more than the want of a head to a Statue of Venus, or legs & arms to one of Hercules; that is, such a defect does not lessen, but greatly enhance the value of either. If every antient Medal was as legible as a King George's halfpenny, what room would be left for our learned conjectures? And I doubt not but the date of the present Poem will afford matter of profound speculation to our posterity in the faculty for many future generations. Et natis natorum, et qui nascentur ab illis. I cannot find, in my Davies's Dictionary in what century either of the above Bards flourished; & in vain have I turned over my Caradog of Llangarfan, & my. Geoffry of Monmouth, to find out when the memorable battle therein mentioned was fought. Camden knows nothing of it, & Carte is very far from being precise in point of time. What time Sibli lived, or where, is to me a mystery; & whether that venerable personage were Man, Woman, or hermaphrodite, would have been as great a one, but for this Poem. But then if this vast treasure of knowledge could have been gain'd by reading, I should have been deprived of the pleasure of making the conjecture which I am now going to offer; viz, that this Poem was written somewhere within that dark period of time that passed between Anno 600 & 1000. Ha! I smell you out Brother Antiquarians, you say. I care not a fig if you do, tho' methinks at that distance ....... My design, Sir is honest as ever entered into any Antiquarian pate; & if it does but take effect, I am persuaded it will be of infinite benefit to Posterity. Time, you know, is the grand enemy of our tribe, with whom our predecessors of everlasting memory have waged perpetual (or to speak more poetically, a never discontinued) war. What He hides we endeavour to find; what he would bury in eternal oblivion, we as strenously register in the eternal records of Fame. The success of this war has always been various; but to the immortal honour of the present age we have gained numberless advantages of the enemy. You know how our army sacked his Capital of Herculaneum ; & (to give merit its due praise) I myself received some glorious wounds in the brains at the Battle of Uriconium in Shropshire, when we retook from the enemy three Roman Officers whom he had kept close
