A Literary History of the English People | Page 7

was in Bavaria. From there, and not from
Gaul, set out the expeditions by which Rome was taken, Delphi
plundered, and a Phrygian province rebaptized Galatia. Celtic
cemeteries abound throughout that region; the most remarkable of them
was discovered, not in France, but at Hallstadt, near Salzburg, in
Austria.[2]
The language of the Celts was much nearer the Latin tongue than the
Germanic idioms; it comprised several dialects, and amongst them the
Gaulish, long spoken in Gaul, the Gaelic, the Welsh, and the Irish, still
used in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The most important of the Celtic
tribes, settled in the main island beyond the Channel, gave itself the
name of Britons. Hence the name of Britain borne by the country, and
indirectly that also of Great Britain, now the official appellation of
England. The Britons appear to have emigrated from Gaul and
established themselves among the other Celtic tribes already settled in
the island, about the third century before Christ.
During several hundred years, from the time of Pytheas to that of the
Roman conquerors, the Mediterranean world remained ignorant of what
took place among insular Britons, and we are scarcely better informed
than they were. The centre of human civilisation had been moved from
country to country round the great inland sea, having now reached
Rome, without anything being known save that north of Gaul existed a
vast country, surrounded by water, rich in tin mines, covered by forests,
prairies, and morasses, from which dense mists arose.
Three centuries elapse; the Romans are settled in Gaul. Cæsar, at the
head of his legions, has avenged the city for the insults of the Celtic
invaders, but the strife still continues; Vercingetorix has not yet
appeared. Actuated by that sense of kinship so deeply rooted in the
Celts, the effects of which are still to be seen from one shore of the
Atlantic to the other, the Britons had joined forces with their
compatriots of the Continent against the Roman. Cæsar resolved to lead
his troops to the other side of the Channel, but he knew nothing of the
country, and wished first to obtain information. He questioned the

traders; they told him little, being, as they said, acquainted only with
the coasts, and that slightly. Cæsar embarked in the night of August
24th-25th, the year 55 before our era; it took him somewhat more time
to cross the strait than is now needed to go from Paris to London. His
expedition was a real voyage of discovery; and he was careful, during
his two sojourns in the island, to examine as many people as possible,
and note all he could observe concerning the customs of the natives.
The picture he draws of the former inhabitants of England strikes us
to-day as very strange. "The greater part of the people of the interior,"
he writes, "do not sow; they live on milk and flesh, and clothe
themselves in skins. All Britons stain themselves dark blue with woad,
which gives them a terrible aspect in battle. They wear their hair long,
and shave all their body except their hair and moustaches."
Did we forget the original is in Latin, we might think the passage was
extracted from the travels of Captain Cook; and this is so true that, in
the account of his first journey around the world, the great navigator,
on arriving at the island of Savu, notices the similitude himself.
With the exception of a few details, the Celtic tribes of future England
were similar to those of future France.[3] Brave like them, with an
undisciplined impetuosity that often brought them to grief (the
impetuosity of Poictiers and Nicopolis), curious, quick-tempered,
prompt to quarrel, they fought after the same fashion as the Gauls, with
the same arms; and in the Witham and Thames have been found bronze
shields similar in shape and carving to those graven on the triumphal
arch at Orange, the image of which has now recalled for eighteen
centuries Roman triumph and Celtic defeat. Horace's saying concerning
the Gaulish ancestors applies equally well to Britons: never "feared
they funerals."[4] The grave was for them without terrors; their faith in
the immortality of the soul absolute; death for them was not the goal,
but the link between two existences; the new life was as complete and
desirable as the old, and bore no likeness to that subterranean existence,
believed in by the ancients, partly localised in the sepulchre, with
nothing sweeter in it than those sad things, rest and oblivion. According
to Celtic belief, the dead lived again under the light of heaven; they did
not descend, as they did with the Latins, to the land of shades. No

Briton, Gaul, or Irish could have understood the melancholy words of
Achilles: "Seek not, glorious Ulysses, to comfort me for