His Messenger In This Business
Was Sighelm, Bishop Of Sherburn, Who, With Great Prosperity, Which Is Much
To Be Wondered At In This Age, Penetrated Into India; Whence He Brought On
His Return, Splendid Exotic Gems, And Aromatic Liquors, Of Which The Soil
Of That Region Is Prolific."
"Sighelm having gone beyond seas, charged with alms from the king, even
penetrated, with wonderful prosperity, to Saint Thomas in
India, a thing
much to be admired in this age; and brought thence, on his return, certain
foreign kinds of precious stones which abound in that region; some of which
are yet to be seen in the monuments of his church."
In the foregoing accounts of the voyage of Sighelm, from the first notice
in the Saxon Chronicle, through the additions of Malmsbury, and the
amplified paraphrase by Harris, we have an instance of the manner in which
ingenious men permit themselves to blend their own imaginations with
original record, superadding utterly groundless circumstances, and fancied
conceptions, to the plain historical facts. Thus a motely rhetorical tissue
of real incident and downright fable is imposed upon the world, which each
successive author continually improves into deeper falsehood. We have here
likewise an instance of the way in which ancient manuscripts, first
illustrated by commentaries, became interpolated, by successive
transcribers adopting those illustrations into the text; and how many
fabricators of story, first misled by these additaments, and afterwards
misleading the public through a vain desire of producing a morsel of
eloquence, although continually quoting original and contemporary
authorities, have acquired the undeserved fame of excellent historians,
while a multitude of the incidents, which they relate, have no foundations
whatever in the truth of record. He only, who has diligently and faithfully
laboured through original records, and contemporary writers, honestly
endeavouring to compose the authentic history of an interesting period, and
has carefully compared, in his progress, the flippant worse than
inaccuracies of writers he has been taught to consider as masterly
historians, can form an adequate estimate of the enormity and frequency of
this tendency to romance. The immediate subject of these observations is
slight and trivial; but the evil itself is wide-spread and important, and
deserves severe reprehension, as many portions of our national history have
been strangely disfigured by such indefensible practices.
[1] Harris, I. 873. Hakluyt, V. II. 38.
[2] Chron. Sax. Ed. Gibson, p. 86.
[3] Hakluyt, II. 88.
SECTION V.
Travels of John Erigena to Athens, in the Ninth Century[1].
John Erigena, of the British Nation, descended from noble progenitors, and
born in the town of St. Davids in Wales; while the English were oppressed
by the cruel wars and ravages of the Danes, and the whole land was in
confusion, undertook a long journey to Athens, and there spent many years
in the study of the Grecian, Chaldean, and Arabian literature. He there
frequented all the places and schools of the philosophers, and even visited
the oracle of the sun, which Esculapius had constructed for himself. Having
accomplished the object of his travels, he returned through Italy and
France; where, for his extraordinary learning, he was much favoured by
Charles the Bald, and afterwards by Lewis the Stammerer. He translated into
Latin, in 858, the books of Dionysius the Areopagite, concerning the
Heavenly Hierarchy, then sent from Constantinople. Going afterwards into
Britain, he became preceptor to Alfred, King of England, and his children;
and, at the request of that prince, he employed his leisure in translating
the Morals of Aristotle, and his book called the Secret of Secrets, or of
the Right Government of Princes, into Chaldaic, Arabic, and Latin;
certainly a most exquisite undertaking. At last, being in the abbey of
Malmsbury, where he had gone for his recreation, in the year 884, and
reading to certain evil-disposed disciples, they put him to death.
[1] Hakluyt, II. 38.
SECTION VI.
Geography of the Known World, in the Ninth Century as described by King
Alfred[1].
INTRODUCTION.
Though not strictly conformable to our plan, as being neither a journey or
voyage, it yet seemed incumbent to present our readers with this curious
British production of the great Alfred King of England, which gives a
singular record of the geographical knowledge of the world in the ninth
century. It was originally written by Orosius, a Spanish Christian, who
flourished in the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century, and
who published a kind of History of the World, down to A. D. 416, which
remained in good repute among the learned till about an hundred years ago,
but is now much neglected. Near a thousand years ago, the work of Orosius
was translated into Anglo-Saxon, by Alfred King of England, but, with great
freedom and much licence, often using his author merely as a foundation for
a paraphrase; omitting most of the introductory chapters to each book,
sometimes leaving out considerable passages, and often inserting new
matter. This is peculiarly the case with the first chapter of the first
book, containing the whole of the geography, and which is all that has any
reference to the nature of our work.
The Honourable Daines Barrington, who published the Anglo-Saxon version,
with an English translation, informs us that the original MS. is in the
Cotton Library, Tiberius I., and is supposed to have been written in
the ninth or tenth century; but that, in making his translation, he used a
transcript, made by Mr Elstob, occasionally collated with the Cotton MS.
and with some other transcripts. But, before publishing a work of such
curiosity and interest, he ought to have made sure of possessing a perfect
copy, by the most scrupulous comparison of his transcript with the original
MS.
In the following republication of the geographical chapter, much care has
been taken to correct errors, chiefly in regard to direction, as east,
west, north, and south, are often used interchangeably in the translation
by Mr Barrington. Most of the notes are from that edition, or from J.R.
Forster, who reprinted so much of this chapter as referred to northern
geography, and who appears to have studied that part of the subject with
great care.
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