Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/516

 484 raSTOKY OF GKEECE. Irious author of Paradise Lost, I shall give in his own words, a* they appear in the second page of his History of England. After having briefly touched upon the stories of Samothes son of Ja- phot, Albion son of Neptune, etc., he proceeds : " But now of Brutus and his line, with the whole progeny ot kings to the entrance of Julius Caesar, we cannot so easily be discharged : descents of ancestry long continued, laws and ex- ploits not plainly seeming to be borrowed or devised, which on the common belief have wrought no small impression : deftmded by many, denied utterly by few. For what though Brutus and the whole Trojan pretence were yielded up, seeing they, who first de- vised to bring us some noble ancestor, were content at first with Brutus the Consul, till better invention, though not willing to fore- go the name, taught them to remove it higher into a more fabu- lous age, and by the same remove lighting on the Trojan talcs, in affectation to make the Briton of one original with the Roman, pitched there : Yet those old and inborn Icings, never any to have been real persons, or done in their lives at least some part of what so long hath been remembered, cannot be thought without too strict incredulity. For these, and those causes above mentioned, that which hath received approbation from so many, I have chosen not to omit. Certain or uncertain, be that upon the credit of those whom I must follow : so far as keeps aloof from impossible or absurd, attested by ancient writers from books more ancient, I refuse not, as the due and proper subject of story." 1 Yet in spite of the general belief of so many centuries in spite of the concurrent persuasion of historians and poets in spite of the declaration of Milton, extorted from his feelings rather than from his reason, that this long line of quasi-historical kings and exploits could not be all unworthy of belief in spite of so large a body of authority and precedent, the historians of the nineteenth century begin the history of England with Julius Caesar. They do not attempt either to settle the date of king Bladud's accession, or to determine what may be the basis of tiuth in the affecting narrative of Lear. 2 The standard of his- 1 " Antiquitas enim recepit fabulos fictas ctiara nonnunquam incondite : hoec rotas autcm jam cxculta, praescrtim cludcns omnc quod fieri non potest, rcspuit," etc. (Cicero, De Republics, ii. 10, p. 147, cd. Maii.J
 * Dr. Zachary Grey has the following observations in his Notes on Slinks