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NOTES. 383o^^^iy maintalne^l, and as strenuously controTf rted.To do justiceto this discussion, would require a volume.Pinkarton andJnne.9 have, above all others, strained every effort in the negative,and adduced every argument to that effect which ingenuity couldinvent, or prejudice suggest.By adverting to the argmnc nts ofthese gentlemen, I will, in some measure, be able to do justiceto the subject, and at the same time confine myself within thebounds to which these notes must necessarily be limited. Boththese gentlemen owed Mr. Toland a grudge, though on very differentgrounds.Pinkarton was sensible his Gothic system couldnever stand, till the Celts, and every thing Celtic, were completelyannihilated, and hence hisinveterate antipathy to Toland,who was not only a Celt, but a strenuous assertor of theantiquity, civilization, and early literature of the Celts.InneSyon llie other hand, was a Popish clergyman, a staunch Jacobite,and an inflexible advocate for the dimne right ofreignmg.Thisdivine right of kings was, by Toland and the whigs, (for Tolandwas a rigid whig) ironically denominated the divine right of doingziwong.With men actaated by such discordant principles, wherea diversity of opinion was possible, no coincidence was to beexpected.INIr. Pinkarton (v. 2. p. 18. & 19.) insists that the Irish haveno claim to letters before St. Patrick introduced them, alongwith Christianity, about the year 440. Yet this same gentleman,wishing to \ix the authentic history of his favourite Pictsas early as possible, dates it from the commencement of the reignof Drust the Great, in 414, and assigns as a reason for this authenticity,(v. l.p.275.) that, in 412, there were /nVj clergymen whosettled in Pictland, and had the use of letters, and that traditionivas then exchangedfor authentic history.If the Irish were unacquaintedwith letters till St. Patrick introduced them in 440,or (as others say) =n 432, it must follow that these Irish clergywho settled in Pictland in 412, must also have been totally illiterate.Bat Mr. Pinkarton, it may be presumed, would notfound the authenticity of the history of his red-haired friends ona fiction, and hence it is evident, from his own account of the3 C 2