Some of the Druids, it is said in Caesar's Commentaries, spent twenty years in learning to repeat songs and hymns that were never committed to writing.

These ancient priests, or diviners, are represented as having great power, and as exercising it in some respects beneficially; but their horrid rites, with human sacrifices, provoked the Romans to destroy them.

Smollett says, "Tiberius suppressed those human sacrifices in Gaul; and Claudius destroyed the Druids of that country; but they subsisted in Britain till the reign of Nero, when Paulus Suetonius reduced the island of Anglesey, which was the place of their retreat, and overwhelmed them with such unexpected and sudden destruction, that all their knowledge and tradition, conveyed to them in the songs of their predecessors, perished at once."-- _Smollett's Hist.

of Eng._, 4to, B.i, Ch.

i, Sec.7.
10.