96 
goes farther :—“ As the languages,” he says, “ of the old Saxons and 
Gauls are elucidated by those of England and Wales, so are the 
antiquities of the still more ancient Celts, Germans, and, in short, 
of all the tribes, at this side of the Britannic ocean, illustrated by 
the language of Ireland.”* To the British antiquary our ancient 
learning would be of special value; because it embraces the 
profoundest antiquities of the British Isles, and because some of the 
primitive Irish colonies inhabited a great part of Britain, where 
they left much of their language, religion, and laws. So our an- 
nals relate; and so the elder Leland, Lhuyd, Rowlands, Evans, 
Roberts, and all the best Welsh antiquaries positively affirm. In 
our old annals, Britain, besides other primitive appellations, is cal- 
led Laogair, and the inhabitants Laogaire ; who, say the annalists, 
passed from the larger Isle into Ireland, where they permanently 
settled. Mr. Roberts, without any knowledge of our history, con- 
firms this account, in his translation of the Welsh Records. 
“© There can be no doubt,” he says, “ but that the language of the 
Lloegrians was the Gaelic, or Irish. It is to this colony we are to 
attribute the Irish names of mountains and rivers in Britain.”+ 
That the old Britons lost every vestige of their civil and theological 
literature, is the complaint of all their historians from Gildas to 
Milton. Their priests, called Drudion (Druids) taught their doc- 
trines by memory, as did the Druids of Gaul. Of these Drudion 
Mr. Jones, an able British antiquary, thus speaks :—“ All the 
arts, sciences, learning, philosophy, and divinity, that was taught 
in the land, was taught by them; and they taught by memory, and 
never would allow their knowledge and learning to be put in’ writ- 
ing. Whereby, when they were supprest by the Emperor of Rome 
* Coll. Etymol. v. 1. p, 158. + Sketch of the History of the Cymri, p. 52. 
