6G London Stone. 



the Trojan descent of the British. But as if these objections were 

 not sufficient to cast doubts upon the truth of this history, another is 

 preseuted; and that is that there never was such a person as Brutus — 

 that no one of the learned authors who wrote about these early times 

 ever mentioned him — that the facts of his birth and early life, as re- 

 lated by Geoffrey, are not in accord with the facts of the Roman 

 history of those times ; and as the Abbot of St. Albans, who wrote 

 many years ago on this subject, has said "the whole relation concern- 

 ing Brutus is rather poetical than historical, and upon several accounts 

 rather fanciful than real." But in dismissing Geoffrey's book as a 

 veritable history, we cannot agree with William of' Newbury that he 

 " forges every thing saucily and barefacedly and that he and his fables 

 should be straightway spat out by us all," for there is no book, except- 

 ing the English Bible, that has exercised so great an influence on Eng- 

 lish literature, or furnished so great an amount of material for English 

 writers. The early writers Wace, Layamon and Robert of Gloucester 

 drew largely from it; the first English tragedy of Gorboduc, or Ferrex 

 and Porrex (1565), was founded upon it; the Faerie Queen is filled 

 with it ; Milton's History of England was greatly influenced by it ; 

 Shakespeare derived his tragedies ot King Lear and Cymbeline from 

 the stories contained in it; and the effect of it is still seen in Tenny- 

 son's Idyls of the King. So that, unreliable as he no doubt is as 

 an historian, he was an inventor of a new literary form, which is 

 represented by the romances and novels of later times. 



William Camden in his Brittania was the first one to gather to- 

 gether all the arguments which are now considered as proving the 

 fabulous origin of Brutus and his connection with Britain and Lon- 

 don, and the subject of this paper ; and when he comes in his valuable 

 work to the matter we are now considering, he speaks of it in connec- 

 tion with a little river flowing through London, called Walbrook, as 

 follows: "It — that is the river Walbrooke — is not far from that 

 great stone, called London Stone. This I take to have been a mile 

 stone (such a one as they had in the forum at Rome), from which all 

 the journeys were begun, since it stood in the middle of the city as it 

 run out in length." It will be noticed that he does not say it was a 

 Roman milestone, but only that he " takes it to have been " ; and this 

 opinion, so cautiously expressed, has in time been changed to a posi- 

 tive assertion on his part, and future statements have been founded on 

 that assertion, and the whole matter has been considered settled. And 

 there is no great wonder in this; for Camden was a man of great learn- 

 ing, good judgment and conceded accuracy in his statements ; but 

 when he does not affirm any thing positively, he ought to have the 



