should a father seek, what can a child promise more? They who pretend beyond this, flatter." For, with the permission of her husband she raised an army, passed over to England, and replaced Lear upon the throne. This close is different from that of Shakspeare; but heart-rending as is that of the poet, it would have been the best after all, compared with the sequel as it exists in the original history. For we are there informed, that after the death of Lear, Cordelia, now a widow, succeeded to the sovereignty of England, where she ruled in peace, until two sons of her unnatural sisters, having now grown to man's estate, conceived themselves defrauded of their inheritance, and made war against her. She was defeated, deposed, and imprisoned; "wherewith," we are told, "she took such grief, being a woman of a manly courage, and despairing to recover liberty, there she slew herself, when she had reigned the term of five years." The two victors, who were the veritable children of such mothers as Goneril and Regan, after having parted the island between them, soon quarrelled about their share of the spoil, and Margan, the elder, in a battle that ensued in Wales, was slain by Cunedag, his cousin, who became sole sovereign of Britain.
We now pass over an interval during which Rome was built, reigned over by its seven kings, and finally changed into a republic. We might well wonder what Britain could have to do with such remote events; but so it was; for Brennus and his formidable troops were not Gauls, as the Roman historians have erroneously reported, but true-born Britons. This Brennus, it appears, according to British chroniclers, was the younger son of Dunwallo Molmutius; and being discontented with his inheritance, which comprised the whole of England north of the Humber, he made war upon his elder brother, Belinus, to obtain the sovereignty of the whole realm. But being defeated, he afterwards joined his forces to those of his brother, overran Gaul and part of Italy, and finally approached the gates of Rome. Having thus settled the most essential part of the story, which was to convert the Gaulish invaders into Britons, the narrative falls into the track of the Roman writers, in the capture of the city and the final defeat of Brennus by Camillus. This was surely enough to console the wounded pride of the Britons for the subsequent conquest of their island by the Romans! Their countrymen had been a civilized people when their proud enemies had been mere barbarians; and had entered as masters the city gates of the world's metropolis, and compelled it to purchase their forbearance. At this point, however, Milton shows his incredulity, and professes himself unable to reconcile the different parts of the story, so that he dismisses it with this brief statement : "Thus much is more generally believed, that both this Brennus, and another famous captain, Britoniarus, whom the epitomist Florus and others mention, were not Gauls but Britons; the name of the first in that tongue signifying a king, and of the other, a great Briton."
After this feat of the sacking of Rome, we have another long array of kings, of whom the early annalists had by this time begun to grow weary, for their deeds are very briefly recorded. During this course, also, if these early legends are to be believed, Englaad must already have been overspread with those stately cities which the Romans had afterwards the credit of founding, and been governed by those wise laws which are usually referred to a Saxon origin. Thus the Mercian law, which has usually been attributed to Alfred the Great, is represented to have been actually devised and formulated by Mertia, wife of King Guithelin or Guintolin; but here Milton, who admits the fact of such an early origin of tho Mercian law, while he scorns the thought of a female legislator, thus gets out of the difficulty: "In the minority of her son, she [Mertia] had the rule, and then, as may be supposed, brought forth these laws, not herself, for laws are masculine births, but by the advice of her sagest counsellors; and therein she might do virtuously, since it befell her to supply the nonage of her son: else nothing more awry from the law of God and nature, than that a woman should give laws to men." Among the kings who followed, was Elidure, whose fate as a sovereign was a rarity in royal annals; for he was thrice deposed, and as often replaced on his throne. He was also a very paragon of justice and generosity, as may be learned from the following romantic incident. His elder brother, Archigallo, who had reigned oppressively, having been displaced, and himself advanced in his room, it happened that one day, after having reigned five years, Elidure, while hunting in a forest, met his deposed brother, now an impoverished wanderer, and meanly attended, after he had vainly roamed about through the different courts of Europe in search of aid to replace him in his kingdom. The forlorn Archigallo was recognized; but Elidure, instead of sweeping such a dangerous rival from his path, as the kings of that period would have done without scruple, took him privately to the city Alclud, and hid him in his own bed-chamber. He then feigned himself to be grievously sick; and, as if unable to endure a crowd, he summoned his nobles one by one to his bedside, that he might consult with them about the affairs of his kingdom. The nobles singly repaired to him, and then the apparently dying Elidure prevailed upon them to swear allegiance to Archigallo. Having in this way obtained the consent of the whole
