terminates.

The most ancient historian of our own island, whose work has been
preserved, is Gildas, who flourished in the latter part of the
sixth century. British antiquaries of the present day will
doubtless forgive me, if I leave in their original obscurity the
prophecies of Merlin, and the exploits of King Arthur, with all
the Knights of the Round Table, as scarcely coming within the
verge of history. Notwithstanding, also, the authority of Bale,
and of the writers whom he follows, I cannot persuade myself to
rank Joseph of Arimathea, Arviragus, and Bonduca, or even the
Emperor Constantine himself, among the illustrious writers of
Great Britain. I begin, therefore, with Gildas; because, though
he did not compile a regular history of the island, he has left
us, amidst a cumbrous mass of pompous rhapsody and querulous
declamation some curious descriptions of the character and
manners of the inhabitants; not only the Britons and Saxons, but
the Picts and Scots (6). There are also some parts of his work,
almost literally transcribed by Bede, which confirm the brief
statements of the "Saxon Chronicle" (7). But there is,
throughout, such a want of precision and simplicity, such a
barrenness of facts amidst a multiplicity of words, such a
scantiness of names of places and persons, of dates, and other
circumstances, that we are obliged to have recourse to the Saxon
Annals, or to Venerable Bede, to supply the absence of those two
great lights of history -- Chronology and Topography.

The next historian worth notice here is Nennius, who is supposed
to have flourished in the seventh century: but the work ascribed
to him is so full of interpolations and corruptions, introduced