which the dread of Irish composition had gone. * At such a period prejudice would consign to oblivion whatever came within its power. Indeed, until the reign of James I. if not later, it seems to have been an object to discover every literary remain of the Old Irish with a view to its being either destroyed or concealed.†

"At the same time, no individual can even at present distinctly inform us, whether what we have in our possession be of real value or not, or whether these manuscripts are not nearly the only remaining source from which light may be thrown on the ancient history of Ireland, and perhaps discover to us some of their ideas respecting other countries as well as their own. The stores even in Dublin have never been impartially and thoroughly canvassed, nor does even a complete Catalogue Raisonnée of the collection in Trinity College

exist.

"I may repeat it, therefore, that the actual state of Irish manuscripts, for these last two hundred years, is one of the most striking illustrations of the power of prejudice as to one branch of our national history to which any historian can point. In the most ancient and curious, which, I presume, must be abroad, historical narration there must be, of whatever value; assertions also, many, in which the writer had no

*In the reign of Elizabeth, the King of Denmark applied to England for proper persons who might translate the ancient Irish books in his possession; and an Irishman in London, then in prison, being applied to on the subject, was ready to engage in the work. But upon a council being called, a certain member, it is said, who may be nameless, opposed the scheme, lest it should be prejudicial to the English interest.

+ Webb's Analysis, p. 121. Dub. 1791.

L

motive to falsify, though in various instances he might prove to be mistaken. But what is the amount of information in these numerous written compositions, no man can tell. We have been printing, very properly, ancient and modern Greek in parallel columns; Turkish for the Turk, and struggling hard to decypher the hieroglyphics of Egypt, but the records of one branch of the British population are still to be explored. Of the manuscripts said to be in Spain, no one informs us whether they are in the Escurial, or at Salamanca, Alcala, or elsewhere. Of the King's Library at Copenhagen, as there has never yet been a printed catalogue, nor the written one completed, what those manuscripts were, which a former Monarch wished to have translated, we are yet to be told. In Paris, by a few these manuscripts may be known to exist. In the Vatican they have slumbered since, and from before the days of Wadding. Fragments have been translated from a few at home, and if all the rest are of no higher value, we should have the less reason to regret their neglect; but chance specimens from a body of written composition are not like the specimens of most other things.

"In our present state there is no judicious man who would hazard more than conjecture, and perhaps add,- before you decide, examine at least, what seem to be the most valuable, and are most valued in different libraries; and before you return your verdict, forget not the relative character of other nations. At present we are prepossessed with unexamined opinions; and the positive assertions of national prejudice, whether for or against the antiquity or value of Irish writing have yet to be met by a positive and candid examination of the writing itself. At all events, there is one evil which has hitherto pursued the antiquities of Ireland,

that the writers in general, who have known her language have been deficient in critical knowledge; while those who possessed the genuine spirit of criticism have not only been ignorant of her ancient tongue, but despised it.""

C.

XVII.

At the time when Solinus wrote, Ireland, which was then very little known, had the reputation of being free from snakes—Illic nullus anguis, avis rara, gens inhospita et bellicosa, (c. xxii.) How such a reputation arose, it is not easy to say perhaps it might be founded in the superstitious sanctity with which the ancients always clothed the extreme boundaries of the west. In the time of Bede, the older simple story was already clothed in legendary array, and that historian asserts that it was not only free from such animals, but that no snake could live there, and that when any such reptiles had been carried over, they died invariably on approaching the shore. He asserts moreover that anything brought from Ireland is a sovereign remedy against the bite of all venomous animals, and tells us how in England they used for that purpose water, in which had been steeped the scrapings of the leaves of books, which had been brought over from the sister isle. After Bede's time, this fable became one of the most popular that prevailed during the middle ages. Giraldus tells us that not only snakes, but toads, and all other venomous reptiles were unable to live in Ireland, that more than once such animals had been carried over in boxes and had died immediately after passing the middle of the channel, that wood or leather, or any other Irish commodity steeped in water afforded a remedy not only against the bite of venomous animals, but against poisop, and that a little Irish earth sprinkled even on English

ground immediately drove away all such creatures from the neighbourhood. Giraldus gives it as the general belief of his contemporaries that Ireland was originally purged of venomous animals by the hand of St. Patrick, though he does not disguise his own scepticism on this point. However, we find this rehearsed amongst the miracles of the saint, by his biographer Jocelin. From his book (ch. clxix. clxx.) we learn that, before the time of St. Patrick, Ireland suffered under three insupportable plagues, which rendered the green island quite uninhabitable. First, it was overrun with every species of venomous reptiles; secondly, it was haunted by innumerable sorts of devils and hobgoblins; and, thirdly, the space which was not occupied by those two classes, was peopled by wizards and witches. Against the first of these plagues, St. Patrick proceeded somewhat after the manner of the fox, who drives the fleas which haunt him to the end of his tail, and then shakes them all off into the pool. So the saint gathered together all the venomous animals from every corner of the island to the top of a lofty promontory, looking down into the sea, which had previously been named Cruachan-ailge, but was afterwards called Cruach-phadruig; and from thence, at one blow, he swept them all into the deep. The hobgoblins he drove away by the sign of the cross, the wizards and witches he converted, and Ireland was every where after inhabited by christian people.

A history of the 13th century, that of the adventures of Fulke Fitz-Warine, makes us acquainted with the spot where the venomous animals, pursued so bitterly by the saint, at last took shelter. Fulke, says the story, sailed so long, seeking marvels and adventures, till he had visited the seven islands of the ocean, which are, Little Britain, Ireland, Gothland,