of Erigena have strongly attracted the notice of the most eminent among the modern inquirers into the history of opinion and of civilization; and the German Tenneman agrees with the French Cousin and Guizot in attributing to them a very extraordinary influence on the philosophy of his own and of succeeding times. To his writings and translations it is thought may be traced the introduction into the theology and metaphysics of Europe of the later Platonism of the Alexandrian school. It is remarkable, as Mr. Moore has observed, that the learned Mosheim had previously shown the study of the scholastic or Aristotelian philosophy to have been also of Irish origin. "That the Hibernians," says that writer, "who were called Scots in this [the eighth] century, were lovers of learning, and distinguished themselves in these times of ignorance by the culture of the sciences beyond all the other European nations, travelling through the most distant lands, both with a view to improve and to communicate their knowledge, is a fact with which I have been long acquainted; as we see them in the most authentic records of antiquity discharging, with the highest reputation and applause, the function of doctor in France, Germany, and Italy, both during this and the following century. But that these Hibernians were the first teachers of the scholastic theology in Europe, and so early as the eighth century illustrated the doctrines of religion by the principles of philosophy, I learned but lately." And then he adduces the proofs that establish his position.

The earliest literature in any of the native languages of the British Islands of which any remains still exist

Translated in Moore's Ireland, i. 302.

appears to be the Irish. The Irish were probably possessed of the knowledge of letters from a very remote antiquity; for, although the forms of their present alphabetical characters are Roman, and were probably introduced by St. Patrick, it is very remarkable that the alphabet, in the number and powers of its elements, exactly corresponds with that which Cadmus is recorded to have brought to Greece from Phoenicia. If we may believe the national traditions, and the most ancient existing chronicles, the Irish also possessed a succession of bards from their first settlement in the country; and. the names of some of those that are said to have flourished so early as in the first century of our era are still remembered. But the oldest bardic compositions that have been preserved are of the fifth century. Some fragments of metrical productions to which this date is attributed are found in the old annalists, and more abundant specimens occur in the same records under each of the succeeding centuries. The oldest existing Irish manuscript, however, is believed to be the Psalter of Cashel, a collection of bardic legends, compiled about the end of the ninth century, by Cormac MacCulinan, bishop of Cashel and king of Munster. But the most valuable remains of this period of Irish literature that have come down to us are the various historical records in prose, called the Annals of Tigernach, of the Four Masters of Ulster, and others. The most important of these have been published in the original, and accompanied with Latin translations, in Dr. O'Conor's Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres,' 4 vols. 4to. Buckingham, 1814-1826; a splendid monument of the munificence of his grace the late Duke

of Buckingham, at whose expense the work was prepared and printed, and from the treasures of whose library its contents were principally derived. Tigernach, the oldest of these Irish annalists whose works we have in the original form, lived in the latter part of the eleventh century; but both his and the other annals profess, and are believed, to have been compiled from authentic records of much greater antiquity. They form undoubtedly a collection of materials in the highest degree precious for the information they supply with regard to the history both of Ireland and of the other early British kingdoms. These Annals differ wholly in character from the metrical legends of Irish history found in the book of Cashel and in the other later compositions of the bards. They consist of accounts of events related for the most part both with sobriety and precision, and with the careful notation of dates that might be expected from a contemporary and official recorder. They are in all probability, indeed, copies of, or compilations from, public records.*

Not of such historic importance, but still more curious and interesting in another point of view, are the remains we still possess of the early Welsh literature. The Welsh have no annals to be compared in value with those of the Irish; but some of their Bruts, or chronicles, fabulous as they evidently in great part are, are undoubtedly of considerable antiquity. It is now almost

*The publication of a continuation of Dr. O'Conor's work, to comprise the Irish Annals from A.D. 1172 to 1639, has recently been announced as to be undertaken by Mr. John O'Donovan, under the auspices of the Irish Archaiological Society.

universally admitted that the famous Latin Chronicle of the Britons, published by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century, is really what it professes to be, at least in the main, a translation from a much older Welsh original. The Chronicle of Tyssilio, who flourished in the seventh century, still exists, and has been published in the original (in the Welsh Archaiology), as well as in an English translation, by the Rev. Peter Roberts, 8vo. Lond. 1810. The Laws of Howel Dha, who reigned in South Wales in the early part of the tenth century, have been printed with a Latin translation, by Wotton, in his 'Leges Wallicæ,' fol. 1730; and again in the late Record Commission edition of the Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales,' by Anewrin Owen, Esq., fol. 1841. They develop a state of society in which many primitive features are strangely mixed up with a general aspect of considerable civilization, and all the order of a well-established political system. Then there are the singular compositions called the Triads, which are enumerations of events or other particulars, bound together in knots of three, by means of some title or general observation-sometimes, it must be confessed, forced and far-fetched enough under which it is conceived they may all be included. Of the Triads, some are moral, and others historical. The historical are certainly not all ancient; for they contain allusions to events that took place in the reign of our Edward I.; but it appears most probable that the form of composition which they exemplify was long in use; and, if so, the comparatively modern character of some of them does not disprove the antiquity of others. A late writer, who considers them to be a compilation of the thirteenth century, admits that

they "reflect, in a small and moderately faithful mirror, various passages of bardic composition which are lost."* The most voluminous of the ancient Welsh remains, however, are the poems of the Bards. The authenticity of these compositions may be considered to be now established, beyond dispute, by the labours of various writers by whom the subject has been recently investigated, and especially by Mr. Turner's able and elaborate Vindication.' The most ancient of them are the poems ascribed to the four bards, Aneurin, Taliesin, Llywarch Hen, and Merdhin, or Merlin, the Caledonian, who all appear to have belonged to the sixth century. A few additional pieces have also been preserved of the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, which are printed along with these in the first volume of the 'Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales,' 3 vols. 8vo. Lond. 1801. Much of this early Welsh poetry is in a strangely mystical style, and its general spirit is evidently much more Druidical than Christian. The author of Britannia after the Romans' has endeavoured to show that a partial revival of Druidism was effected in Wales in the sixth century, principally through the efforts of the Bards, whose order had formerly composed so distinguished a part of the Druidical system; and certainly the whole character of this ancient poetry seems strongly to confirm that supposition, which does not, however, rest upon this evidence alone. No existing manuscript of these poems,

* Britannia after the Romans, p. xiv.

First published separately in 1803, and since, much enlarged, at the end of the third and subsequent editions of his History of the Anglo-Saxons. See also the Rev. E. Davies's Celtic Researches, Mr. Probert's Preface to his edition of Aneurin, and Britannia after the Romans, pp. i.-vi.