180 RICARDUS CORINENSIS. 



some little extract from it; then an imitation of the hand-writiag, 

 which I showed to my late friend, Mr. Casley, Keeper in the Cotton 

 Library, who immediately pronounced it to be 400 years old. I pressed 

 Mr. Bertram to get the manuscript into his hands, if possible ; which 

 at length, with some difficulty he accomplished ; and on my solicitation 

 sent me, in letters, a transcript of the whole, and at last a copy of the 

 map : he having an excellent hand in drawing. Upon perusal, I 

 seriously solicited him to print it, as the greatest treasure we now can 

 boast of in this kind of learning." 



The date of the reception of the completed transcript and map, we 

 learn from Dr. Stukeley's Journal, extracts from which appeared in the 

 Gentleman's Magazine for August, 1835. He thus writes, under date, 

 March 1st, 1748-9 : " I rec'd from my friend, Mr. Bertram of Copen- 

 hagen, a copy of his curious MS. of Ric'us Westmonasteriensis with 

 the map— '-t'is a most valuable curiosity to the antiquitys of Brittan, 

 being compiled out of old manuscripts in Westminster Library, now 

 lost /' and by the 31st of the same month he is able to record in his 

 journal : " I finished the translation of Ricardus Westmonasteriensis." 



Whatever may have been the cause of Dr. Stukeley's indifference 

 on first receiving Bertram's hint of his reputed discovery, his zeal now 

 became unbounded; and the reception of his labours by European 

 scholars and historians left him no reason to doubt that it was ex- 

 pended in a worthy cause* In 1757, he published the " Itinerary," 

 with an abstract of the remaining portions of the work. In professed 

 obedience to his urgent entreaties, Bertram himself, in the following 

 year, put the whole to press, and published at Copenhagen, a volume 

 in which Kichard figures alongside of Gildas and Nennius, under the 

 title '' Britannicarum Gentium Historiae Antiquae Scriptures tres : Ricar- 

 dus Corinensis, Gildas Badonieus, Nennius Banchorensis, &c." The 

 book was in immediate demand, and, if only genuine, — which nobody 

 then doubted, — well merited the most careful study. 



The Itinerary contains eighteen Iters, professedly compiled by Richard 

 from certain fragments written by a Roman General, — supposed by 

 Stukeley, in defiance of all possibilities, to have been Agricola ; — and 

 from Ptolemy and other authors. Richard, indeed, in a style won- 

 derfully unlike that of a monkish historian, takes .credit to himself for 

 having altered the work, as he hopes for the better, with their assistance. 

 The Itinerary of Antoninus, the most ample record on the subject, 

 contains references to one hundred and thirteen Roman stations, while 



