1 1 the praises of Apollo upon their harps in circular temples, and that Pytheas, a celebrated aftronomer of Marseilles, is reported by Strabo not only to have vifited, but to have described, these hyperborean ifles. The voyage of this learned Greek, I am of opinion, will give us nearly the exact period when the navigators of that nation first ploughed the British ocean; for, it was about the period of Alexander the Great, when that philofopher is faid to have paffed through the Straits, and to have failed to fo high a degree of north latitude, as to have seen the fun only for a moment of time fink below the horizon, and then emerge; a fact, which, by aftronomical arguments, may be proved poffible to have taken place about the 68th degree north, where, in the fummer, and when the fun is in Cancer, there is no night.* That Britain, at all events, muft have been explored, and the principal commodities trafficked in by its inhabitants have been in great requeft in Greece, when Polybius flourished, which was above two hundred years before Chrift, is evinced by a fact recorded in Strabo, that the fame Polybius Diodorus Siculus, lib. v. p. 308. had had written an exprefs an exprefs treatise TE TWO Βρετανικων νησεων και της κασσιτηρά κατασκευής, concerning the British islands, and the process of making TIN; and this word BpeTavinov, thus early occurring in a Greek writer, may be confidered as an additional teftimony of the name being originally derived from the Phonician Baratanac, or Bretanac, fince, from the Phoenician navigators only, could they have obtained any information about it.* It is unfortunate, that this treatise of Polybius, which probably contained many curious and interefting particulars relative to these islands and our ancestors, has not defcended to pofterity. Pliny's affertion, also, ought here to have fome weight, that, long before the period in which the Romans vifited this country, Britain was famous in Greek monuments. Whatever truth there may be in that affertion, few veftiges of the Greeks were ever, to be met with in thefe iflands, and the arguments which fome writers have founded, on the number of Greek words interfperfed in the old Britifh dialect, lofe their force when we confider their affinity with the Celtic, the com * Strabo, lib. iv. in loco cit. † Plinii Nat. Hift. lib. xvii. cap. 4. mon mon parent of both. The Greeks did not come hither to improve our language or correct our tafte; they formed no fettlements on the coaft, nor penetrated into the inland parts of the country; they came hither as mariners and merchants; they took our tin and lead for the Indian market, and gave the Britons articles of cutlery and other wares fuited to the wants of a warlike and barbarous people, The deftruction of Tyre and Carthage threw the whole commerce of the Mediterranean into the hands of the Athenians; for, their rivals, the Lacedæmonians, principally ftudious of military glory in the embattled field, had but little inclination to engage in naval concerns. Their difcriminating character, however, of ferocious bravery, added to an insatiable thirft of wealth, did not permit them to be wholly without a navy, which was, for the most part, employed in acts of barbarous aggreffion on their peaceful neighbours. The nautical genius of the Athenians, however, ftill foared with a bolder flight, and having a dynasty of Grecian monarchs on the throne of Perfia, and also another dynasty on that of Egypt, they foon arrived to that aftonishing height of naval fplendor, which they enjoyed VOL. VI. B B enjoyed for nearly three hundred years, the moft brilliant æra in the annals of Afia, at the close of which the power of the Seleucidæ, in Syria, and of the Ptolemies, in Egypt, became extinguished by the SUPERIOR LUSTRE OF THE RISING SUN SOMETH DE LA END OF VOL. VI. Luke Hanfard, Printer, Great Turnstile, Lincoln's-Inn Fields. |