Succeeding writers seem to have had fewer scruples, and to have admitted the idea without consideration.  Thorkelin, the Dane, (when in England to copy out the poem of Beowulf for publication at Copenhagen), gave a very flattering testimony to Forster’s notes, in Bibliotheca Topographica, vol. ix. p. 891. et seq., though I believe he subsequently much modified it.  Our own writers who had to remark upon the subject, Sharon Turner, and Wheaton, in his History of the Northmen, may be excused from concurring in an opinion in which they had only a verbal interest.  Professor Ingram, in his translation of Othere’s Voyage (Oxford, 1807, 4to. p. 96. note), gives the following rather singular deduction for the appellation:  Quenland was the land of the Amazons; the Amazons were fair and white-faced, therefore Cwen-Sae the White Sea, as Forster had deduced it:  and so, having satisfied himself with this kind of Sorites, follows pretty closely in Forster’s wake.  But that continental writers, who took up the investigation avowedly as indispensable to the earliest history of their native countries, should have given their concurrence and approval so easily, I must confess, astonishes me.

Dahlman, whilst Professor of History at Kiel, felt himself called upon by his situation to edit and explain this work to his countrymen more detailedly than previously, and at vol. ii. p. 405. of the work cited by Mr. Singer gives all Alfred’s original notices.  I shall at present only mention his interpretation of Quen Sae, which he translates Weltmeer; making it equivalent to the previous Garseeg or Oceanus.  He mentions the reasonings of Rask and Porthan, of Abo, the two exceptions to the general opinion (which I shall subsequently notice), without following, on this point, what they had previously so much more clearly explained.  The best account of what had previously been done on the subject is contained in Beckmann’s Litteratur der alten Raisen (s. 450.); and incidental notices of such passages as fall within the scope of their works, are found in Schloezer’s Allgemeine nordische Geschichte, Thummann’s Untersuchungen, Walch’s Allgemeine Bibliothek, Schoening’s Gamle nordishe Geographie, Nyerup’s Historisk-statistik Skildering i aeldre og nyere Tider, in Sprengel’s Geschichte, and by Woerbs, in Kruse’s Deutsche Alterthuemer.  Professor Ludw.  Giesebrecht published in 1843, at Berlin, a most excellent Wendische Geschichte, in 3 vols. 8vo., but his inquiries concerning this Periplus (vol. iii. p 290) are the weakest part of his work, having mostly followed blindly the opinions to which the great fame and political importance of Dahlman had given full credence and authority.  He was not aware of the importance of Alfred’s notices for the countries he describes, and particularly for the elucidation of the vexed question of Adam