ANCIENT IRISH LITERATURE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 151, 24 March 1876, Page 6

ANCIENT IRISH LITERATURE.

[From the ' Dublin Nation.'] It was particularly as scribes and illuminators that the Irish monks of the middle ages excelled. The learned Westwood, who made a close and careful examination of ancient Irish manuscripts, has expressed his admiration and wonder at their beauty and the labor bestowed upon them in terms which, coming from an Irishman, ■would only excite depreciatory ridicule. This writer has published fac-eimiles, or rather copies, oi" some of the most beautiful of the initial letters in the Book of Kells, and in other Irish manuscripts, as have also Mr. Todd, Miss Stokes, and Mr. Henry O'Neill. The latter gentleman has, we are informed, colored copies of many of the illuminations of the Book of Kells, Durrow, Ballymote. &c, and frcm his well known artistic taste we can feel sure before-hand that they are faithfully executed. Mrs. D'Olier made some exquisite colored copies of many of these illuminated letters. Most, if not all, of those contained in Dr. Todd's book on the ornamental letters in ancient Irish manuscripts were, we believe, executed in Germany, and we understand that the copying and transferring of the large monogram in the Book of Kells, " Christi autem generatio," cost by itself as much as one hundred and twenty pounds, such was the difficulty and complexity of the work. Beside these copies the government fac-simileslcok faded and dim, and, indeed, give but a very imperfect idea of the coloring of the original. Notwithstanding this, however, the volume of Irish facsimiles far exceeds in artistic beauty and general execution those issued for England. The difference is such that it, as the French say, sa ute dans les yeztx. Here we have the exact counterpart of pages perused by St. Patrick fifteen hundred years ago, and by the great Dove of the Churches a century later — books about which battles have teen fought, where thousands of warriors were engaged, and a single one of which precious documents was reckoned worth more than aking's ransom. These are the venerable volumes which have escaped the ravages of the fierce p-*gan Norseman, who held learning and learned men in contempt, and whose great delight was to c mmit libraries to the flames ; of the ignorant Norman knights and theJr brutal followers : of the Vandals of the so-called Reformation, and the blood-thirsty Puritans in Cromwell's wake ; of the ignorance and neglect of a poor unlettered peasantry — through all taofle dangers have those aged tomes passed and come down to us now through long centuries of disorder, oppression, and bloodshed, to testily to us, their far descendants, of the sanctity, civilization, and artistic taste of our remote ancestors when Ireland was truly the Island of Saints and the Glory of the West.