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OF THE DRUIDS. 75the modern Italians equal them in conceits. Butin s tiring the passions, their elegies and lamentationsfar excede those of the Greecs, because theyexpress nature much more naturally. TheseBards are not yet quite extinct, there being ofthem in Wales, in the Highlands of Scotland, andin Ireland: nor did any country in the worldabound like the last with this sort of men, whoselicentious panegyrics or satyrs have not a littlecontributed to breed confusion in the Irish history.There were often at a time, a thousand OUaivs*^or graduate poets, besides a proportionable numberof inferior rhymers, who all of 'em liv'd mostof the year on free cost: and, what out of fear oftheir railing, or love of their flattery, no bodydurst deny them any thing, be ithorse, mantle, or the like;armour, fewel,which grew into a gejieralcustom, whereof the poets did not fail iotake the advantage.The great men, out of selfloveand interest, enconrag'd no other kind oflearning, especially after they professed Christianity:the good regulation, under which theywere in the time of Druidism, as then in somemanner belonging to the temples, having been destroyedwith that religion.In a small time theybecame such a grievance, that several attemptswere made to rid the nation of them :and, whichis something comical, what at least our presentl)oets would not extraordinarly like, the orders* Ollamh is a professor or doctor in any faculty.