1825. ] 
ages, ot the Isles of the West, or any 
other of which men have babbled, the 
fictions related about each seem of a 
precisely similar cast: —“ Men were 
once favoured by the gods!” said the 
old Egyptians—so sang the Greeks— 
and so re-echoed the Britons. All 
people seem to have agreed, that, in 
early times, men lived to an incredible 
age, seeing children, grandchildren and 
descendants, to twenty generations, 
blessing the grey hairs of their fathers, 
and doing honour to their reverend 
progenitor: and that not only did they 
experience all the pleasures of love, 
health, long life, and dutiful regard ; but 
their very size was gigantic, and their 
strength prodigious: whilst the earth 
itself, in youthful vigour, gave, sponta- 
neously, fruits and herbs in rich luxu- 
riance. There, untoiled for, 
« —____ the show’ring grapes, 
In bacchanal profusion, reel’d to earth, 
Purple and gushing.” 
Hercules, they tell us, went not unpre- 
pared to his labours, but was endowed 
with a body of hugest mould,—the 
print of his foot in the earth being two 
cubits long, and his club too heavy for 
an ordinary man to move. And Per- 
seus, we learn, departed on his adven- 
turous journey, not less able to endure 
fatigue and conquer opposition: his 
sandal,* found near Chemnis, centuries 
after his time, was said to be upwards 
of two cubits in length, and his helmet 
large in preportion. Large stones, 
seemingly immoveable, were believed to 
be placed in their firm position, by the 
single effort of some hero of remote 
antiquity. Rocky fragments, scattered 
here and there,—perhaps the ruins of 
some gorgeous temple, or awful memo- 
rials of the universal deluge, or some 
convulsion of diseased Nature,—were 
thought, simply, sheep transformed to 
marble. A group of this kind, on the 
plains of Marathon, the country-people 
called Pan’s Flock,—believing these 
ponderous articles to be the exact stony 
representation of so many goats, in the 
days of the world’s golden infancy. 
These fictions, however, were not 
confined to Greece, orto the oriental 
regions—Britain, no less than Greece, 
Egypt, or Arabia, can tell of like mar- 
* «>? 
* “"Twas an excellent question of my 
Lady Cotten, when Sir Robert Cotten was 
praising of a shoe which was Moses’s or 
oah’s, and wondering at the strange shape 
and fashion of it—‘ But, Mr.,Cotten (says 
she), are you sure it is a shoe ?’’’—Selden’s 
le alk. 
Monrtnty Maa, No. 410. 
Fallacies— No. I, 
417 
vels, and, doubtless, as well authenti- 
cated. Once (alas! centuries since) as 
we are told, these islands were inha- 
bited by men who enjoyed, and were 
worthy of enjoying, divine favour in a 
degree infinitely more perfect than we, 
their disgraced effeminate offspring, can 
hope for, either for ourselves or chil- 
dren. The son of Uther Pendragon, 
he whose deeds old Geoffrey of Mon- 
mouth so choicely sings, was, on the 
credit of that historian, not less a won- 
derful example of courage, piety, and 
rare courtesy of spirit, than for a body 
proportionately huge; and as the enor- 
mous stone, shewn by the Locrians, be- 
fore the door of Euthymus, is a memo- 
rial of his strength, so the size of the 
celebrated quoit is no less a proof of the 
strength of our Arthur, who could wield 
sO massy an instrument of diversion. 
We are told, that at the discovery of 
Arthur’s bones at Glastonbury, “ the 
chynne was lenger by thre ynches then 
the legge and knee of the lengest man 
that was then founde; also the face of 
his forehead, between his two eyen, 
was a span brode.” Robin Hood, the 
gay freebooter of Sherwood Forest, 
like Homer’s Ajax, was fourteen feet 
high (Arcadian measure); and the bows 
of bold Friar Tuck and Little John, 
were doubtless four and twenty inches 
(of the same standard) in circumference, 
and their arrows twelve feet long. We 
are told that the curious circle of up- 
right blocks of stone in Oxfordshire, 
large as they are, were once believed 
to have been men, turned, like Lot’s 
wife, into lifeless pillars. Marlborough 
Downs still shew “ Robin’s grey 
wethers;” and still the old tale falls 
upon our ear—they, once, were a living 
flock. Whilst, more wonderful than 
all, the Giant’s Causeway stands a 
monument of fabled mortal strength 
in those extraordinary days. Such are 
the stories of all nations, such are the 
inventions of men in all times ;. serving, 
at least, as a key to metaphysical in- 
quiry, and, perhaps, not the less instruc- 
tive, because they have no sober and 
sedate foundation in truth. 
In more modern times, this custom 
has fallen somewhat into “ the sear and 
yellow leaf;”” it were vain, indeed, now 
to talk of any land as of another Uto« 
pia, and “tales of fays, hobgoblins, 
and of ghosts,’ must be well told now 
to be but ill believed. » Nevertheless, 
the cause remains, and will remain 
whilst man is man; and, however coun- 
teracted by the daily acquisition of 
3H fresh 
