BOOK II. 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 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 scripturememory are exerted with unceremonious fusion; 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, 40 40 See his first tract de excidio Brit. pro 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." 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 excess and coarseness of the invectives of Gildas, 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 Mark the hermit, one of the last-known revisers of Nennius, 42 It is his epistola in which these expressions occur, with 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 mag. nopere 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. 199 CHAP. VIII. II. BOOK inserted them.43 Yet so many features of moral depravity in the Roman empire at this period are described by Salvian, who witnessed and detailed them, that however unwilling we are to adopt the violent abuse and repulsive rhetoric of Gildas, there is too much reason to fear, that many of the 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 seto 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 Gale and Bertram in certain transpositions of the subject; in the omission of two introductory prefaces; in not acknowledging the assistance of Samuel Bewly, the reputed master of Nennius; and in detaching the life of St. Patrick from the body of the work, and placing it at the end." Pref. xxiv. It is, in fact, the former work dislocated and curtailed. I think these alterations quite sufficient to account for Mark having put his own name to the transcript he so varied. This MS. makes one of its latest computation of dates in 946, and the fifth year of Edmund, the Anglo-Saxon king, p. 45. But this year is afterwards protracted to 994, pp. 62. and 80. The dates of all the copies are inconsistent. Mark by his date has varied that of Nennius, which in the MSS. used by Gale was 800, and in the Hengwrt MS. 796, and in c. xi. is made 876. This would imply that the chronicle had both earlier authors and revisals than Mark. Jeffry quotes Gildas frequently as a writer of some history which we have not; and as this history of Nennius has had the name of Gildas prefixed to it, and bears so many marks of dislocated passages and changes of its date, I am tempted to think that it is an old chronicle revised and altered by several hands. Gildas may have made the first sketch of part of it. His work, Nennius in the ninth century may have abridged and carried on, and Mark in the next age have added his revisal. It is clear that the history of Nennius is not the whole work of Gildas to which Jeffry alludes, because it does not contain the incident to which he refers. It is therefore either an extract or a different work. VIII. deformities which his coarse daubing has distorted CHAP. almost into incredibility, degraded the character and accelerated the downfal of our ancient British predecessors.44 44 See Salv. de Gub. 44, 5, 6, 7. APPENDIX то BOOK II. THE MANNERS OF THE SAXONS IN THEIR I. CHAP. I. The Character and Persons of the most ancient SAXONS. CHAP. WE may now pause to consider the most prominent features of the Saxons before they established themselves in Britain. THE Anglo-Saxons came to England from the Germanic continent; and above a century had elapsed from their first settlements before they received those improvements and changes which followed the introduction of the Christian system. These circumstances make it necessary to exhibit them as they were in their continental and pagan state, before they are delineated with the features, and in the dress of Christianity. It would be extremely desirable to give a complete portrait of our ancestors in their uncivilised state; but this is an epocha in the history of the human mind which in former times seldom interested any one, and has not been faithfully detailed. Hence on this subject curiosity must submit to be disappointed. The converted Anglo-Saxon remembered the practices of his idolatrous ancestors with |