The reverse or back-face of the English Janus to-wit, all that is met with in story concerning the common and statute-law of English Britanny, from the first memoirs of the two nations, to the decease of King Henry II. set down and tackt together succinctly by way of narrative : designed, devoted and dedicated to the most illustrious the Earl of Salisbury / written in Latin by John Selden ... ; and rendred into English by Redman Westcot, Gent.

CHAP. IX.

The menage of their Schools without Writing. On other occasions they might use the Greek Letters, as Caesar saith, yet not have the language. The Greek Letters then were others than what they are now. These borrowed from the Gauls, as those from the Phoeni∣cians. Ceregy-Drudion, or the Druids Stones in Wales. This Place of Caesar's suspected. Lipsius his Judgment of the whole Book.

7. UPon the account of that priviledge, they had in their Schools (which were most of them in Britany) a great confluence of youth.

They are said to learn without Book, says Caesar, a great num∣ber of Verses: Therefore some of them spend twenty years in the dis∣cipline. Nor do they judge it meet to commit such things to writing, whereas generally in all other, whether publick affairs or private ac∣compts, they make use of Greek letters.

What? Greek letters so we read Greek ones. Why! Marseilles, a City of France, which was a Greek Colony of the Phocians, had made the Gauls such lovers of Greeks,* 1.1 that, as Strabo the Geographer tells us, they writ their very Contracts and Covenants, Bargains and Agreements, in Greek. The fore-mentioned Julius Caesar also writes,* 1.2 that there were Tablets found in the Camp of the Switzers, made up of Greek letters.

But, for all that, I would not have any one from hence rashly to ga∣ther, that the Greek Language was in use to that Age and People, or to these Philosophers and Lawyers. They made use of Greek letters, there∣fore

they had the Greek Tongue too; this truly were a pitiful consequence. At this rate the ••argum or Chaldee Paraphrase, as Paulus Merula has it, and Gorepius before him, would consist of the Hebrew Language, because 'tis Printed in Hebrew Characters: And the like may be said of the New Te∣stament in Syriack, done in Hebrew letters.

What? that those very Letters of the Greeks in Caesars time, and as we now write them, are rather Gallick (as borrowed from the Gauls) than Greek? He was acquainted with those Greek letters, but did not yet know the Gallick ones, which learned men do think the Greeks took for their Copy, after the Phoenician letters, which were not altogether unlike the Hebrew, were grown out of use. Consult for this Wol••gangus Lazius his Celtae, Becanus his Gallica, and if thou hast a mind, Annius his Archilochus, Xenophons Aequivoca, and what others write concerning Li∣nus, Cadmus, Palam••des, and Simonides, the first Inventors of the Alphabet.

In the mean time take this from me, that those ancient and rude Go∣thick Characters, which Bonaventure Vulcanius of Bruges, lately put forth,* 1.3 with a little comentary of one without a name, do very much re∣semble the Greek ones (as also the Russian Characters do at this day) and that those which are now Latin letters, were at first brought over into Italy out of Arcadia, along with Nicostrata the Mother of Evander, who was banished his Country.

But that which seems to put the matter out of all dispute, Caesar being about to write to Quintus Cicero,* 1.4 who was then besieged somewhere in Flanders, among the Nervians, by great rewards perswades a Chevalier, that was a Gaul, to carry the Letter for him: He sends it written in Greek, lest peradventure it being intercepted, the Enemy should come to know their design. To what purpose should he have done this, if that Chevalier, who was a Gaul, or if the Gauls, or if the very Druids themselves, who had the management of State, had been skilled in Greek?

Among the Western Hills of Denbeigh, a County in North-Wales, there is a place, as I read in our famous Chorographer, commonly cal∣led Ceregy-Drudion,

that is, the Druids Stones, and some small pil∣lars are seen at Yvoellas, inscribed with foreign Characters, which some suspect to have been those of the Druids.

Who if they have rea∣son so to suspect, I would to God, Time, with his rusty teeth, had spa∣red those Pillars, that so some light might shine from thence to clear this quarrel

If so be our interpretation of that form of Caesars speaking, which we brought, do not please (as to Strabo's testimony, that respects some∣what later times, and perhaps mainly concerns those who lived near the Sea-side) why mayst not thou,* 1.5 with that great Scholar Francis Hotoman be of opinion, that the word Graecis crept into this Story, either by the carelesness or confidence of Transcribers? For elsewhere in that very Author, where it is said, dextris humeris exertis, Justus Lipsius, the Prince of Criticks, remarks, that the word humeris is plainly redundant, thrust in perchance by the Vamper of that Story,* 1.6 Julius Celsus.

And what so great a man, of so great a judgment as he was, did cen∣sure of those Commentaries of Caesar, in his Book called Electa, or Choice Piece,* 1.7 take from himself thus.

I see many patches stitched into that Purple; nor doth the expression it self there every where breath to my Nostrils that golden (as I may so say) Gum, or liquid myrrh, of pure antiquity. Read it, read it over again, you will find many things idly

said, disjoynted, intricate, vampt, said over and over, that it is not unreasonable to think, but that some Novel and unskilful hand was added to this, as it were, statue of ancient work.

Therefore we may be easily cheated, if we stand upon such little scruples of words, as we shall meet with in one Julius or other, Caesar or Celsus.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Strab. Geogr. lib. 4.
• * 1.2

  Caes. de bello Gall. l. 1.
• * 1.3

  Vulcan. in app. ad Jor∣nand. Goth. Munst. Cosm. l. 4.
• * 1.4

  Cas. bell. Gal. l. 5.
• * 1.5

  Hotoman c. 2. Franco gal∣lae.
• * 1.6

  Cas. bell. Gal. l. 7.
• * 1.7

  Lips. Elect. lib. 2. cap. 7. & quast. Epi. ••••olic. l. 2. c. 2.