_Cornish_, extinct only within a century.
_Armorican_, Bas Breton, spoken in French Brittany.
The Gadhelic into
_Gaelic_, still spoken in the Scottish Highlands.
_Irish_, or _Erse_, spoken in Ireland.
_Manx_, spoken in the Isle of Man.
Such are the first people and dialects to be considered as the antecedent
occupants of the country in which English literature was to have its
birth.
II. ROMAN CONQUEST.--But these Celtic peoples were conquered by the Romans
under Caesar and his successors, and kept in a state of servile thraldom
for four hundred and fifty years. There was but little amalgamation
between them and their military masters. Britain was a most valuable
northern outpost of the Roman Empire, and was occupied by large garrisons,
which employed the people in hard labors, and used them for Roman
aggrandizement, but despised them too much to attempt to elevate their
condition. Elsewhere the Romans depopulated, where they met with barbarian
resistance; they made a solitude and called it peace--for which they gave
a triumph and a cognomen to the conqueror; but in Britain, although
harassed and endangered by the insurrections of the natives, they bore
with them; they built fine cities like London and York, originally
military outposts, and transformed much of the country between the Channel
and the Tweed from pathless forest into a civilized residence.
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