BOOK SECOND. Ipse ego Dardanias Rutupina per æquora puppes Britain! thy legends all have charms for me Nor lingering with Pandrasian Inogen; Nor shall bold Brennus mourn a slighted name. 107 CHAPTER I. True, Thomas rose, with harp in hand, (In minstrel strife, in fairy land, The elfin harp he won.) Hush'd were the throng, both limb and tongue, And harpers for envy pale; And armed lords lean'd on their swords, And hearken'd to the tale. THOMAS THE RHYMER, P. III, BORDER MINSTRELS. As it is my intention to introduce the reader to the court of the British King who flourished in the middle of the first century, it may be as well, perhaps, to make a brief remark on the state of civilization in this island at that time. One hundred years had now elapsed since Cæsar's invasion, and during this period many Roman stations had been established here, and constant intercourse, friendly or hostile, had subsisted between the Britons and their conquerors. In the description which Tacitus gives us of the destruction of Camelodunum at the commencement of Boadicea's revolt, he mentions temples, and theatres, and council chambers, as existing there; and hints that the streets were more remarkable for the beauty of the buildings, than for the defence which they afforded the inhabitants. In the progress of his narrative of this event, he also relates that seventy thousand persons were slain in the cities of London and Verulamium, in consequence of their attachment to the Romans; from which may be inferred the populousness of those places and their connection with their foreign allies. Indeed, this unrivalled historian has not left the progress of civilization to mere inference; for he has expressly told us, when narrating events which happened a year or two subsequent to this period, that, at this time, the Britains had acquired a taste for luxuries.* As the territories in which our tale is laid were, as yet, unconquered, however, Roman refinements had exerted only an indirect influence over them; and had not displaced those primitive manners and customs which were soon to pass away for ever. Here and there a mind more elevated than the common order, had * Didicere jam barbari quoque ignoscere vitiis blandientibus. Vit. Agric. s. 16. caught the rays of civilization, and seemed to rejoice in its own solitary brightness; but the crowd was left in darkness below, for the illumination was by no means general. Among these more favoured individuals was the King, to whose court we have conducted our hero; who was no other than Arviragus, the British Hector; not unknown to the Roman Satirist Juvenal, and not unsung by his native chroniclers : Was never King more highly magnifide, Nor dredde of Romans, than was Arvirage. SPENSER. Arviragus was the son of Cymbeline, over whose history Shakspeare has thrown such a halo of glory. Who has not read, and who, having read, can ever forget the fortunes of Arviragus and his brother; stolen from their father by a banished courtier, and educated as peasants, until their innate magnanimity, bursting through the trammels of rusticity-asserted its claim to those dignities of which they had been unlawfully deprived? When was the inborn greatness of a noble mind ever so magnificently developed as in that drama; or so beautifully apostrophized as in the following lines?- O thou Goddess, Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon'st |