The genuine history of the Britons asserted against Mr. Macpherson ...

22 THE GENUINE HISTORY OF
latter declares the Britifh Ifles to have received a
colony of the Celts, in confequence of the Pho-
cffian fettlement at Marleilles. I Ihall confider both
of thefe attentively.
The opinion here advanced by Mr. Macpherfon
concerning the Urabri, has been advanced by
feveral writers before, in that jflrange humour
which has been taken up by fo many antiquari-
ans, of magnifying the glory and extending the
polTeffions of the Gauls. But the notion appears
to be chimerical and groundlefs.
The Umbri are affirmed by both Pliny and
Florus, as Mr. Macpherfon himfelf has quoted
them, to be the mod antient people in Italy, or,
in other words, to be the progeny of the firft
colonifts that came into it after the flood. And,
if the Umbri were a race of men derived from
Gaul, Gaul mufl have been inhabited fome ages
before Italy. So accelTible as the latter is acrofs the
fea from Dalmatia or from Germany by land,
and therefore lying much more obvious than
Gaul to the great colonies of the Noachids, as
they converged to the Weft ; it muft, according
to this reprefentation, have never received any
colony at all, till Gaul difcharged its fuperfluous
numbers into it. And a country that would have
peculiarly invited the fpreading hords of theEaft,
as pufhing its whole length in one vaft projeftion
into the waves of the Mediterranean, and there-
fore lying very happily central betwixt the three