A later Welsh scholar affirms, “beyond all doubt there has been an era when science diffused a light among the Cymry—in a very early period of the world.”—Owen’s “Heroic Elegies of Llywarç Hen.” Preface, xxi.
This style is traditional and still kept up among Welsh and Irish scholars, who seem familiar with an antiquity beyond record.
[7] Toland’s “History of the Druids” in his Miscellaneous Works, ii. 163.
[8] “The Celtic Druids, or an Attempt to show that the Druids were the Priests of Oriental Colonies, who emigrated from India.” By Godfrey Higgins, Esq. London, 1829.
This is a quarto volume abounding with recondite researches and many fancies. It is more repulsive, by the absurd abuse of “the Christian priests who destroyed their (the Druids’) influence, and unnerved the arms of their gallant followers.” There are philosophical fanatics!
[9] Cæsar was a keen observer of the Britons. He characterizes the Kentish men, Ex his omnibus longè sunt humanissimi,—“Of all this people the Kentish are far the most humane.” Cæsar describes the British boats to have the keel and masts of the lightest wood, and their bodies of wicker covered with leather; and the hero and sage was taught a lesson by the barbarians, for Cæsar made use of these in Spain to transport his soldiers,—a circumstance which Lucan has recorded. In the size and magnitude of Britain, confiding to the exaggerated accounts of the captives, he was mistaken; but he acknowledges, that many things he heard of, he had not himself observed.
[10] Toland’s “Hist. of the Druids,” 56.
[11] The origin of Stonehenge is as unknown as that of the Pyramids. As it is evident that those huge masses could not have been raised and fixed without the machinery of art, Mr. Owen, the Welsh antiquary, infers, that this building, if such it may be called, could not have been erected till that later period when the Druidical genius declined and submitted to Christianity, and the Druids were taught more skilful masonry in stone, though without mortar. It has been, however, considered, that those masses which have been ascribed to the necromancer Merlin, or the more ancient giants, might have been the work of the Britons themselves, who, without our knowledge of the mechanical powers in transporting or raising ponderous bodies, it is alleged, were men of mighty force and stature, whose co-operation might have done what would be difficult even to our mechanical science. The lances, helmets, and swords of these Britons show the vast size and strength of those who wore them. The native Americans, as those in Peru, unaided by the engines we apply to those purposes, have raised up such vast stones in building their temples as the architect of the present time would not perhaps hazard the attempt to remove. “Essays by a Society at Exeter,” 114.
