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HISTORY

OF

GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.

THE FABULOUS HISTORIANS.

1. THE history of a nation, to be really instructive, should contain nothing but the truth. We are naturally inclined to believe what we read in books without questioning its accuracy; and historians, taking advantage of this disposition, have sought to gratify their own prejudices and the national vanity by misrepresenting facts, or by exaggerating the antiquity and warlike achievements of their ancestors. Thus succeeding writers, adopting without examination the tales recorded by their predecessors, and even adding to them, have in many cases either entirely obscured the truth, or supplied its place by fable and falsehood. As very little is known of the early inhabitants of this island for nearly a thousand years after the birth of Christ, most readers, and the young especially, take little interest in a narrative which does not enlist their sympathies by the heroic exploits of great men and the triumphs or reverses of the nation. Encouraged by this feeling, our earlier historians have sought to relieve the dryness of a general account by the invention of particulars that have little or no foundation in fact; and although this volume will contain nothing but what the author has good grounds for believing to be true, it may afford the learner some amusement as well as instruction, to be shown the kind

of fables which were once current about the early history of England, Scotland, and Ireland. And it must be remembered that a belief in these fables was not confined to the ignorant only, but was entertained by every class of educated men.

2. ENGLAND.-A monk, named Geoffrey of Monmouth, about the middle of the twelfth century wrote a Latin history of Britain, in which he gives a list of seventy kings who flourished before the landing of Julius Cæsar,-the earliest fact concerning Britain which we know on good authority. Our readers who are familiar with the history of Greece will remember that the siege of Troy took place in the early infancy of the Greek nation, and on the lowest computation ten centuries before the birth of Christ. This siege they would hardly expect to find connected with the history of England; and yet, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, it had nearly as much to do with this country as the battle of Bannockburn or of Waterloo. He tells us, that young Ascanius, who fled with his father Æneas from Troy, had a son named Brute, from whom this island was called Brutain or Britain. After having wandered over the world with an army of Trojans, it seems that he came to an island beyond Gaul, inhabited by giants, where Brute and his army performed great feats of valour; and one of his followers had the credit of slaying a hundred men with his own hand in one battle. They killed all the giants in the island, and built London, which they called Troy Novant, or New Troy, after their native city. The chroniclers tell us that Brute had three sons, called Locrinus, Albanactus, and Kamber. To the first he left the kingdom of England, to the second that of Scotland, and to the third that of Wales.

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In Geoffrey's narrative, which has had many copyists, we find a long succession of kings from Brute downwards; and to show the preposterously fictitious nature of the whole account, it may be sufficient to state that he gives a minute history of King Lear as the contemporary of Solomon, king of Israel. Of this King Lear a pleasant and instructive story is told. It is said, that having three daughters, he desired in his old age to divide his kingdom among them, but first wished to know in what degree each loved him, that he might reward them accordingly. One of them said, "She loved him above all creatures;" another said, "She loved him above her own soul;" but the third would only say, "My love towards you is as my duty bids;—what should a father seek-what can a

child promise more? they who pretend beyond this flatter." The foolish old man, enraged at this candid speech, divided his kingdom between the two elder daughters, and the third, whose name was Cordelia, he left destitute. But Cordelia's virtues, as the story goes, attracted the admiration and love of Aganippus, a distant and powerful monarch, who made her his queen. In the meantime, King Lear, with a party of threescore knights, bethought him that he would live in happiness and comfort at the court of his eldest daughter. But she, complaining that his followers were disorderly, treated him and them with affronts and incivilities, and gradually got them reduced to the number of thirty. He then went with his diminished retinue to his second daughter; but she followed the example of her sister, and reduced his attendants to five. The old man next sought to return to his eldest child, but she refused to admit him if he had more than one attendant. And now the heart-broken monarch began to think of the words of his daughter Cordelia, and sought a refuge at her husband's court. She was only too glad to receive and honour her poor old father; and, in the words of the great poet Milton, who gives the story a place in his history of England, "not enduring either that her own or any other eye should see him in such forlorn condition as his messenger declared, discreetly appoints one of her most trusty servants first to convey him privately towards some good sea-town, then to array him, bathe him, cherish him, and furnish him with such attendants and state as beseemed his dignity; that then, as from his first landing, he might send word of his arrival to her husband Aganippus; which done, with all mature and requisite contrivance, Cordelia, with the king her husband, and all the barony of his realm, who then first had news of his passing the sea, go out to meet him; and after all honourable and joyful entertainment, Aganippus, as to his wife's father and his royal guest, surrenders him during his abode there the power and disposal of his whole dominion." Aganippus afterwards sent an army which conquered the kingdom from the two ungrateful daughters, and restored it to their aged father.-Such is the story of the old chroniclers; which, though not true, at all events contains a good moral. It formed the groundwork of the most affecting of all Shakspeare's tragedies.

3. SCOTLAND.-The Scottish historians were resolved not to be behind their neighbours in the antiquity which they

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