Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

NORTH RONA. 303
concise and philosophical writer Plutarch. Every one
knows that Ulysses went to a land situated no one knows
where, covered with perpetual clouds, and never visited
by the rays of the sun: the said Cimmerian, Cimbrian,
or Celtic fog being- produced by a witch, and the island
being situated €?? Ttupara umuvoTo, This must have been
North Rona : because the geography is precise. If any
doubt could exist of Homer's truth, the fact is confirmed
by Isaac Tzetzes and Natalis Comes; profound and vera-
cious authors both. Toland, however, thinks that this
island also of Homer's, was the Isle of Mann; and thus
we commentators disagree. An author more profound
than all of us, has clearly demonstrated that both the
Monae are here implicated ; and that one of them was
the Elysian Fields, and the other the Fortunate Islands
of the ancients. By what means Jineas contrived to find
a subterranean passage from Italy to either of the Mouse,
is not clearly explained ; but it was probably generated
by the branch of magic misletoe which Virgil plainly
shows to have been at the bottom of the secret, I ought
also to quote Pytheas, who does not romance at all ; but
if I quote him, I must quote the poetical geographer
Scymnos, and so on, and there will be no end to my
learning. Perhaps you think I am jesting all this time.
If I do feel some compunction at putting on my paper
what grave authors have gravely quoted as solid sub-
stantial learning, in quartos of no small weight, be as-
sured there has been no jesting among them. I do
assure you all this reading is very true and profound
but, unluckily for my reputation, it is not a treatise on
the Titans, the Druids, or the gods of Samothrace; else
I might have assumed " superbiam qusesitara meritis."
It matters much, in these cases, " quid a quo dictum
est"—and how, also.
But we must not forget our own island in this deep
;