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OF THE DRUIDS. 83O ! sanctas gentes ! quibus haec nascuntur in hortisNumina.Juvenal, Sat. 15. ver. 10.I could make your lordship yet merryer, or ratherangrier, at these forc'd and far-fetch'd etymologies,together with others hammered as wretchedly outof Greec, nay even out of Suedish and German.But the word Ogmius, asLucian was truely inform*d,is pure Celtic;and signifies, to use Tacitus's*phrase about the Germans, the Secret ofLetters, particularly the letters themselves, andconsequently the learning that depends on them,from whence the force of eloquence proceeds:that Hercules Ogmius issothe Ijcarned Hercules, orHercules the jyrotector oflearning, having by manybeen reputed himself a philosopher f.To provethis account of the word, so natural and so apt, bepleas'd to understand, that,from the very beginningof the colony, Ogum, sometimes writtenOgam, and also Ogma J,has signify^d in Irelandthe secret of letters, or the Irish alphabet; for thetruth of which I appeal to ail the antient Irishbooks, without a single exception. 'Tis one of* Literarum Secreta viu puriier ac foeminae ingnorant, Demoribus Germanorum, cap. 19.c^-u^i rr,v Koyxy>.vVf &c. Palaphatifragmentum in Chronica Alexandrino. ^Epnxx?)jAXKfAtj^TK: uiog. TcwTOv 4>iXo5-o4>o» ico^ovTifScc. Suidas in voce 'Epajtx*??. Et dinante Suidam audiebat apud Heraclitum, in Allegoriis Homericis, Avrj e^4>^«r,xa.1 crc^ja? ou^xnov (xvirni:, ua-nifji kcita QaQsix; a^Kvo; tfriQi^uK.vMt 6«T