Note 559 — Chapter XI

I give the following amusing tradition, which was probably founded on the celebrity of the English pearl embroidery of the Anglo-Saxon times, of which much went to Rome:—

“Then Cæsar, like a conqueror, with a great number of prisoners sailed into France, and so to Rome, where after his return out of Brytaine, hee consecrated to Venus a surcote of Brytaine pearles, the desire whereof partly moved him to invade this country.”—(Stow’s “Annales,” p. 14, ed. 1634.) Tacitus, in the Agricola 12, says that British pearls are grey and livid.