5

OP THE DRUIDS, 81
lege of the Irish language and books, the Gallic
antiquities, not meaning the Francic, can never be
set in any tolerable light, with regard either to words
or to things ;
and numerous occasions there will occur
in this History of illustrating both words and
things even in the Greec and Roman authors,
shall here give one example of this, since I just
come from treating of the several professors of
learning common to the antient Gauls, Britons,
and Scots, viz. the Druids, Bards, and Vaids.
• Lucian* relates that in Gaule he saw Hercules
represented as a little old man, whom in the language
of the country they call'd Ogmius; drawing
after him an infinite multitude of persons, who
seem'd most willing to follow, tho' drag'd by extreme
fine and almost imperceptible chains ;
I
which
were fasten'd at the one end to their ears, and held
at the other, not in either ofHercules's hands, which
were both otherwise imploy'd; but ty'd to the tip
of his tongue, in
which there was a hole on purpose,
where all those chains centr'd. Lucian wondering
at this manner of portraying Hercules, was
inform'd by a learned Druid who stood by, that
Hercules did not in Gaul, as in
Greece, betoken
strength ofbody, but iheforce of eloquence; which
is there very beautifully display'd by the Druid,
in his explication of the picture that hung in the
* T»» 'Ef«»Xs» «i KeXtoi orMlON wo;i*«{os«-i 4fm» in mxffif, et quae sequuntur
in Hercule Galilee : Grseca etenim longioi-ii sunt, quSm ut bic conio
mode itiseri ^ ostlnt.
K