VIII. in it. 29 The natives had been ambitious to obtain, CHA P. and hence had not only built houses, temples, courts, and market places, in their towns, but had adorned them with porticoes, galleries, baths, and saloons 30, and with mosaic pavements, and emulated every Roman improvement. They had distinguished themselves as legal advocates and orators, and for their study of the Roman poets.32 Their cities had been made images of Rome itself, and the natives had become Romans.33 The description of Caerleon in Wales is applicable to many others in Britain.34 The ruins of Verulam, near St. Albans, ex fair meaning of the orator's words addressed to him, speaking of Britannias, or the British Isles, "Tu etiam nobiles, ILLIC ORIENDO fecisti." Mr. Gibbon thinks this may refer to his accession; but the other opinion is the most natural construction; and so the foreign editor thought when he added the marginal note, "Nam in Britannia Constantinus natus fuit." 29 Carausius, Constantius Chlorus, the father of Constantine, and others. 30 Tacit. Vit. Ag. c. 21. 31 Hence Juvenal's "Gallia causidicos docuit fæcunda Britannos," Sat. 15. Gaul being their place of study. 32 So Martial intimates, "Dicitur et nostros cantare Britannia versus." Ep. 33 Hence Gildas says, "Ita, ut non Britannia, sed Romania insula censeretur," c. v. p. 3. He adds, that all their coins were stamped with the image of the emperor, ibid. 34 Giraldus has left this account of its remains in the twelfth century." It was elegantly built by the Romans with brick walls. Many vestiges of its ancient splendour still remain, and stately palaces, which formerly, with the gilt tiles, displayed the Roman grandeur. It was first built by the Roman nobility, and adorned with sumptuous edifices, with a lofty tower, curious hot baths, temples now in ruins, and theatres encompassed with stately walls, in part yet standing. The walls are three miles in circumference, and within these, as well as without, subterraneous buildings are frequently met with; as aqueducts, vaults, hypocausts, stoves," &c. Giral. Camb. Itin. Camb. p. 836. II. BOOK hibited analogous signs of splendour and luxury; and the numerous remains of habitations or towns built in the Roman fashion, which casual excavations are even yet every year, and sometimes every month, disclosing to our view, show that Britain, at the time of the Saxon invasion, had become a wealthy, civilised, and luxurious country. These epithets, however, whenever used, are but comparative phrases, and their precise meaning varies in every age, from the dawn of Egyptian civility to our own bright day. Britain did not in the fifth century possess our present affluence and civilisation, but those of a Roman province at that epoch. It had not our mind, or knowledge, or improvements, but it shared in all that Rome then possessed or valued. Gildas has been emphatically querulous in painting the desolations which it had endured before his time-the sixth century—from the Picts, the Irish, and the Saxons, and from its own civil fury; and yet, after all these evils had occurred, he describes it as containing twenty-eight 35 One abbot of St. Albans, before the conquest, found great subterraneous passages of the ancient city, Verulam, solidly arched and passing under the river, and tiles and stones, which he set apart for the building of a church. Mat. Par. Vit. Ab. p. 40. The next abbot exploring farther, met with the foundation of a great palace, and remains of many buildings, with some manuscripts. He discovered several stone floors, with tiles and columns fit for the intended church; and pitchers and vessels made of earth, and neatly shaped as with a wheel; and also vessels of glass, containing the ashes of the dead. He also met with several dilapidated temples, subverted altars, idols, and various coins. Mat. Par. ibid. p. 41. 36 It is mentioned by the orator Eumenius, that when the father of Constantine the Great rebuilt Autun, he was chiefly furnished with workmen from Britain, " which abounded with the best builders." Eum. Pan. 8. VIII. cities, and some well-fortified castles, and speaks of CHA P. the country with metaphors, that seem intended to express both cultivation and abundance.37 Bede, who lived two centuries after Gildas, does not subtract from his description; but on the contrary adds "nobilissimis" to his cities, and " innumera" to his castles, which Nennius above a century later repeats. 39 IF our knowledge of the moral state of Britain at this period be taken from the vehement censures of Gildas, no country could be more worthless in its legal chieftains and religious directors, or in its general population. He says it had become a proverb, that the Britons were neither brave in war, nor faithful in peace; that adverse to peace and truth, they were bold in crimes and falsehood; that evil was preferred to good, and impiety to religion. That those who were most cruel were, though not rightfully, anointed kings; and were soon unjustly destroyed by others, fiercer than themselves. If any one discovered gentler manners or superior virtues, he became the more unpopular. Actions, pleasing or displeasing to the Deity, were held in equal estimation. It was not the laity only who were of this character; the clergy, he 37 Gildas, c. 1. The fecundity of the harvests of Britain, and the innumerable multitudes of its cattle and sheep, had been extolled by the Roman encomiast of Constantine. Paneg. Const. And we read in Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xviii. c. 2., and Zosimus, lib. iii., of corn being carried to Germany from Britain, by the Roman armies, as if from their granary. Permission had been granted by Probus to plant vines and make wine in Britain. Scrip. Aug. p. 942.; and see Henry's History, vol. ii. p. 106-112. 38 Hist. Eccl. c. 1. p. 41. 39 Nenn. 3 Gall. p. 98. II. BOOK adds, who ought to have been an example to all, were addicted to intoxication, animosities, and quarrels. He aggravates the features of this revolting picture, in his subsequent addresses to the British kings, whom he names, and for whom no epithet seems, in his opinion, to have been too severe and to the clergy, on whom his vituperative powers of rhetoric and scripture-memory are exerted with unceremonious profusion; accusing them, besides their folly and impudence, of deceit, robbery, avarice, profligacy, gluttony, and almost every other vice: -"even, he adds, "that I may speak the truth, of infidelity." He is angry enough with the Saxons, whom he calls Ambrones, Furciferi, and Lupi, "robbers, villains, and wolves;" but these are forbearing metaphors, compared with the flow of Latin abuse which he pours first on all the British kings generally, and then specially on Constantine, "the tyrannical cub of the lioness of Devonshire;' on the other "lion's whelp," Aurelius Conan, "like the pard in colour and morals, though with a hoary head;" on Vortiper, "the stupid tyrant of South Wales, the bear-driver," and what his words seem to imply, "the bear-baiter;" on Cuneglas, whose name he is pleased with recollecting, implies the "yellow bull-dog;" and on Maglocune, "the dragon of the island," the most powerful and "the worst" of all. 42 But the very ex 40 See his first tract de excidio Brit. 41 See his last declamation against the ecclesiastical order of Britain, of which he yet says, before he dies, he sometimes wishes to be a member, "Ante mortem esse aliquandiu participem opto." 42 It is his epistola in which these expressions occur, with VIII. cess and coarseness of the invectives of Gildas, CHA P. display such a cynicism of mind and atrabilious feeling in himself, as not only to show that he partook of the dispositions he reprehends, but also that he has so much exaggerated the actual truth, that we cannot disencumber it from his spleen, his malice, or his hyperboles. Bede has condescended to adopt a few sentences from his inculpations; but Nennius has not copied them; nor has Marc the hermit, one of the last-known revisers of Nennius, inserted them. 43 Yet so many features of moral copious commentaries of the same tendency. I am rather inclined to think, that one of the passages against Maglocune, alludes to his having aided Mordred against the celebrated Arthur. "Nonne in primis adolescentiæ tuæ annis, AVUNCULUM REGEM cum fortissimis prope modum militibus, quorum vultus, non catulorum leonis in acie magnopere dispares, visebantur, acerrime, ense, hasta, igni oppressisti." The chronology suits Arthur, and the king with his brave militibus, whose countenances in battle were not much unlike lion's whelps, will sound like remarkable expressions, to those who cherish the romances on Arthur and his knights. 43 Of the small history of the Britons, usually ascribed to Nennius, the Rev. W. Gunn has recently (1819) published an edition from a MS. in the Vatican, that seems to be of the age of the tenth century, where it bears the name of Mark the Anchorite. "Incipit Historia Brittonum edita ab anachoreta Marco ejusdem gentis scto Epo. p. 46. "The original is on parchment, fairly written in double columns, and fills ten pages of a miscellaneous volume of the folio size." Gunn's Pref. It once belonged to Christina, the celebrated queen of Sweden. The two MSS. of this work in the British Museum, Vitel. A. 13. and Vespas. D. 21., have the name of Nennius as the author. So has the MS. of the Hengwrt library. The Bodleian MS. No. 2016., now No. 163., makes Gildas its author. "A Gilda sapiente composita." Of the new MS. Mr. Gunn justly says, "It varies not as to general import from the copies already known. It differs from those edited by |