tionary, documentary, or
cotemporaneous, the case is reversed, and the modern writer must listen
to his senior with thankful deference. And this it is that makes the
distinction between inference and evidence so important. To mistake the
former for the latter is to overvalue antiquity and exclude ourselves
from a legitimate and fertile field of research. To confound the latter
with the former, is to raise ourselves into criticism when our business
is simply to interpret.

Proceeding to details, we find that the _Historia Gildae_ and the
_Epistola Gildae_ are the two earliest works upon Anglo-Saxon Britain.
For reasons which will soon appear, these works are referred to A.D.
550. The class of facts for which the evidence of a writer of this date
is wanted, is that which contains the particulars of the history of
Britain during the last days of the Roman, and the beginning of the
Anglo-Saxon domination. Amongst these, the more important would be the
rebellion of Maximus, the Pict and Scot inroads, the earliest Germanic
invasions, and the subordination of the Romans to the Saxons. But all
these are deeds of devastation, and, as such, unfavourable to even the
existence of the scanty literature necessary to record them. Again,
there were two other changes, equally unfavourable to the preservation
of records, going on. Pagan or Classical literature was becoming
Christian or Medieval, whilst the Latin or Roman style was passing into
Byzantine and Greek. Ammianus Marcellinus, the last of the Latin Pagan
historians, was cotemporary with the events at the beginning of the
period in question. Procopius, one of the last Pagan writers of
Byzantium, died about the same time as Gildas.

Hence, the 150 years--from A.D. 400 to 550--for which alone the history
of Gildas is wanted, is an era of excessive obscurity. Are the merits of
the author proportionate? Is the light he brings commensurate with the
darkness? What could he know? What does he tell? He tells so little that
the question as to the value of his authorities is reduced to nearly
nothing; and, of that little which we learn from his wordy and turgid
pages, the smallest fraction only is of any ethnological interest.
Indeed, Gildas is most worth notice for what he leaves unsaid. The
rebellion of Maximus he mentions; but he is not answerable for the
migration from Britain to Brittany, on which (as already stated) so much
turns. The Saxons, too, he mentions, and the name of Vortig