RICARDUS CORINENSIS. 197 



and the latest misprints of ill-edited classics : the marvel is little less 

 when he is shown to have been beforehand in like manner with the 

 conjectures and bold hypotheses of Camden. We learn from the 

 Notitia Imperii the names of the five provinces of Britain, but for 

 the relative position or boundaries of, at least, three out of the five, we 

 are left wholly to conjecture. Roman antiquaries have accordingly 

 shifted their localities according to the theories they advocated ; and 

 Camden, among the rest, has his hypothesis : anticipated as a demon- 

 strable geographical distribution of the Roman divisions of the island; 

 in Richard's Tractate. To those he does, indeed, add Vespasiana, 

 apparently as his own entirely novel contribution to Roman geography j 

 but even this Mr. Woodward conceives to be traceable to a hint of the 

 great Elizabethan antiquary. 



Camden assumes a river Urtis on which to place Eburacum, or York, 

 but Richard already had it. Out of Ptolemy's Trisanlon\iQ constructs, 

 by means of a false etymology from Hants, a word Antona, and applies 

 it to the River Itchen ; but the old monk of Westminster was before 

 him in this ingenious blundering. Camden makes of the " Madus " 

 of the Peutingerian Table a river, and identifies it with the Medway ; 

 the "Lemana" of elder authorities becomes with him the " Lemanus 

 fluvius ;" Richard adopts both, and adds, to complete the rivers of 

 Cantium, the " Sturius etDubris :" he oi: his alter ejo, having mistaken 

 the name of the town of Dover for that of a river. 



These are mere illustrations of the blundering servility with which 

 Camden's ingenious hj'potheses are adopted ; and his errors accepted, 

 even to such orthographic variations as " Segontiutn " for " Segon- 

 cium." The examples cited by Mr. Woodward of Richard's anticipa- 

 tions of such conjectures and assumptions are numerous and conclusive 

 beyond all dispute. One of the boldest of his conversions of a mere 

 analogy into a fact will best illustrate this process of manufacture of 

 ancient geography. Camden in support of his etymology of the name 

 of Cornwall, says there were promontories in Crete and in the Tauric 

 Chersonese, called Kpiod ^ircu-cc, because of their resemblance to the 

 horn of a ram ; and so Richard supplies us with authority for naming 

 the British " Ram's Head " of Camden Kpcou iiiriD-ov. 



There is some satisfaction in referring to the labours of English 

 scholars in the exposure of a fraud on which English scholarship has 

 expended such misplaced zeal. Yet even now, there are antiquaries 

 of good repute who have not disavowed their faith in the antiquarian 



