To Cæsar we look for the earliest authentic information, and he first visited Britain in the year B. C. 55. As he was an eye witness of the events he records, and was even the principal actor, his narrative has peculiar claims to attention; but it must be admitted on the other hand, that there are circumstances which render his veracity questionable. Our experience teaches us, that great generals in modern times are apt to colour their narratives, even when they know that there will be a counter-statement. Exaggeration of advantages and palliation of losses are to be expected; nay, are scarcely to be avoided. Now, Cæsar was interested in representing the events in the manner most favourable to his own character, and whilst the final advantage gained, appears even from his own account to have been trifling; the rejoicings at Rome were, we may almost say, extravagant. Succeeding writers have spoken of his success in very different ways, some representing it as a conquest, and others as little better than defeat, whilst Pollio, one of his contemporaries, has not hesitated to charge his narrative with inaccuracy. The stratagems he made use of, are said to have been carefully concealed, for the supposed purpose of exalting his courage and power, whilst the same motive would induce him to magnify the strength of his opponents, and to describe them as more formidable than they really were. Polycenus, who wrote a work on "Military Stratagems," dedicated to the emperors M. Antoninus and L. Verus, towards the close of the second century, records several stratagems that had been used by Cæsar, which are supposed to have been extracted from his " ephemerides" or daily memorandums, a work now lost. From this work, Servius the commentator on Virgil, at the latter end of the fourth century, is supposed to have learned a remarkable circumstance mentioned by him in a note on the 11th Eneid, that Cæsar was once carried off by a Gaul of great strength, and was set free, in conse quence of another Gaul crying out Cæsar, Cæsar, which was intended as exultation over him, but was understood by the captor as an order to set him at liberty. This circumstance, if it took place, is omitted in the commentaries. The use of an elephant to alarm the Britons, when collected by Cassibelanus to oppose Cæsar's passage of the Thames, on his second expedition, is mentioned by Polycenus, who says, as quoted by Lingard, that at the approach of this unknown animal, of enormous magnitude, covered with scales of polished steel, and carrying on his back a turret filled with armed men, the Britons abandoned their defences, and sought for safety in a precipitate flight." Now, if Cæsar used elephants, or a single elephant in his wars against either Gauls or Britons, he has studiously concealed it in his commentaries; and it has also escaped the researches of Plutarch; and yet it may be said, what could induce Polycenus to invent such a tale? We refer to it merely as one instance in which Cæsar is supposed to have withheld a fact, but do not intend to argue for its truth. A statement, however, in all respects different, has been made by some of the early historical writers in England. Matthew, a monk of Westminster, who lived in the reign of Edward I., and who was a great collector from the writings of preceding authors, but does not give his authorities, states, that Cassibelanus became sovereign of Britain, after the death of his brother Lud, and that Cæsar sent to him, demanding tribute, which was indignantly refused; that Cassibelanus with his confederates (for there were a number of petty states combined under one head, called the Pendragon, according to Whittaker,) met Cæsar on his landing, when a long and bloody battle was fought; that Cæsar had a personal engagement with Nennius, brother of the British chief; that he lost his sword in the engagement, and that the Romans fled to their ships and returned to Gaul, in confirmation of which, the historian quotes the reproach which Lucan puts into the mouth of Pompey. "Territa quæsitis ostendit terga Britannis." That on Cæsar making a second attempt two years after, he was again obliged to depart; but, that after this, on a quarrel between Cassibelanus and his nephew Androgeus, Duke or King of the Trinobantes, the latter applied to Cæsar for aid, and on the landing of the Roman army, joined it with his forces; that Cassibelanus was defeated give us no information respecting the time in which he lived, or the circumstances of his life. From Tacitus, on the other hand, we learn, that the sons of Cynobelinus, were Togodanmus and Caractacus, who were kings in the time of Claudius, and the former of whom, like Guiderius, is said to have been killed in battle. Was the story of Cymbeline a mere romance, or was Caractacus (or Caradoe, as some have called him) the same as Arviragus? The name of Caractacus has been rendered familiar to us, by the Drama of Muson; and we associate him with in a hard fought battle; that he was encompassed whilst on a hill where he took refuge, and that he must have perished by the sword or famine, if Androgeus had not interfered and mediated a peace, by the terms of which, Cassibelanus agreed to pay 3,000 pounds of silver yearly, as a tribute. Now, Caesar mentions only two expeditions, in both of which he was successful in the field; he speaks of Cassibelanus, not as the regular monarch, but as an able prince, selected by his equals, to command, when Cæsar came the second time; and he speaks of the Trinobantes join-Wallace and other brave but unsueing him, in consequence of his having with him a young prince, son of their former king, who had fled to him for protection. The final result is similar in both cases, a peace formed on the basis of submission and tribute. The name Cassibelanus, is supposed to mean, king of the Cassi; belin, meaning king. After this, there seems to have been little intercourse with Britain for many years, though Horace, in one or two passages, seems to attribute the conquest of them to Augustus, founded, perhaps, on their renewal of tribute, or some submission which has not been deemed worthy of notice by the Roman historians, but of which the flattering poet availed himself, to compliment his patron. Cymbeline, is a name which Shakespeare has made familiar to us, yet we do not meet with it in the best historical works. The compilation of Matthew of Westminster, informs us, that Cassibelanus reigned seven years after the departure of Cæsar, that on his death, he was succeeded by his nephew Tenuantius, whose son Cymbeline had become king, previous to the birth of our Saviour. This answers in point of time, supposing his reign to be of tolerable length, with the Cynobelinus, so many of whose coins have been found, and the banishment of whose son, caused Caligula's foolish expedition, recorded by Suetonius. The sons of Cymbeline, were, Guiderius and Arviragus, who were successively kings, and the latter of whom is represented to have married a daughter of Claudius Cæsar, and to have been mostly in alliance with, though occasionally at war with the Romans. Juvenal speaks of an Arviragus, king of Britain, but in such a manner as to cessful defenders of the liberty of their country. We thus feel an interest in his story, and gladly receive whatever is told respecting him, calculated to exalt his character. That he maintained resistance to the Romans in his native wilds, for nine years that he at last fell into the hands of his conquerors and was carried to Rome, and that in consequence of his manly and dignified behaviour, he was treated somewhat better than prisoners of his class generally are. These are facts which we may without hesitation receive, on the authority of Tacitus, who was born in a few years after the events were said to have happened. Messrs. Bennett and Bogue in their history of the dissenters, seem to adopt a tale that his father accompanied him to Rome, with the rest of the family, and was converted there to christianity, and returning to Britain, introduced it there. This is inconsistent with his being the son of Cymbeline, as stated by Tacitus-so also, is his being king of the Silures in the west, for Cymbeline resided in the east of Britain. The details of Tacitus are, by many of our compilers enlarged on the authority of Dio Cassius, a native of Bithynia, who was raised to the consulship and various governments by Alexander Severus, in the early part of the third century, and who employed his old age in writing history. There is nothing improbable in the circumstance, that the Romans employed some native princes against others; that the stepmother of Čaractacus betrayed him to his enemies, or that a weak prince, like Claudius, should appoint the triumphal spectacle, recorded on the delivery to him of such a captive. The speech which Caractacus is represented to have delivered, is, of course, an invention of Tacitus, but is suitable enough to the character and circumstance; and we may, perhaps, say the same of the expression of surprise," that the possessors of palaces in Rome should envy him a cottage in Britain," which has been introduced from some other source. Dr. Henry is very full in his detail, taken chiefly from Tacitus; other compilers vary in their narratives, but Mr. Hume has, I think, judiciously compressed the whole into a single sentence. The monkish historians have a succession of three kings after the death of Arviragus, called Marius, Coillus and Lucius, who are represented as remaining in peace, attentive to the welfare of their subjects, and regularly paying their tribute to Rome, and we have a pompous account of the conversion of Lucius, the last of them, to Christianity, which is adopted with modifications by Dr. Lingard. This tale, however, is, in many points, inconsistent, and is completely at variance with every thing we learn from other sources and is also omitted by Gildus, a British writer, whose silence may be considered as decisive of its falsehood. From the time of Caractacus to the year 84, A. D. we have interesting details of the war with Boadicea, of the reduction of the Brigantes and Silures, and of the campaigns of Agricola, all omitted, as I have observed before, by the monkish historians, but recorded by Tacitus, of whose veracity there is strong internal evidence, though he might be disposed to magnify the exploits of his father-in-law, Agricola. For thirty years after, during the reigns of Nerva and Trajan, we know nothing of the state of Britain. Nor, indeed, for a much longer period have we any satisfactory information. The brief narrative of Eutropius, the abridgment of Dio, by Xiphilinus, and the lives of some of the Roman Emperors, supply a few circumstances, and it is supposed that the country was, in general, quiet and improving, because it has supplied few materials for the historian. The inference, however, is hardly justifiable. The Britons might be unable to resist with effect; but they were, in all probability, a distinct people, under their own petty Kings, neither speaking the language, nor adopting the VOL. I. customs of their conquerors. Some of the hardy youths enlisted in the Roman service, and were sent to foreign regions, where they became completely alienated from their country; and a few might, in the towns, attain to some privileges, but the great body were an oppressed, and most probably a discontented people, kept in submission by a strong military force, and compelled to yield the produce of their labours. › Because the Romans built temples and fortified walls and castles, and made military roads, it by no means follows that the natives were advanced in civilization, for we have no traces of it in any respect. If, indeed, we would form a judgment of the Britons, during the period of Roman sway, we should think of the Irish from the time of Henry the Second to that of Elizabeth, or even much later; or of the Caribs in the West Indies, or of the natives of South America in the Spanish and Portuguese settlements. The groans of the Britons then, if we believe Gildes, that such were uttered to the Romans, must have proceeded from a few favoured adherents, inhabitants of London or York, Verulam, or some Roman towns, who, perhaps, dreaded the population at home, as much as the Scots and Picts; but Zozimus, a general historian, at the latter period of the Roman empire, "whose fidelity," according to Dr. Priestly, in his lectures on history," is not easily to be called in question," relates that the people in general, armed themselves, asserted their independence, and might have protected themselves effectually, if their internal divisions had not been in favour of the enemy. This Zozimus held different civil offices under the younger Theodosius, about the commencement of the fifth century, and left a history of Roman affairs in six books; in the five last of which he details public events from the death of Diocletian to the second siege of Rome by Alaric. He, of course, did not live long after the time under consideration, though very distant from the scene of action, and the important events that took place so much nearer to him, would, probably, attract more of his attention. He has, however, mentioned some circumstances respecting the state of Britain at variance with the more common accounts. All 4 s do not think of this writer, however, with equal approbation-for Gibbon speaks of him as credulous and partial; and he has been charged by others with prejudice against the Christian Emperors, especially against Constantine the Great. Gildas lived at a later period, but was a native of the country, and had, of course, some advantages. He was born in 520, and be came a monk at Bangor, but travelled much, and wrote his work De Excidio Brittannic in 564, when living in Bretagne, then called, Armonia. This work is still in existence. These are the two leading authorities. Nermius of the same abbey, who lived about a century later, or according to Nicholson, not till the ninth century, has left a history of Britain, enlarged upon by Geoffrey of Monmouth, or the Welsh bard, whom Geoffrey is said to have translated, but whose work has not been found, which history is so romantic and so much at variance from what we derive from other sources, that it is now deemed of little authority; though made use of by Mathew of Westminster and the other compilers, down almost to the present day. The Venerable Bede is said to have been born in 672, and to have died in 735, being nearly three centuries after the events recorded. He spent his life in the monastery of Jarrow, near the mouth of the river Lyna, and wrote an ecclesiastical history, in which he gives an account of the state of Christianity in Britain, from its introduction to the year 731. In this he occasionally mentions other circumstances, but when we consider the length of time which had elapsed, the distant and retired situation in which he lived, and the prejudices by which, as a Saxon he must have been influenced, we can neither be surprised that the information he gives about the Britons is scanty, or much disappointed at the manifest appearance of credulity and superstition. Indeed, in all that respects the Britons, he seems to depend on Gildas, and therefore adds nothing to his authority. Mr. Turner has further gleaned from the history of the Goths by Jornandes, himself a Goth, who flourished in 540, and from Claudian, the poetic panegyrist of Stilicho. Some incidental circumstances may be mentioned in some other compilations, but nothing of importance. The ac count as it may be collected from the British writers is that in the year 420, the Britons in consequence of the enmity of the Goths, Picts, and Norwegians sent to Rome for aid, when a legion was sent which repelled the enemy and raised a wall of sods from sea to sea for the protection of the Britons; that this wall proving to be of no use, the Romans being again sent for in the following year, 421, returned, and then built a stone wall with many castles; after which they bid farewell to Britain, as not likely to return. In 434, the Romans are again represented as leaving Britain, and soon after follows an account of the letter, much spoken of in British history, which was entitled the "Groans of the Britains." In the year 435, according to the same account, Guithelin, archbishop of London, is represented as having gone to the King of Armonia, and procured from him his brother Constantine and 2000 soldiers. This Constanntine was chosen King and was father of Constans, Ambrosius and Uthra Pendragon.-On Constantine's being murdered by a Pict in 445, Vortigena, a man of rank, called a Consul, procuring the advancement of Constans, who had been a monk, to the throne, with an expectation of influencing his measures. Not satisfied, however, with this power, Vortigena procures the assassination of Constans and his own elevation to the throne, and his tyranny obliged him to seek the aid of the Saxons in 449. This story is compounded from Gildas, Bede, and Rennius. Mr. Warrington, in his history of Wales, seems to have given credit to it; and a late improved edition, (as it is called), of Goldsmith's History of England, seems to follow Rennius' whole series of Kings, without any expression of doubt. Mr. Hume, the philosopher, who could reject the well-attested facts on which Christianity is founded, adopts that portion which rests on the authority of Gildas, omitting the episode of Constantine from Rennius, and fixes the departure of the Romans in the year 448, in which he varies from all other writers on the subject I have been able to consult. Rapin takes nearly the same course, but differs in dates; he fixes the first departure of the Romans in 410, their final one after rebuilding the wall in 426 and the coming of the Saxons in 449, which last date seems generally agreed upon. Dr. Henry, referring to the same authority, repeats much of the story more in detail, and appears to me to render it inconsistent by mingling accounts which can scarcely be reconciled. Thus following Zosimus, he tells us of the spirit with which the Britons repelled their northern invaders, and then he adopts Gildas's tale of their cowardice and despair. He indeed makes them at different periods. Thus, the Roman troops depart first in 412, and are followed by the other Romans in 414. On this occasion the Britons act with spirit. In 416 they obtain the aid of a legion which repels the enemy and assists them in repairing Antoninus's wall of turf; thus reconciling it to previous history, whilst Gildas, as appears from Turner, speaks of it, as if it were an original undertaking. In 418 a legion comes again and stays a year, during which it repairs (accommodating as before) the stone-wall of Severus. In 420 the Romans take their final departure, and then we have the whole of Gildas's account of the dreadful state of the Britons, for which he quotes Bede, not considering that he might, with equal propriety, quote every other of the many compilers who copied Gildas, without adding in the least to the authority. In giving this, he seems to tell us more than his original, from whatever source he may have got it; and in 446 brings the Britons to that state in which they applied to Etuis. In 449 a council of British kings takes place; Vortigern, sovereign of the Silures, acts the part of universal monarch, and recommends to make application to the Saxons, which is immediately carried into execution. Dr. Lingard adheres chiefly to Zozimus; he does not, indeed, entirely omit the application to Altius or Agitius, but makes it the act of a small party, and says nothing of the groans of the Britons; whilst Turner exposes the inconsistency of Gildas's account with that of Zozimus, supported by gleanings from other works, and rejects it almost with contempt, applying to him what Dr. Johnson said of Ossian-" If we have not searched the Magellanic regions, let us however forbear to people them with Patagons; if we know little of this ancient period, let us not fill the vacuity with Gildas." Mr. Turner fixes the final departure of the Romans in 409, on which the Britons asserted and maintained independence. For the division of Britain under the Romans, he infers, that there were thirty independent republics governed by chief magistrates, a senate, and other officers. These states quarrelled with one another; kings, or tyrants, were established, and at last one tyrant, Gwrtheyrn, or Vortigern, predominated over the rest, though Ambrosius, or as the Welsh bards call him, Emrys Wledig, is represented as a successful rival. Mr. Turner, on the authority of a Welsh chronology, fixes 426 for the acquired ascendancy of Vortigern, leaving a period of twentythree years from his being chief monarch to the invitation of the Saxons. Such is the uncertainty attached to this period of history, that we can scarcely move a step with satisfaction, and we have no writer on whom we can depend. So also with respect to the introduction of Christianity into Britain, there is no consistency-in the want of an original account conjecture has followed conjecture, and the obscure riddles of the Welsh bards have been recorded as authority. Nor do we appear to have more certainty when we enter upon the Saxon times. "Our further progress," says Mr. Turner, "must be very cautiously made; we are treading among the broken monuments of our ancestors and the ancient Britons, and the feeble light we can obtain, throws but a small and faint circle of rays into the damp and dreary gloom of time, which is corroding them. Sometimes the scanty illumination presents to us the relics distorted by the shades it creates and cannot remove; with all our care we may often give a delusion, when we think we have traced a reality." Gildas and Bede continue our chief authorities, the Saxon chronicle and the Welsh poems supplying occasional information. Of the Saxon horde succeeded horde till eight kingdoms were founded, the Britons offering constant, though ineffectual resistance. After the defeat, and almost total expulsion of the Britons, Christianity, and with it the barbarous literature of the day, was soon introduced among the victorious Saxons; numerous monasteries were founded by their weak |