Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

DRUIDS. 251
obliged in their turn to yield to Luther, Calvin, Knox,
Cant, and Clavers, and now—what is to follow next.
Not a quarto volume, as such a commencement might
promise, be assured. Yet as, in attempting- to square
these unlucky circles, you may think that I have spoken
irreverently of so many learned men, I am in honour
bound to inquire what it is that we really do know about
the Druids and Druidism. To attempt to extract and
condense the essence and matter of twenty times as many
volumes as my entire undertaking, into halfa dozen of
its pages, is a bold piece of literary chemistry. But it is
only to dip into the same wells, and to try if we cannot
reproduce, in a solid form, the elementary matter which
has thus been gasified into so monstrous a bulk. It is to
Csesar chiefly that we must look for the little of decided
information which we possess on this subject. If he did
not speak from absolute personal knowledge, yet his in-
formation seems to have been derived more immediately
from real authorities, than that of the few other classical
writers who have noticed this priesthood. These are,
principally, Pliny, Lucan, Valerius Maximus, Pomponius
Mela, Diogenes Laertius, Ausonius, Ammianus Marcel-
linus, Vopiscus, Elianus Lampridius, Suetonius, Tacitus,
Diodorus, Strabo, Aurelius Victor, Seneca, and Ovid.
With respect to most of these writers, their notices are
commonly very slender and casual; and among them,
Pliny, though the most full and particular, is merely the
narrator of reports, like most of the rest. Yet from these
slender materials it is that such a system has been
erected ; conjectures serving to fill the vacancies, and
assertions being substituted for evidence.
In truth, there is little or no other evidence respect-
ing the Druids, than that which is thus historical and
classical. There is no modern evidence ; because they
had disappeared and were forgotten before modern