The poor man was overjoyed at the offer while Glorvina betrayed neither surprise nor regret at my intention, but looked first at her father, and then at me, with kindness and gratitude.
Were my heart more at ease, were my confidence in the affections of Glorvina something stronger, I should greatly relish this little tour, but as it is, when I found every thing arranged for my departure, without the concurrence of my own wishes, I could not check my pettishness, and for want of some other mode of venting it, I endeavoured to ridicule a work on the subject of _ancient Irish_ history which the priest was reading aloud, while Glorvina worked, and I was trifling with my pencil.
“What,” said I, after having interrupted him in many different passages, which I thought savoured of natural hyperbole, “what can be more forced than the very supposition of your partial author, that _Albion_, the most ancient name of Britain, was given it as though it were another or _second Ireland_, because Banba was one of the ancient names of your country?”
“It may appear to you a forced etymology,” said the priest, “yet it has the sanction of _Camden_, who first risked the supposition. But it is the fate of our unhappy country to receive as little credit in the present day, for its former celebrity, as for its great antiquity, * although the former is attested by _Bede_, and many other early British writers, and the latter is authenticated by the testimony of the most ancient Greek authors. For _Jervis_ is mentioned in the _Argonautica_ of _Orpheus_, long before the name of England is anywhere to be found in Grecian literature. And surely it had scarcely been first mentioned, had it not been first known.”
* It has been the fashion to throw odium on the modern Irish, by undermining the basis of their ancient history, and vilifying their ancient national character. If a historian professes to have acquired his information from the records of the country whose history he writes, his accounts are generally admitted as authentic, as the commentaries of Garcilasso de Vega are considered as the chief pillars of Peruvian history, though avowed by their author to have been compiled from the old national ballads of the country; yet the old writers of Ireland, (the Psalter of Cashel in particular) though they refer to these ancient re cords of their country, authenticated by existing manners and existing habits, are plunged into the oblivion of contemptuous neglect, or read only to be discredited.