For noble Britons sprong from Trojans bold, And Troynovant was built of old Troye's ashes cold.
(This is one of Spenser's fine old lingering lines, in which he seems to dwell on a fable till he believes it.) Brutus, having the misfortune to kill his father, fled from his native country into Greece, where he set free a multitude of Trojans, captives to King Pandrasus, whose daughter he espoused. He left Greece with a numerous flotilla, and came to an island called Legrecia, where there was a temple of Diana. To Diana he offered sacrifice, and prayed her to direct his course. The prayer, and the goddess's reply, as told in Latin by Gildas, have received a lustre from the hand of Milton. He gives us the following translation of them in his historical fragment:--
"Goddess of Shades, and Huntress, who at will Walk'st on the rolling sphere, and through the deep, On thy third reign, the earth, look now; and tell What land, what seat of rest, thou bidst me seek; What certain seat, where I may worship thee, For aye, with temples vowed, and virgin quires."
"To whom, sleeping before the altar," says the poet, "Diana in a vision that night, thus answered:--
"Brutus, far to the west, in th' ocean wide, Beyond the realm of Gaul, a land there lies, Sea-girt it lies, where giants dwelt of old: Now void, it fits thy people. Thither bend Thy course: there shalt thou find a lasting seat; There to thy sons another Troy shall rise, And kings be born of thee, whose dreaded reign Shall awe the world, and conquer nations bold."[2]
According to Spenser, Brutus did not find England cleared of the giants. He had to conquer them. But we shall speak of those personages when we come before their illustrious representatives in Guildhall.
This fiction of Troynovant, or new Troy, appears to have arisen from the word Trinobantes in Cæsar, a name given by the historian to the inhabitants of a district which included the London banks of the Thames. The oldest mention of the metropolis is supposed to be found in that writer, under the appellation of _Civitas Trinobantum_, the city of the Trinobantes; though some are of opinion that by _civitas_ he only meant their government or community. Be this as it may, a city of the Britons, in Cæsar's time, was nothing either for truth or fiction to boast of, having been, as he describes it, a mere spot hollowed out of the woods, and defended by a ditch and a rampart.