Those forms of dark yet lustrous loveliness.
Whatever the original cradle of the mysterious Etrurians, scholars, with one or two illustrious exceptions, are pretty well agreed that it must have been somewhere in the East; and the more familiar we become with the remains of their art, the stronger appears the evidence of their early and intimate connection with the Egyptians, though in themselves a race decidedly not Egyptian. See Micali, Stor. deg. Antich. Pop. But in referring to this delightful and learned writer, to whom I am under many obligations in this part of my poem, I must own, with such frankness as respect for so great an authority will permit, that I think many of his assumptions are to be taken with great qualification and reserve.
NOTES TO BOOK IV.
Like that in which the far Saronides.
Saronides—the Druids of Gaul: "The Samian Sage"—Pythagoras.. The Augur is here supposed to speak Phœnician as the parent language of Arthur's native Celtic. See note 2.
Exchanged dark riddles with the Samian sage.
Diodorus Siculus speaks with great respect of the Saronides as the Druid priests of Gaul; and Mr. Davis, in his Celtic Researches, insists upon it that Saronides is a British word, compounded from sêr, stars; and honydd, "one who discriminates or points out:" in fine, according to him, the Saronides are Seronyddion, i. e. astronomers. For the initiation of Pythagoras into the Druid mysteries, see Clem. Alex. Strom. L. i. Ex. Alex. Polyhist. It will be observed that the author here takes advantage of the well-known assertions of many erudite authorities that the Phœnician language is the parent of the Celtic, in order to obtain a channel of oral communication between Arthur and the Etrurian;[C] though, contented with those authorities, as sufficing for all poetic purpose, he prudently declines entering into a controversy equally abstruse and interminable, as to the affinity between the countrymen of Dido and the scattered remnants of the Briton. It is not surprising that the Augur should know Phœnician, for we have only to suppose that he maintained, as well as he could in his retreat, the knowledge common among his priestly forefathers. The intercourse between Etruria and the Phœnician states (especially Carthage) was too considerable not to have rendered the language of the last familiar to the learning of the first;—to say nothing of those more disputable affinities of origin and religion, which, if existing, would have made an acquaintance with Phœnicia necessary to the solution of their historical chronicles and sacred books. Nor, when the Augur afterwards assures Arthur that Ægle also understands Phœnician, is any extravagant demand made upon the credulity of the indulgent reader; for, those who have consulted such lights as research has thrown upon Etrurian records, are aware that their more high-born women appear to have received no ordinary mental cultivation.