THE GIANT AND THE MAYPOLE OF CERNE. 1 I J 



'Tis not to be supposed that it was made in his time, but 

 afterwards in commemoration of him, when the Britons may have 

 had a notion of the later Theban Hercules, by whose virtue and 

 magnanimity so many monsters of men and beasts were subdued. 



Our Phoenician Hercules was a different person, or of different 

 qualifications, educated in the politest part of the Asiatic world, 

 of whom Lucian gives us this picture ; a man in years, bald 

 before, learned and eloquent. And so, indeed, we may deem 

 such a person to be, who could so far prevail over and influence 

 his associates as to venture out into the great ocean, and fix an 

 habitation in Britain. 



'Tis natural to suppose their first settlements were made on the 

 southern coasts of this island, and the infinite number of barrows 

 (which the Doctor deems to be theirs), spread universally over 

 the whole of those delightful downs in Dorsetshire, show them 

 to have been a great and numerous people. 



'Twas here, he says, they celebrated their religious Panegyres, 

 or public sacrifices ; accompanied with publick games of horse- 

 racing and chariot-racing, whereat our British coins were the 

 prizes given to the victors. 



So grand and magnificent, he thinks, was the celebration of 

 the games here that one might imagine Homer hence took his 

 notion of the gods going to visit the inculpabiles Ethiopes on the 

 occasion. If Homer was not a Phoenician (of which the Doctor 

 professes some suspicion), he acquired, however, from them his 

 literary knowledge ; and 'tis more likely, he thinks, he should be 

 informed of, and instructed in, the solemnities we speak of in 

 Britain than those of Ethiopia properly so called. By Ethiopia, 

 the Doctor says, we are to understand Arabia, so meant by the 

 ancients, and 'tis from Arabia our first Britons came. These 

 were of the same patriarchal religion as the Arabian Magi, or, 

 properly, the Druids, who went to worship our infant Saviour. 

 As 'tis to small purpose, the Doctor observes, to gather up the 

 scattered and disjointed fragments of antiquity, unless by com- 

 paring and connecting them with other parts of history, we can 

 form them into some regular and consistent account ; this, there- 



