of Roger, (and I grieve to say so) with one
settled and fixed conviction—that I don't
believe Roger the Monk. More than this;
I am not an unbeliever, generally, I hope. I
have read Paley, and the French author who
wrote The Words of a Believer, but I can't
believe in any ante-Norman History of
England, because the chronicle of Mathew
Paris, on which almost all our early histories
are founded, hath been lately discovered (by
Roger's learned editor) to contain embodied
therein, verbatim et literatim, the "Flowers
of History" of Roger de Wendover; secondly,
because the work of Roger de Wendover,
who was copied by the first-named author,
is as full of impossibilities as an egg is full of
meat, as a stack is full of straws, as an Act
of Parliament is full of flaws.

Any good that Roger de Wendover has
done is certainly interred with his bones.
The evil that he has done lives after him.
He has poisoned the well of history
undefiled; he has crammed more falsehoods
into two octavo volumes than herrings
could be crammed into a barrel. He has
lied not for an age, but for all time; and
the most distressing circumstances
connected with his mendacity is, that so many
are the lies—so often do we catch him
Munchausenising—that we don't know when
to believe him. It is the boy and the
wolf over again. When we find, wedged
sandwich fashion between two palpable falsehoods,
the story of King Alfred and the neat-herd,
of Canute and his courtiers, of William
the Norman's invasion, how are we to know
that Roger is not lying yet? I am sorry I
have read Roger; sorry that Herr Niebuhr
should have demolished Livy, and that Mr.
Macaulay should have agreed with Niebuhr;
sorry that Horace Walpole should have
explained away Richard the Third's murders. I
am always sorry to be disillusioned. After
love there's nothing half so sweet as History's
young dream. After Roger's lies, how am I
to place credence in King Alfred? I shake
my head at him. The forty Royal
Academicians may find the body of Harold now, as
often as they like, and bury him, but I shall
not go to the funeral. Was there ever a Fair
Rosamond? Did Richard the First ever fight
at Ascalon? A man don't know what to
believe. Let me briefly and rapidly run
through Roger.

Beginning in 447, Roger describes the
inviting over of Hengist and Horsa, and tells
us the stories of Vortigern and Rowena, and
of the wars of King Vortimer, of the Picts
and Scots, Merovius, King of the Franks,
of the Emperor Valentinian, and of the
Council of Chalcedon, in a very sensible,
business-like, historical manner. He even
mentions the cathedral of Saint Stephen,
but with no fewer than three cock and bull
stories. One concerning Severus, "a man
remarkable for miraculous powers," and the
"blessed Germanus." The former built
the Vienna cathedral, and the latter had
promised to attend at its dedication; but
—happening to die at Ravenna was there
buried, "not without many miracles"—it
might be reasonably supposed that he did
not keep his appointment. No: hear Roger.
"It fell out, that on the very day of the
dedication, and before the service had
commenced, the most blessed body of Germanus
was taken into that new church while they
rested; and thus the promise of that man
of God was fulfilled." A highly credible
miracle, provided always that no collusion
existed between Saint Severus, "the man
remarkable for miraculous powers," and the
undertaker's men. Again, this romancing
Roger tells us (on the authority of the
arch-deceiver, Geoffrey of Monmouth) that
Vortigern gave Hengist as much land as
could be surrounded by a bull's hide, which
the artful Saxon cut into long narrow thongs,
and so surrounded a great expanse of earth
with his leathern cordon. Ingenious and
picturesque, but unhappily not original. Have
we not an exactly similar story concerning
Queen Dido of Carthage? And is it likely
that the Wodin-worshipping Hengist was
familiar with the writings of the ancients?
Shortly afterwards we are favoured by a
genteel anecdote applying to Saint Mamertus,
Bishop of Vienna; who, keeping a vigil, and
in the midst of a terrible conflagration which
was devastating the city, with a flood of
tears restrained the violence of the fire. Oh,
how are we to believe in Hengist and Horsa,
Vortigern and Rowena, after these bouncers!

In the paragraph immediately following,
Roger gravely writes under the capitular
title of "Discovery of the head of Saint John"
—just as a penny-a-liner might record on
his flimsy, "Discovery of the head of the
murdered woman"—that "in the year of grace
458, two Eastern monks having gone up to
Jerusalem to worship, revealed to them the
place of his head, near the house where
Herod formerly lived. It was straightway
brought to Edessa, a city of Phœnicia, and
there buried with due honour."

"In the year of grace" (says Roger) "461,
Hengist, hearing of the death of Vortimer,
returned into Britain with three hundred
thousand warriors." I don't believe that
Hengist ever mustered a tithe of that number
of warriors; yet every respectable historian
has copied the assertion; and if I, being at
school, had ever dared to question the veracity
of the standard historian of my school, I
should have been flogged. I place as little
credence in Roger's minute description of the
May-day banquet offered by Hengist to the
Britons at the village of Ambrius, where
every Saxon had a carving-knife stuck in his
stocking, with which, in the interval between
dinner and dessert they treacherously slew
their guests. I believe that banquet to have
taken place just as much as I believe to have
been present thereat the famous ancestor