You promised not to
interrupt me, and you have already snapped asunder the gossamer threads
of as sweet a dream as was ever spun from a poet's brain."
"It certainly did rhyme!"
* * * * *
=_Henry Reed, 1808-1854._= (Manual, p. 501.)
From "Lectures on English History."
=_207._= LEGENDARY PERIOD OF BRITISH HISTORY.
It would be a weary, and probably vain inquiry to consider minutely the
claims which such historical materials have on our belief; and so little
is there attractive in the legends of British history, that I need
not attempt to dwell upon any of the alleged facts. But I wish before
passing from this part of my subject, briefly to examine the curious
tenacity with which the belief in this legendary literature was once
held, and to show that it was not relinquished until a more critical
standard of historic belief was adopted, and scientific investigation
took the place of uninquiring and passive credulity. It has been said
that no man, before the sixteenth century, presumed to doubt that the
Britons were descended from Brutus the Trojan; and it is equally certain
that no modern writer could presume confidently to assert it.
... It is most difficult for us, in these later days of higher standards
of historic credibility, to form anything like an adequate conception,
of the entire and unquestioning confidence which was felt for the story
of British origin, and the race of ancient British kings.
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