publications. At the former period, we see him moving forward" with thoughts inflamed of highest resolve," in the strength of youth and hope, conscious of unrivalled genius and extraordinary acquirements, and confident in the truth of his yet untried speculations. But the scene was now changed; his public hopes were defeated; the friends of his youth and partners of his expectations, separated from him by death and calamity; himself oppressed with poverty and blindness, bodily suffering, and domestic disquietude; seeking, in the pursuits of literature, like Cicero of old, at once a refuge from personal affliction, and a means of service to his country, and supporting himself with the hope, that his past exertions, if unsuccessful as to their immediate objects, had not been wholly unacceptable to the "Great Task-Master," in whose eye he laboured. Hence his early works are redolent of promise, of lofty design, and confident expectation; while, in his latter, we see the bitterness of disappointed hope, a desire of explaining the confounding events of the time, by causes, which no individual virtue could obviate, and a frequent recurrence to the great unchangeable maxims of political and moral truth, as if to strengthen and support himself amidst the numerous and disheartening misapplications of the former, and violations of both. Such is the character of Samson Agonistes, Paradise Regained, and the prophetic parts of Paradise Lost; and the same strain of feeling is visible throughout this history. He writes evidently with a view to his own and succeeding times; and in the events of his country's early history, he reads a perpetual comment upon his favourite maxims of a visible providential superintendance in the affairs of nations, and the inseparable connection of public liberty with private virtue and religion; a truth, his constant inculcation of which, distinguishes him as widely from those spurious advocates of liberty, who degrade his name by associating it with their own profligate tenets, as his unwearied zeal for the advancement of freedom and public knowledge separates him from those who would confound the cause of bigotry and servility with that of public morals. But we are wandering from our subject: our intention was not so much to draw the attention of our readers to a work, by which the greater portion of them would most probably be disappointed, as to place before them a set of extracts, which might save them the trouble of perusing the original work; we shall, therefore, be excused from making more than a very few remarks on the manner of its execution. The style of narration is neat, concise, and clear, modelled on that of the classical historians, and in the more important and interesting parts rises to a degree of animation. There is not much display of deep philosophical research; but the author's

characteristic freedom of judgement is every where apparent. It would not be easy to point out a better executed précis of early English history, considering its conciseness. The diction is impregnated with classical idioms, to a degree utterly inconsistent with the purity of English style.

The first book, containing the legendary history of Britain from the earliest ages to the invasion of Cæsar, is by far the most entertaining. The author's motives for telling over again the tales of the old chroniclers, are thus stated in the exordium.

"The beginning of nations, those excepted of whom sacred books have spoken, is to this day unknown. Nor only the beginning, but the deeds also of many succeeding ages, yea, periods of ages, either wholly unknown, or obscured and blemished with fables. Whether it were that the use of letters came in long after, or were it the violence of barbarous inundations, or they themselves at certain revolutions of time, fatally decaying, and degenerating into sloth and ignorance, whereby the monuments of more ancient civility have been some destroyed, some lost: perhaps dis-esteem and contempt of the public affairs then present, as not worth recording, might partly be in cause. Certainly ofttimes we see that wise men, and of best ability, have forborne to write the acts of their own days, while they beheld with a just loathing and disdain, not only how unworthy, how perverse, how corrupt, but often how ignoble, how petty, how below all history the persons and their actions were; who, either by fortune, or some rude election, had attained, as a sore judgement and ignominy upon the land, to have chief sway in managing the common wealth.

"Nevertheless there being others besides the first supposed author, men not unread, nor unlearned in antiquity, who admit that for approved story, which the former explode for fiction, and seeing that oft-times relations heretofore accounted fabulous, have been after found to contain in them many footsteps, and relics of something true, as what we read in poets of the flood, and giants little believed, till undoubted witnesses taught us, that all was not fained; I have therefore determined to bestow the telling over even of these reputed tales; be it for nothing else but in favour of our English poets and rhetoricians, who by their art will know how to use them judiciously.

"I might also produce example, as Diodorus among the Greeks, Livy and others of the Latins, Polydore and Virunnius accounted among our own writers. But I intend not with controversies and quotations to delay or interrupt the smooth course of history; much less to argue and debate long who were the first inhabitants, with what probabilities, what authorities each opinion hath been upheld, but shall endeavour that which hitherto hath been needed most, with plain and lightsome brevity, to relate, well and orderly, things worth the noting, so as may best instruct and benefit them that read. Which, imploring

divine assistance, that it may redound to his glory, and the good of the British nation, I now begin."

Whether the present article will have the effect of drawing more of the attention of our poets and orators to the fables alluded to, we cannot tell; it is, however, partly for the benefit of the former that we transcribe the most interesting of them. As to the latter, we fear the poet's gift will be thrown away upon them, however aptly an allusion to the Gallic victories of Brennus and Belinus might chime in with a panegyric on the late war, or however effectual the story of king Archigallo might prove, by way of illustration, in the mouth of a radical

orator.

Among the fables relative to the original colonization of Britain, is one which attributes it to the fifty daughters of Danaus, famed in story.

"These daughters, by appointment of Danaus on the marriage night, having murdered all their husbands, except Linceus, whom his wife's loyalty saved, were by him, at the suit of his wife, their sister, not put to death, but turned out to sea in a ship unmanned;* of which whole sex they had incurred the hate and as the tale goes, were driven on this island: where the inhabitants, none but devils, as some write, or as others, a lawless crew left here by Albion without head or governor, both entertained them, and had issue by them a second breed of giants, who tyrannized the isle till Brutus came.

"The eldest of these dames, in their legend, they call Albina; and from thence, for which cause the whole scene was framed, will have the name Albion derived."

The story of Brutus the Trojan, and his immediate successors in the kingdom of Britain, is given as follows. We need not point out to the classical reader the sources from which many of the fables are obviously derived.

"All of them agree in this, that Brutus was the son of Silvius; he of Ascanius, whose father was Æneas, a Trojan prince, who at the burning of that city, with his son Ascanius, and a collected number that escaped, after long wandering on the sea, arrived in Italy: where at length, by the assistance of Latinus, King of Latium, who had given him his daughter Lavinia, he obtained to succeed in that kingdom, and left it to Ascanius, whose son Silvius (though Roman histories deny Silvius to be son of Ascanius) had married secretly a niece of Lavinia.

* A Greek idiom.

"She being with child, the matter became known to Ascanius; who commanding his magicians to enquire by art, what sex the maid had conceived, had answer, that it was one who should be the death of both his parents; and banished for the fact, should, after all, in a far country, attain to highest honour. The prediction failed not, for in travail, the mother died. And Brutus (the child was so called) at fifteen years of age, attending his father to the chace, with an arrow, unfortunately killed him.

"Banished therefore by his kindred, he retires into Greece; where meeting with the race of Helenus, King Priam's son, held there in servile condition by Pandrasus, then king, with them he abides. For Pyrrhus, in revenge of his father slain at Troy, had brought thither with him Helenus, and many others, into servitude. There Brutus, among his own stock, so thrives in virtue and in arms, as renders him beloved to kings and great captains, above all the youth of that land. Whereby the Trojans not only begin to hope, but secretly to move him, that he would lead them the way to liberty. They allege their numbers, and the promised help of Assaracus, a noble Greekish youth, by the mother's side a Trojan, whom for that cause his brother went about to dispossess of certain castles bequeathed him by his father. Brutus, considering both the forces offered him, and the strength of those holds, not unwillingly con

sents.

"First, therefore, having fortified those castles, he with Assaracus, and the whole multitude, betake them to the woods and hills, as the safest place from whence to expostulate; and, in the name of all, sends to Pandrasus this message, That the Trojans, holding it unworthy their ancestors to serve in a foreign kingdom, had retreated to the woods, choosing rather a savage life than a slavish; if that displeased him, that then, with his leave, they might depart to some other soil.""

Our readers, we are sure, will be desirous to hear the story of king Lear, as related by Milton.

"Hitherto, from father to son, the direct line hath run on: but Lear, who next reigned, had only three daughters, and no male issue; governed laudably, and built Caer-Leir, now Leicester, on the bank of Sora. But at last failing through age, he determines to bestow his daughters, and so among them to divide his kingdom. Yet first to try which of them loved him best, (a trial that might have made him, had he known as wisely how to try, as he seemed to know how much the trying behoved him), he resolves a simple resolution, to ask them solemnly in order, and which of them should profess largest, her to believe. Gonoril, the eldest, apprehending too well her father's weakness, makes answer, invoking heaven, that she loved him above her soul. Therefore,' quoth the old man overjoyed, since thou so honourest my declined age, to thee and the husband whom thou shalt choose, I give the third part of my realm.' So fair a speeding for a few words soon uttered, was to Regan, the second, ample instruction

what to say. She, on the same demand, spares no protesting, and the gods must witness, that otherwise to express her thoughts she knew not, but that she loved him above all creatures;' and so receives an equal reward with her sister. But Cordelia, the youngest, though hitherto best beloved, and now before her eyes the rich and present hire of a little easy soothing, the danger also, and the loss likely to betide plain dealing, yet moves not from the solid purpose of a sincere and virtuous answer. 'Father,' saith she, my love towards you, is as my duty bids; what should a father seek, what can a child promise more? they who pretend beyond this, flatter.' When the old man, sorry to hear this, and wishing her to recal those words, persisted asking, with a loyal sadness at her father's infirmity, but something on the sudden, harsh, and glancing rather at her sisters, than speaking her own mind, Two ways only,' saith she, I have to answer what you require me; the former, your command is, I should recant; accept then this other which is left me; look how much you have, so much is your value, and so much I love you.' Then hear thou,' quoth Lear now all in passion, what thy ingratitude hath gained thee; because thou hast not reverenced thy aged father equal to thy sisters, part in my kingdom, or what else is mine, reckon to have none.' And without delay, gives in marriage his other daughters, Gonorill to Maglaunus, duke of Albania; Regan to Henninus, duke of Cornwall; with them in present half his kingdom; the rest to follow at his death. In the mean while, fame was not sparing to divulge the wisdom and other graces of Cordelia, insomuch that Aganippus, a great king in Gaul, (however he came by his Greek name), seeks her to wife, and nothing altered at the loss of her dowry, receives her gladly in such manner as she was sent him. After this, king Lear, more and more drooping with years, became an easy prey to his daughters and their husbands, who now by daily encroachment had seized the whole kingdom into their hands and the old king is put to sojourn with his eldest daughter, attended only by threescore knights. But they in a short while grudged at, as too numerous and disorderly for continual guests, are reduced to thirty. Not brooking that affront, the old king betakes him to his second daughter but there also discord soon arising between the servants of differing masters in one family, five only are suffered to attend him. Then back again he returns to the other, hoping that she, his eldest, could not but have more pity on his gray hairs: but she now refuses to admit him, unless he be content with one only of his followers. At last, the remembrance of his youngest, Cordelia, comes to his thoughts; and now acknowledging how true her words had been, though with little hope from whom he had so injured, be it but to pay her the last recompence she can have from him, his confession of her wise forewarning, that so perhaps his misery, the proof and experiment of her wisdom, might something soften her, he takes his journey into France. Now might be seen a difference between the silent or down-right spoken affection of some children to their parents, and the talkative obsequiousness of others, while the hope of inheritance over-acts them, and on the tongue's end enlarges their duty. Cor