264 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



of the printed books. Do our lists throw any light on this question ? 

 I think they do. If the third and fourth lists are compared, it will 

 be found that, in A-H 3, some eighty-four volumes, described with 

 sufficient accuracy for identification, were missing immediately before 

 their owner left Ireland for the last time. Let the proverbial 

 character of book-borrowers be remembered, and not less the horrors 

 of 1641, and the reader will probably wonder whether any of these 

 books ever came into TJssher's hands again. The fact is that a 

 very large proportion of them are at this day on the shelves of the 

 Trinity College Library. No less than thirty- one appear in our table, 

 and to these twenty-six are to be added, which can be identified with 

 probability. There are thus no more than twenty-seven still missing. 

 And, of these, eleven were already absent (nine of them absent "of 

 old" ^) from their places in Feb. 163f. Of the remainder some may 

 be in the Library, though I cannot be sure that I have found them.' 

 The inference surely is, that very few indeed of those which were 

 recovered by the Archbishop failed to reach the ultimate destination 

 of his library.' 



^ Of which as many as five are laid to the account of Mr. Puttock. 



"^ E.g. F. 1. 8; G. 1. 17; G. 3. 30; H. 1. 13. 



^ Dr. Abbott {Book of Trinity College, p. 150) quotes an interesting contem- 

 porary document, from which we leani that in Nov., 1659, the Commissioners of 

 Parliament for the Government of Ireland ordered "the Trustees for Trinity 

 College", and others, "to take into consideration ... a Paper delivered by 

 Dr. Jones [Query, TJssher's nephew: see above, p. 226, note ^], concerning the 

 publishing of some part of the said [Ussher's] Library or manuscripts, and of 

 recovering some part of the said library being at present abroad hi some men's hands, 

 albeit they ought to have been returned hither with the Books as were purchased," 

 &c. This statement deserves attention. It helps to account for the fact that so 

 many of the volumes lent by Ussher to his friends before 1641, were ultimately 

 restored to his library ; and it leads us to expect that Catalogue C may contain 

 the titles of many books not named in B — thus confirming a suggestion which has 

 been made in an earlier part of this Paper, above, p. 257. 



