Blair Collection > Critical dissertations on the origin, antiquities, language, government, manners, and religion, of the antient Caledonians, their posterity the Picts, and the British and Irish Scots

8 On the Remote
the wood in which he purfues his game * ; but
without the aid of records, he can never trace
back the origin of his diftant predeceiTor, nor,
were he in the humour of fidion, can he have any
idea of framing a legendary one. On thefe ac-
counts it is fruitlefs, and indeed fuperfluous, to
fearch after the ideas or fyflems which the old
Celtic nations formed with regard to their remote
origin and hiftory.
These natural obflrudions to the refearches of
a barbarous people, after a i'plendid origin, did not
at all difcourage the nations of Europe. Spain, in
particular, claimed to hcrfelfan extraordinary pro-
portion of antiquity and genealogical honour.
Strabo informs us, that the Turdetonians, a nation
of that country, could produce written monu-
ments to fupport their claim, together with many
celebrated poems and laws couched in verfe, all of
fix thoufand years landing. Our author obferves,
that thefe Turdetonians were the moft learned peo-
ple in Spain ; and we may very fafely add, that
they were beyond comparifon the moft antient
people on earth, if Strabo's account of them be
jufh : but that judicious writer acknowledges that
the high antiquity of the Turdetonians^ and the
genuinenefs of their records, reft entirely on the
credit of their own teftimony. It is a pity that
thefe hiftorical records, poems, and verfified laws,
fhould, after fo long and fucccfsful a ftruggle with
time, have in the end peridied fo prematurely,
that not the fmalleft veftige of them could be dif-
covered for thefe fifteen hundred years paft.
* Tacit. de^Mor. Germ. cap. i.
Though