manners of the inhabitants; not only the Britons and Saxons, but
the Picts and Scots (6). There are also some parts of his work,
almost literally transcribed by Bede, which confirm the brief
statements of the "Saxon Chronicle" (7). But there is,
throughout, such a want of precision and simplicity, such a
barrenness of facts amidst a multiplicity of words, such a
scantiness of names of places and persons, of dates, and other
circumstances, that we are obliged to have recourse to the Saxon
Annals, or to Venerable Bede, to supply the absence of those two
great lights of history--Chronology and Topography.

The next historian worth notice here is Nennius, who is supposed
to have flourished in the seventh century: but the work ascribed
to him is so full of interpolations and corruptions, introduced
by his transcribers, and particularly by a simpleton who is
called Samuel, or his master Beulanus, or both, who appear to
have lived in the ninth century, that it is difficult to say how
much of this motley production is original and authentic. Be
that as it may, the writer of the copy printed by Gale bears
ample testimony to the "Saxon Chronicle", and says expressly,
that he compiled his history partly from the records of the Scots
and Saxons (8). At the end is a confused but very curious
appendix, containing that very genealogy, with some brief notices
of Saxon affairs, which the fastidiousness of Beulanus, or of his
amanuensis, the aforesaid Samuel, would not allow him to
transcribe. This writer, although he professes to be the first
historiographer (9) of the Britons, has sometimes repeated the
very words of Gildas (10); whose name is even prefixed to some
copies of the work. It is a puerile composition, without
judgment, selection, or method (11); filled with legendary tales
of Trojan antiquity, of magical delusion, and of the miraculous
exploits of St. Germain and St. Patrick: not to mention those of
the valiant Arthur, who is said to have felled to the ground in
one day, single-handed, eight hundred and forty Saxons! It is
remarkable, that this taste for the marvelous, which does not
seem to be adapted to the sober sense of Englishmen, was
afterwards revived in all its glory by Geoffrey of Monmouth in
the Norman age of credulity and romance.

We come now to a more cheering prospect; and behold a steady
light reflected on the "Saxon Chronicle" by the "Ecclesiastical
History" of Bede; a writer who, without the inte