A history of the Highlands and of the Highland clans : with an ...

TRELIMINARV DISSERTATION. XXXr
lonies. (Lib. V. c. 10.) Tliose Belgoe may be justly regarded as tbe
chief ancestors of the English nation, for the Saxons, Angles, and othei
northern invaders, though of distinguished courage, were inconsidera-
ble in numbers. Till a recent period, antiquaries had imagined that
tlie Belgie used the Celtic language, and had execrated the cruelties of
the Saxons for an extirpation which never happened. But, as it appears
that two-thirds of England were possessed by the Belgic Goths for six
or seven centuries before the arrival of the Saxons, it is no wonder
that no Celtic words are to be found in the English language, which
bears more affinity to the Frisic and Dutch than to the Jutlandic or
Danish."* He computes the Belgic population of Britain at three or
four millions, and affirms, that at the time of the Saxon invasion these
BelgiE spoke the German language I Yet Nennius, who wrote his
chronicle in the year eight hundred and thirty-two, says expressly,
that at " the feast given by Hengist to Vortigern, the latter brought
his interpreter with him, for no Briton understood the Saxon tongue,
except that interpreter."-^
If it could be shown that the Belgs of Gaul were Germans of Gothic
origin, the position maintained by Mr Pinkerton and other writers that
the British Belgae were of the same descent, might be allowed, as it is
an unquestionable fact that the Belgae whom Caesar found in Britain,
were from the opposite coast of Belgic Gaul ; but with the exception of
two passages in Csesar of doubtful import, there are no historical data
on which to found such an hypothesis. Bishop Percy, however, ob-
serves, " Coesar, whose judgment and penetration will be disputed by
none but a person blinded by hypothesis, and whose long residence in
Gaul gave him better means of being informed than almost any of his
countrymen—Ciesar expressly assures us, that the Celts, or common
inhabitants of Gaul, differed in language, customs, and laws, from the
Belga on the one hand, who were chiefly a Teutonic people, and from
the inhabitants of Aquitaine on the other, who, from their vicinity to
Spain, were probably of Iberian race. Csesar positively affirms, that
the nations of Gaul differed from those of Germany in their manners,
and in many particulars, which he has enumerated at length ; and this
assertion is not thrown out at random, like the passages brought by
Cluverius against it, but is coolly and cautiously made when he is
going to draw the characters of both nations in an exact and well-finish-
ed portrait, which shows him to have studied the genius and manners
of both people with great attention, and to have been completely master
of his subject.^"
But unfortunately for the Bishop's own hypothesis, Csesar has, in the
highly finished sketches which he has drawn in his sixth book, of the
customs and manners of the Gauls and Germans, shown that the people
• Pinkerton's Geography, vol. i. p. IS, 19.
•ilan. c. 6. t Preface to Noiiheiii Auliquilius, p. xi-