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.
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