184 RICARDUS CORINENSIS. 



being able to retrace the Watling, Iknield, or Ermyn Street, and 

 review their favourite objects of study under the guidance of an 

 intelligent observer of the fourteenth century, vsras possessed of too 

 fascinating a charm to be lightly rejected. Dr. Bruce searches in vain 

 for any trace, along the line of the Roman Wall, of vrhat was abun- 

 dantly manifest to Horsley little more than a century before. What 

 would he not give to know how it looked to the eyes of the good 

 monk, Richard, in the year lo50, before the waste of five centuries 

 had done its work. To all appearance this was the grand consumma- 

 tion actually achieved for English antiquaries by the discovery at 

 Copenhagen, in 1747, of the MS. treatise " l)e Situ Britanniae," to 

 which Richard of Cirencester has ever since owed his celebrity. If he 

 did surpass himself, it was due to the virtue of his theme and the 

 character of his guides. Whitaker thus expresses the feelings begot 

 in his mind by a comparison of the novel treatise with Richard's 

 genuine history of Britain from the days of Hengist : " the hope of 

 meeting with discoveries as great in the British and Saxon history, 

 as he has given us concerning the previous period, induced me to 

 examine the work. But my expectations were greatly disappointed. 

 The learned scholar and the deep antiquarian I found sunk into an 

 ignorant novice, sometimes the copier of Huntingdon, but generally 

 the transcriber of Geoffrey. Deprived of his Roman guides, Richard 

 showed himself as ignorant and as injudicious as any of his illiterate 

 contemporaries about him." Yet for all this, not the slightest sus- 

 picion of fraud seems to have suggested itself to the acutest of such 

 critics. 



Dr. Stukeley was still residing at his Lincolnshire parsonage, when, 

 as he tells us, in the summer of 1747, he '' received a letter from 

 Charles Julius Bertram, Professor of the English tongue in the Royal 

 Marine Academy of Copenhagen, a person unknown to me. The letter 

 was polite, full of compliments, as usual with foreigners ; expressing 

 much candor and respect to me : being only acquainted with some 

 works of mine published. The letter was dated the year before ; for 

 all that time he hesitated in sending it. Soon after my receiving it, I 

 sent a civil answer; which produced another letter, with a prolix and 

 elaborate Latin epistle enclosed, from the famous Mr. Gramm, privy- 

 counsellor and chief librarian to his Danish Majesty : a learned gentle- 

 man who had been in England, and visited our Universities. He was 

 Mr. Bertram's great friend and patron. I answered that letter, and it 



