367 



days can alone be legitimately traced ; to this first — best guide the 

 voice of what is pre-eminently termed classic literature, can be but a 

 handmaid. 



To lead the inquiry into these unexplored regions, is a work far 

 more arduous, and less familiar with the pleasures of association; a work 

 that must be begun with caution, diligence, and critical examination, 

 pursued with unbiassed ardour, and perseveringly completed in des- 

 pite of disappointment. The records and archives of Ireland have 

 been fatally scattered, the consuming lapse of centuries has been the 

 least effective of their destroyers. The Christian missionaries set the 

 example of literary despoliation ;* they were indefatigable in suppress- 

 ing the records of heathenism. The Danes were the bitter agents of 

 retaliation ; they flung the torch on every monastic receptacle of lite- 

 rature, and during their military occupation of nearly 250 years, 

 laboured unceasingly to accomplish that total annihilation of native 

 MSS., which they subsequently so effectuated in England. In the 

 beginning of the eleventh century, a deplorable conflagration reduced 

 to ashes the great library of Armagh,"!" the shrine of much that had 

 escaped the fury of the northern invaders. The first English adven- 

 turers were scarcely less rapacious of the gleanings which their fore- 

 runners had overlooked ; the same policy, that dictated the destruc- 

 tion of the memorials of Scotland in the reign of Edward the First, 

 continued to be openly professed towards Ireland to the days of 

 James. 



The literary spoliation, induced by the suppression of the monas- 

 teries, was not less wantonly exercised in Ireland than in England, 

 while the happy result of King Henry's appointment of Leland to the 

 office of Royal Antiquary, by which so many valuable monuments of 



• Ante, p. 200. f Ante, p. 301. 



