as to the fact, it is but candour, however, to continue the passage, 

 though the latter member of the sentence it will be perceived is but 

 inference. " But the letters upon the most ancient of them are appa- 

 rently of Roman and Roman British original, and none of these 

 inscribed monuments are so ancient, as to prove that the Irish were 

 possessed of letters before the Romans had intercourse with the 

 Britons, though they prove that they had letters before the arrival of 

 Saint Patrick in that kingdom,"* Yet let any one look at the characters 

 etched by Astle himself, (plate xxxi of his work,) as " specirnens of 

 Ogham writing practised in Ireland," and say whether they are at all re- 

 ferrible to the Latin: the truth is, that the scholar, who can see nothing 

 classical but what associates with Greece or, Rome, shrinks from the 

 notion of learning in colder latitudes as untenable ; but let him know 

 that Joannes Magnus asserts, the northerns of Europe, had not only 

 the art of writing, but also regular historians long before the Latins 

 invented letters, and refers to the evidence of some gigantic rocks, 

 which presented letters sculptured on them from the most remote 

 antiquity. -f* Lindebrogius also is said (citante Vallancey) to affirm 

 that letters, philosophy, poetry, theology, and laws, were among the 

 Gauls even before the Greeks received them ; and Caesar, though he 

 asserts that neither the Druids of Britain or Gaul committed their 

 doctrine to writing, yet affirms that in other affairs the use of letters 

 was common. "Neither do they think it lawful to commit their 



X Origin and Progress of Writing, c. 5. p. 119. 



f " Credendum tamen non est ipsos aquUonares omnino caruisse scriptoribus rerum a se 

 magnifice gestarum, cum longe ante literas inventas Ijatinas, et antequam carmenta ex Gra;ci4 

 ad ostia Tyberis et Romanum solum cum Evandro pervenisset, expulsisque Aboriginibus 

 gentem Ulam rudem mores et literas docuisset, Gothi suas literas habuerint. Cujus rei indi- 

 cium prasstant eximiee magnitudinis saxa, quae literarum formis insculpta persuadere possint, 

 quod ante universale diluvium vel paulo post gigantea virtute ibi erecta fuissent." — Hist. 

 Goth., &c. lib. 1. c. 7. See also Spelman's Glossary, title " Runicae Literse." 



