29 



pillars of Hercules into the Mediterranean : the very position of Ire- 

 land is denoted with an accuracy, and so named as a landmark of 

 navigation, as would countenance the inference of its being a place 

 then long and well known to mariners. 



This is a high testimony of the antiquity of that country, and one 

 of whose value Camden is so sensible, that (while he admits lernis 

 must mean Ireland) he labours to make his countrymen participate 

 in it,.even in a faint, nameless land, which he imagines the poet points 

 to, but his total failure* to establish the desired conclusion, is in itself 

 the most powerful evidence, that the voice of antiquity is against it ; 

 at best, England is nameless in this record of Grecian literature, yet, 

 undoubtedly, had it too been known it would have appeared in the 

 poetic chart of an author, whose sole object in sketching the cruise 

 was, like Homer's, in the Catalogue of the Ships, to display the geo- 

 graphical learning of the age in which he lived. 



That this notice could not have been suggested by Grecian com- 

 merce, is quite evident from Herodotus, who, in about a century 

 after the date generally assigned to the Argonautica, thus writes of the 

 Cassiterides : "I do not know where the islands called Cassiterides are 

 situated, but it is thence the tin comes to us/'f- Here is Herodotus 

 speaking of these western islands, as a region whence the carriers of 

 the world, necessarily the Phoenicians, conveyed lead or tin to Greece, 

 but of whose situation himself was totally ignorant ; which it must be 

 conceded, he could not long be if they were then known to the 

 Greeks. Eratosthenes, " the Geometer of the world," was ignorant 

 of the localities of Ireland, neither does Polybius notice it, while 



* See Parsons's Defence, &c. p. 91, &c. 



f " Outs nn-tv^ oi^x Kas-s-iTEjiSa; so«r«;, # » # # f '■"i' o xxs-riTf^tf tiftm (fuTcc." 

 Herod, lib. 3. c. 1 15 and 1 16. 



