mimics: actors who played in farces, like our pantomimes.
scribes: among the Romans, clerks in public offices.
[7. AFTER THE ROMANS. PART III.]
Alaric, king of a German tribe called the Visigoths (West Goths) invaded Greece and Italy, and after several defeats finally took and sacked Rome in 410 A.D. It was this state of thing which compelled the Romans to withdraw their troops from Britain.
The West where the Britons still held their own: Wales and Cornwall were never occupied by the invading Saxons: Welsh and Cornishmen are Celts, with a language of their own in Wales, while the Cornish language has only disappeared during the last hundred years.
Wessex: the land of the West Saxons corresponds roughly to England south of the Thames.
oblivion: being forgotten.
The river Lea rises in Bedfordshire, near Luton, passes Hertford and Ware, forms the boundary between Middlesex and Essex, and falls into the Thames at Blackwall, after a course of forty miles.
quagmires: marshy, boggy ground that quakes under the feet (quake, mire).