To the traditional history of the tribes peculiarly belong the genealogies of their kings, to which it will be necessary to refer hereafter in a mythological point of view. For the present it is enough that I call attention to the extraordinary tale of Offa, who occurs at an early stage of the Mercian table, among the progenitors of the Mercian kings. This story, as we find it in Matthew Paris’s detailed account[33], coincides in the minutest particulars with a tale told by Saxo Grammaticus of a Danish prince bearing the same name[34]. Footnote 33: Vit. Offae Primi, edited by Wats. Footnote 34: Saxo Gramm. bk. iv. p. 59 _seq._ The form itself in which details, which profess to be authentic, have been preserved, ought to secure us from falling into error. They are romantic, not historical; and the romance has salient and characteristic points, not very reconcilable with the variety which marks the authentic records of fact. For example, the details of a long and doubtful struggle between the Saxons and the Britons are obviously based upon no solid foundation; the dates and the events are alike traditional,—the usual and melancholy consolation of the vanquished. In proportion as we desert the older and apply to later sources of information, do we meet with successful wars, triumphant British chieftains, vanquished Saxons, heroes endowed with supernatural powers and blessed with supernatural luck. Gildas, Nennius and Beda mention but a few contests, and even these of a doubtful and suspicious character; Geoffry of Monmouth and gossipers of his class, on the contrary, are full of wondrous incidents by flood and field, of details calculated to flatter the pride or console the sorrows of Keltic auditors: the successes which those who lived in or near the times described either pass over in modest silence or vaguely insinuate under sweeping generalities, are impudently related by this fabler and his copyists with every richness of narration. According to him the invaders are defeated in every part of the island, nay even expelled from it; army after army is destroyed, chieftain after chieftain slain; till he winds up his enormous tissue of fabrications with the defeat, the capture and execution of a hero whose very existence becomes problematical when tested by the severe principles of historical criticism, and who, according to the strict theory of our times, can hardly be otherwise than enrolled among the gods, through a godlike or half-godlike form[35]. ----- Footnote 35: