three ftrong ditches, including a small area round fuch mounts; and-fuch-plainly appear to have been the private habitations of the little petty chiefs of the feveral fubordinate districts; and are allowed, by tradition, to have been fo." Such then were even the "private habitations of petty chiefs" in Ireland! Such, therefore, were equally, whatever Mr. King may aver, "the private habitations of petty chiefs" in our own ifles, before the Romans fettled in it! And fuch, Mr. King comes moft contradictorily to argue at laft, was even Old Sarum, the Sorbiodunum of the Romans, a town and a fortrefs together, and a fortrefs-town of the Britons before !+" Mr. King has thus run the round of contradictorinefs to himself, exalting his "fmall hovels" of the Britons into Irish caftles, and raifing them, at last, into British towns. The abfurdity of this conduct, however, is heightened by what immediately follows, in making the Badbury Rings of Dorfetfhire another of fuch habitations; though confeffedly "Roman coins, urns, and a Roman fword have been dug up here in 1665." I But Mr. King, who seems to fet no bounds to his ideas, and combines things very diffimilar into one difcordant substance, before he finishes this long and rambling chapter, thinks, that "after having thus endeavoured to form a clear idea of the nature of the fortreffes, and of the mode of habitation of the antient Britons, we cannot but wish to obtain, as far as is poffible, fome little conception of the appearance of their perfons, and of their manners." Into this we fhall hardly enter, as we confess ourselves heartily tired with a chapter of no lefs than ninety-fix pages in folio. Yet we cannot refrain from remarking, that he has half adopted, and actually delineated, from the Archæologia, Vol. XII. the hook of the Druids, pretendedly discovered in Cornwall, when the hook was a fickle, and this is a crook, when the metal to this is only "a fubftance refembling gold," and the fickle was real gold itself; || that he finds the broad-fword of the Highlanders upon a Roman monument of London; though the perfon, by whom the fword is held on the monument, is exprefsly declared, by an infcription below, to have been a foldier of the 2d Auguftan legion; ** and that he has funk "the antient British cars," of which we have a fine reprefentation on a British coin, ++ into a "refemblance" with "the modern Welch, little, low-built carts, of which he kindly gives us a delineation at the end + PP. 82-85. PP. 99, 100, Plate III. No. 1, Middlesex. ++ Camden's, of his chapter. On the fight of this we must perforce exclaim, that burlesque itself cannot poffibly go beyond the attempt. But the erroneousness in all is nothing to the deviousness of all; the whole having no relation to "Munimenta Antiqua," no connection with "aboriginal British fortreffes," no union with either "hill-forteffes in general," or with "caves and hiding places," but being a mere impertinence of digreffion from every one of them. The fluxe de plume must have been very strong indeed upon Mr. King, to have gone off in such a digreffion as this. We have diffected the first chapter thus fully through all its length, in order to exhibit Mr. King as he is, excurfive in his ideas, unlimited in his reading, and ingenious in his fpeculations; but hafty in his affumptions, contradictory in his conclufions, and borne, at times, on the full flood of his notions, over all the banks fet up by either Nature's hand or his own. But, having done this with one chapter, we can only tell the contents of the others, of the fix remaining, that cover merely 231 pages in all. So difproportionately has Mr. King divided his materials! Thefe, however, are upon ftones of memorial; circles of memorial; of obfervances, or of obfervation; facred circles, with altars of oblation; cromleches; barrows, carns, or kiftivaens; logan or rocking ftones; tolmen, and bafon ftones. On these we have much to fay, equally in commendation of Mr. King, and in oppofition to him. But we withhold ourselves, remembering the brevity of a Review. Yet me muft ftop a moment or two, to make a remark upon his cromleches, and upon his logan ftones. That those were actual altars, is attempted to be proved by a long circuit of multifarious reading, that proves nothing except the industry of the author, the genius in the back of a German. Every mind that thinks must revolt at the fuggeftion of the covering-ftone for a cromlech being made as a ftage for offering up victims, the bunching back of a fharply inclined rock-stone, only "eleven feet or more in every direction," + made the lofty fcaffold for priests to flaughter bullocks upon it, and "a cavity, or rock bafon," in the ftone, " defigned to receive part of the blood as it flowed down." This forms fuch a mafs of incredibility, as even the credulity of antiquarianism could have received only in its first efforts of inquiry, under the guidance of youth, inexperience, and fancy; all inflamed with ideas of Druidical worship, as the predominating fignature of the Britifh character; forgetting, therefore, that the Britons muft have had graves as well as facrifices; and fo converting the + P. 2.22. P. 112. † P. 221. mere mere tomb-ftone of a British chief into a ridiculous altar för a British Druid. Yet Mr. King has adopted this fuggeftion of childish fancy, and endeavoured to "huddle 'round" the folly with a diverfity" of learning; even while his very eyes must have withstood the delufion, and his very mind have rejected the impofition. As to the rocking-ftones, adds Mr. King, "whether" they 66 were used for divination ; as our poet, Mafon, has finely imagined; and as Toland also thought; or whether they were idols, or elfe fraudulent means of impofing upon the vulgar, a pretended divine affent on certain occafions; must be left to mere conjecture;" and conjecture has wildly fuppofed them, in contradi&tion to common-sense, to have been used for fome, or all of thefe purposes. They are not peculiar to Britain. They are noticed by the antients as in the east, as equally in the weft too, of the old Continent; and as merely natural curiofities in both. They are merely fuch curiofities in fact. Some of them are confeffedly too ponderous to be artificial; and, therefore, by analogy of argumentation, none of them are artificial at all. We have even a rocking-ftone pointed out to us by Mr. King himself, which was both made and ́un-made, by the hand of accident, within the prefent or laft century; one of Stukeley's Trilithons at Stonehenge, the deformed Trilothons univerfally of Mr. King, having fallen down, and its impoft having been thrown "quite across" another ftone that lay upon the ground; where, "in this pofition, it for fome years remained, fo nicely balanced, as to form a fort of rocking-flone." And we have what would have been a rocking ftone in. Yorkshire, if Nature had not thrust a large pebble between two mafies of ftone, and prevented the one from riding on the other by the irremovable intruder. § "It may be added, that, the word cromlech, in its very etymology, really implies a place of fuperftitious devotion, by means of facrifice, and aufpicy. For Rowland [Rowlands] has, with much learning and judgement, obferved, that the antient word cromlech, by which fo many of these structures are now, by tradition, known, is derived from cæræm-lech-a devoted ftone, or altar.” (P. 230.) Rowlands has thus deceived Mr. King again, by a temptation too strong to be refifted by the latter, an affectation of learning in the former. The true etymology of cromlech was much nearer home, even in the very language which furnished the word. Thus cromlech, in Welch, is derived, by the Welch themfelves, from crom, the feminine of crum, crooked, bowed, bent; and llech, a ftone. This etymon fpeaks for itilf. The very view of the monument created the appellation; and all 29 could fee the inclination of the main ftone, while not one in a thousand, probably, would know the devoted nature of it, even if it had been devoted. Mr. King, indeed, in P. 259, adopts this very fignification at last, but jointly with his own, and diftortedly in his own meaning. It "ftill imports a stone in Ireland, "that was to be bent towards, or bowed to, or to be looked toward; as well as a ftone placed in a bent, or floping pofition." But all this is untrue. Crom, crum, is crooked, bending down in Irish; cromaim, is to bow or bend, and fo to worship. The radical idea, therefore, is merely crookedness in Irish, as in Welch; and refers to the most striking part of a cromlech, the vast covering-ftone inclined. (To be concluded in our next.) ART. VIII. M. Mufuri carmen in Platorem. Ifaaci Cafauboni in Jofephum Scaligerum Ode. Accedunt Poemata et Exerci tationes utriufque Lingua. Auctore S. Butler. Appendicis loco Subjiciuntur Hymnus Cleanthis Stoici; Clementis Alexandrini Hymni duo. Henrici Stephani Adhortatio ad Lectionem Novi Faderis. Confcripfit atque edidit Samuel Butler, A. B. Coli. Div. Joann. apud Cantabr. Soc. 8vo. Pp. 116. Payne. 1797 MR R. BUTLER feems to have fent this volume of Mifcellanies into the world, as a fort of precurfor to a pro"jected edition of Afchylus; to explore the public opinion of his claffical abilities. The first piece, in this collection, is the poem of Mufurus on Plato, accompanied with the poetical verfion of Zenobias Acciaioli. Mufurus was born in the island of Crete; and was one of thofe learned Greeks who had the honour of being patronized by Leo the Tenth. His poetry was cenfured by Erafmus for its obfcurity and affectation. But the poem before us affords no proof of the juftnefs of Erasmus's criticifm. Not that it poffeffes one fublime or beautiful thought, or one ftrikingly poetical expreffion. The purity of the language is its chief recommendation. It is only calculated, therefore, for the perufal of the curious fcholar." The fecond piece is liaac Cafaubon's Greek Ode in Memory of Jofeph Scaliger; to which are fubjoined two epitaphs on Scaliger, in Greck and in Latin, by Daniel Heinfius. We are next prefented with fome of Mr. Butler's own compofitions. His Greek Ode, entitled "Præflantia Græcæ Poefeos," has, doubtlefs, more poetica! merit than the pieces either of Mufurus, Cafaubon, or Heinfius. σε Πα The "Britanniæ Gloria Navalis" runs in the fame ftrain of poetry. The Latin Ode, "Aftronomia Laus," opens with a grandeur, worthy, we had almost faid, of infpiration: "In lucis æternæ penetralibus Suftinet et moderatur auctor. Infana primo qui maria halitu Trifte cient elementa bellum." Of the poetical trifles that follow, the Latin verfion of Dr. Beattie's Hermit" is the moft pleafing. Though they may not recognize in it Bourne's happy manner, yet our readers (to whom the original must be familiar) will thank us for tranfplanting it into these pages: "Undique cùm pagus filet atque oblivia fpargens Solaque per nemora, abrupti de vertice faxi, Ad fcopulos fenior cœpit et antra queri. Lugubre funde melos, lugubre, chara comes : 5 10 15 Jam |
