A new edition of Toland's History of the druids: - Free History Ebooks

202 THE HISTORYplan ill my second letter*", it subsisting in greatpart still. He affirms that they had a peculiardialect, which in reality continues the same tothis day; it being Earse, or the sixth among theCeltic dialects I enumerated in my first letter:and approaching so near to that of the Irish, thatthese and the ilanders discourse together withoutany difficulty.But, omitting several other mattersno less concordant, he adds, that the ilandwas frequented of old by the Greecs|, and infriendship with them; which will be easily admitted,after perusing the fourth and fifth sectionsof this present letter, where I manifestly provethis intercourse. I very well know, that others,who are far from agreeing among themselves, doplace the Hyberboreans elsewhere: nor am I ignorantthat diverse, after the example of AntoniusDiogenes s TJmlian Romcince'^, have indeavordtodivert their readers, no less than themselves, withHyperborean fictions ; and so made such variationsof site or circumstances, as best suited their severalplans, to speak nothing of such as weregrossly ignorant in geography. Allowances oughtto be made for all these things. And the Hyperboreancontinent (which was questionless the mostnorthern part of Scythia, or of Tartary and Muscovy,stretching quite to Scandinavia, or Sweden* Section XI.% See the last section.