28 



where could he have gleaned his information unless from the Phoe- 

 nicians.* 



They, however, who would be Hardouins to Irish Antiquity, 

 suggest two doubts upon this passage, that the Argonautica was not 

 written by Orpheus, and that by whomsoever written, Ireland is not 

 meant by lernis. As to the first objection, it seems of very little 

 consequence whether the poem was written by Orpheus, Cercops, or 

 Onomacritus, since the very latest of them flourished upwards of five 

 centuries before the Christian era, and to one of these, all agree, the 

 poem must be attributed ; and for the second objection, it must here 

 suffice to say, without relying on any internal evidence that might 

 arise from the great mistiness ("^gya ve(J)oq") so consonant with the 

 moisture of the Irish climate, and which, in early days was ascribed 

 rather to magic than to natural causes, that it is repelled by the 

 concurrent interpretation of Camden, -f the great English antiqua- 

 rian, the learned Archbishop Usher, the veteran Bochart,;]; Andreas 

 Scottus,§ Stephanus, and innumerable other antiquaries, and yet 

 more than these, that the course which the poet gives his ship, while 

 it is consistent only with the remotest notions of Geography, and 

 furnishes additional evidence of the antiquity of the poem, brings 

 "lernis" into view, precisely where Ireland should be discovered; 

 for, on analyzing the poem, the Argo will be traced, after passing 

 through the Bosphorus and Palus Maeotis, as making its way by the 

 Riphsean Mountains, (the Tanais being then thought navigable to the 

 Polar Sea,) into the Northern Ocean; and then returning, rather to 

 diversify the route than with any belief of its reality, by way of the 

 Atlantic to Ireland, from whence the good ship proceeds between the 



* See Bochart to the same conclusion. — Geog. Sacr. 1. I.e. 39. 



f Camden's Hibemia. j Geog. Sacr. lib. 1. c. 39, § Observ. Hum. 1. 2. c. 20. 



