Stranica 50 [50]
28 ORIGIN OF THE CITY
that she ever visited England. It is even asserted on good authority
that, so far from converting her son Constantine to Christianity, it was
he who converted her.
We may be said to have come to authentic history with 43 A.D. ;
but we may well inquire why people in the middle ages should have
been at the pains and trouble to make
up all these stories. ail ee “A a I have only quoted
from Harry, but BiH | 4 3 q Holinshed s Chvon¬
icle is much fuller d : ő on the subject, and
the stories may be ABS sea found in Higden
and in Geoffrey of ay Monmouth, and
were eagerly re- ee ENS ceived and believed.
Perhaps Shake¬
them, perhaps not.
speare believed
He took Cymbdeline
from them, as well as King Lear, and
his contemporary Spenser also gives
us Lear's story. I think the reason
these legends were so widely accepted
is because they gave a plausible answer
to questions which must have greatly
puzzled our ances- tors as they have
puzzled us. ‘True, ee a Ae nea me SS we see no wall.
The gates have dis- wil ssezezüt 4 appeared for more
than a century. But the Bridge, or its successor, is there, and we
have the Tower, or what " restorers " have left of it. The chief question
was no doubt as to the wall. The people of the twelfth century saw
London girt with a mighty rampart, which, so far as their authentic
history went, had never been forced. How came it there? ‘Then, too,
there was a bridge, and so far back as their annals or their traditions
went, there always had been a bridge. How did the bridge come to