As the inhabitants of the Danish islands and of Norway had no share in the spoils of England, they were not bound to respect the coasts after their kindred had established the kingdoms of the polyarchy. Their ravages, indeed, were experienced by the English chiefs before Northumbria became a kingdom. Offa of Mercia, whose domains were invaded by them, had the valour to defeat, and the generosity to pardon, his foes. It has, however, been contended that we find no satisfactory account of the Danes being here in such numbers as to command the notice of history, before the eighth century. In this case, the authority of Saxo is rejected as unworthy of credit. “Some documents for his history Saxo may have derived from poems of the ancient Scalds, from inscriptions on stones and rocks, from an inspection (yet how imperfect!) of the Icelandic authors, and from the narrations of his friend. We may even grant to him, that such men as he enumerates, such actions as he so eloquently describes, and such poems as he so diffusely translates, once appeared; but the chronology and succession into which he arranges them are unquestionably false. The boasted fountains of the history of the ancient Scandinavians, their memorial stones and funeral runæ, the inscribed rings of their shields, the woven figures of their tapestry, their storied walls, their lettered seats and beds, their narrative wood, their re-collected poetry, and their inherited traditions, may have given to history the names of many warriors, and have transmitted to posterity the fame of many battles: but no dates accompanied the memorials; even the geography of the incidents was very rarely noted. Hence, however numerous may have been the preserved memoranda, their arrangement and appropriation were left to the mercy of literary fancy or of national conceit. Saxo unfortunately emulated the fame of Livy, instead of becoming the Pausanias of Scandinavia; and instead of patiently compiling and recording his materials in the humble style or form in which he found them, which would have been an invaluable present to us, he has shaped them into a most confused, unwarranted, and fabulous chronology. The whole of his first eight books, all his history anteceding Ragnar Lodbrog, can as little claim the attention of the historian, as the British, history of Jeffry, or the Swedish history of Johannes Magnus. It is indeed superfluous, if we recollect the Roman history, to argue against a work which pretends to give to Denmark a throned existence, a regular government, and a tissue of orderly and splendid history for twenty-four royal accessions before the birth of Christ. Saxo, on whose history many others were formerly built, refers to the Icelandic writers; but this only increases our depreciation of his narratives, for they are at irreconcileable variance with all his history before the ninth century.”[270] Yet we are far from subscribing, in its most rigorous sense, to this unfavourable character.