Name I. Ffraid Role Poet | Died 1875 | |
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I. D. Ffraid or John Evans (1814–1875) was a Welsh poet.
He was a Welsh poet and Calvinistic Methodist minister, who was born at Ty Mawr, Llansantffraid Glan Conwy, North Wales, 23 July 1814. At the age of sixteen he published a ‘History of the Jews’ in Welsh, and at twenty-one he created ‘Difyrwch Bechgyn Glanau Conwy,’ a volume of poetry. Much of his later work was contributions of prose and verse to the periodical literature of the day. He was, for many years, a regular contributor of a racy letter to the ‘Baner,’ under the name of Adda Jones. A writer in the ‘Gwyddoniadur’ (the Welsh Cyclopædia) says that many of the letters remind one of Addison's ‘Essays’ in their liveliness, wit, and ingenious reasonings. He strikes his opponent till he groans, and at the same time tickles him till he laughs, and the reader is amused and instructed. He translated Young's ‘Night Thoughts’ and Milton's ‘Paradise Lost’ (xxxvi. 418, no date). It is on this last his reputation will chiefly rest, and it has received high praise in Dr. Lewis Edwards's ‘Traethodau Llenyddol.’ Dr. W. O. Pughe had already translated the ‘Paradise Lost’ into Welsh, but the doctor's Welsh was so artificial that it was never much read. Evans died 4 March 1876, and his remains were interred in the burying-ground of his native parish, 10 March.