N commencing the history of a country, the mythic or fabulous portion of it is commonly treated by modern writers as a ravelled skein, wherein truth is so mingled with error, as to defy extrication. But in the legendary records of our land, however garbled by the allegories of early fabulists and bards, and the accidents of oral tradition, we may discover traces of the origin of the people, and the changes that operated upon their habits and character up to the period at which these become associated with authentic history. The fabulous history of Britain continued to be an article of faith during the time of the Plantagenets, and it supplied Edward I. with arguments for his aggressions upon Scotland, and the commencement of the longest and most important warfare in which England was ever engaged. It continued to be received in the Elizabethan age, and was studied as veritable historic truth by the brightest intellects which this country has produced. Even at a still later period, also, the same pen that wrote Paradise Lost did not disdain to illustrate those shadowy ages in which a VOL. I.

Trojan rule was established in England. With these reflections we are justified in glancing at those early legends upon which Milton employed his learning, and from which Shakspeare himself derived some of his happiest illustrations.

The collectors of these earliest traditions who first adventured upon a written history of England, after alluding to the people by whom England was inhabited before the Deluge-and about the records of whom they modestly profess their ignorance-are contented to begin as late as 200 years after that memorable event. It was then that Samothes or Dis, who was either the fourth or the sixth son of Japheth, planted Gaul and Britain with the Celtic race, and from him the island was originally called Samothea. This Samothes is also alleged, upon the authority of Berosus, to have taught his people the arts of government and the use of letters. After him succeeded Magus, who was not only a learned scholar, but a mighty magician; Sarron, a founder of schools and colleges; Druis, the originator of the order of Druids; and Bardus, the father of the Bards. In this way, four great stages of improvement are comprised within four short generatious, and impersonated in as many names: it was,

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Having thus peopled the island with a Celtic race, and described those institutions by which the people were distinguished, a change occurred, under which the ancient name of Samothea, that was first affixed to Britain, was to pass away, and be superseded by that of Albion. This was in consequence of an arrival of hostile strangers, who landed in Britain during the reign of Bardus, and became masters of the island. These victorious invaders, who have been described as giants, were under the command of Albion, the son of Neptune; and on winning possession of the country, they commemorated the valour and good fortune of their chief by giving his name to the island at large. But the career of Albion was brief; for Hercules, the destroyer of giants, was abroad, and the gigantic sons of Neptune were his especial enemies. Bergion, King of Ireland and the Orkneys, having been assailed by this formidable wanderer, Albion, his brother, hastened to his assistance; but in an engagement that followed, the two brethren fell, with the greater part of their army. In this story, Hercules, instead of going forth alone with his club and lion's skin, is at the head of a host, and makes war in regular fashion, and with the ordinary weapons, while the provocations that have moved him are such as any ancient chief would have made the ground of a warlike enterprise. The whole narrative, indeed, is evidently nothing more than that of a hostile invasion which was made upon Britain at a very early period, while the rude chroniclers who first reduced the report to writing, invested the successful assailant with the well-known classical name of Hercules, to give additional interest to the story.

The success of this story of Hercules upon the credulous minds of the British nobles and priests of the early ages, was not lost sight of; and the next arrival of strangers into the island was allegorized in the same spirit of classical license. It was the old Greek story of Danaus and his daughters, naturalized into the annals of England. This Danaus, whom our early writers by mistake call Dioclesian, King of Syria, had fifty daughters, whom as many of his nephews sought in marriage,

should not profit by his submission, he gave a sword to each of his daughters, with which she was to murder her husband on the wedding night. With this they all complied, except one, who saved her husband, Lyncæus; and, in requital of their barbarity, this young prince caused the forty-nine faithless brides to be put on board a ship, and set adrift to the mercy of the waves. The vessel was borne by the winds to Britain, and the giants, whom the death of Albion had set free to follow their own devices, were so delighted with the arrival of these congenial spirits, that they took them in marriage, and became fathers of an offspring more gigantic and tyrannical than themselves. In this way, it may be, the arrival of a foreign female influence, and the origin of an unpopular aristocracy in Britain, were embodied under the guise of the old Greek story.

In such a fashion as this, the mythic history of England is carried onward through the earliest periods of antiquity to the era of the Trojan war. It is well known how eagerly this event was laid hold of by the Roman poets and historians, to aggrandize the origin of their countrymen, as well as that of their noblest families. But in spite of these fables, by which historic truth was so much obscured, we also know how greatly a Pelasgic, if not a Trojan ancestry belonged to the founders of Rome. The idea of such an honoured derivation was not confined exclusively to the Romans; the Britains also claimed a similar paternity, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, who was its chief recorder and advocate, continued to be copied by his successors until the beginning of the seventeenth century. It was only then that they dismissed it indignantly as a pious fraud, without inquiring as to what particles of truth it may have contained, or even what important change or era in our ancient history it may have obscurely symbolized.

The commencement of the strange story, by which a Trojan ancestry is secured for the ancient Britons, is thus told by Giovani Villani, a Florentine, in his Universal History, as quoted by Holinshed: "Sylvius, the son of Æneas by his wife Lavinia, fell in love with a niece of his mother, the same Lavinia; and by her he had a son, of whom she died in travail, and therefore he was called Brutus; who after, as he grew in some stature, and hunting in a forest, slew his father at unawares; and thereupon, for fear of his grandfather, Sylvius Posthumus, he fled the country, and with a retinue of such as followed him, passing through diverse seas, at length he arrived in the isle of Britain."

Such is the earlier portion of the tale, embel