rto been said about the early traditions of either
Briton or Gael. No word, either, about their early records. Nothing
about the Triads, Aneurin, Taliessin, Llywarch Hen, and Merlin on the
side of the Welsh; nothing about the Milesian and other legends of the
Irish. Why this silence? Have the preceding investigations been so
superabundantly clear as to lead us to dispense with all rays of light
except those of the most unexceptionable kind?

It is an unusual piece of good fortune when this happens anywhere; and
assuredly it has not happened on British or Irish ground as yet. Or has
the evidence of such early records and traditions been incompatible with
the doctrines of the previous chapters, and, on the strength of its
inconvenience, been kept back? If so, there has been a foul piece of
disingenuousness on the part of the writer. But he does not plead guilty
to this. He attaches but little weight to the evidence of the early
British records; and the contents of the present chapter are intended to
justify his depreciation of them.

The writer who asserts that the oldest work in any language is of such
antiquity as to be separated from the next oldest by any very long
interval--by an interval which leaves a wide chasm between the first and
second specimens of the literature which no fragments and no traces of
any lost compositions are found to fill up--makes an assertion which he
is bound to support by evidence of the most cogent kind. For it is not
always enough to shew that no intrinsic objections lie against the
antiquity of the work in question. It may be so short, or so general in
respect to its subject as to leave no room for contradictory and
impossible sentences or expressions. It is not enough to shew that there
were no reasons against such a literature being developed; since it is
difficult to say what conditions absolutely forbid the production of a
work stamped by no very definite characteristics. Nor yet will it
suffice to say that the preservation of such a work is probable. All
that can be got from all this is a presumption in its favour. The great
fact of a work existing without giving this impulse to the production of
others like it, and the fact of the same means of preservation being
wholly neglected in other instances, still stand over. They are not
conclusive against certain positions; but they are circumstances which
must be fairly met; circumstances which if one writer overlook, others
will not; c