Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



His History of Political Economy^ 1888, and his History of Slavery 

 and Serfdom, 1895 — both works of lasting value and importance in 

 the literature of economic and social science — may be said to have 

 had their origin in Ingram's connexion with the Statistical Society ; 

 and his contributions to its Journal contain many interesting illus- 

 trations alike of his remarkable powers of exposition and of his 

 humanitarian zeal.* Nevertheless, although in the course of sixty 

 years Ingram produced no more than six Academy Papers, his 

 contributions are admirably representative of the wide range of his 

 interests. The geometrical studies contained in the papers already 

 mentioned were followed, in 1858, by a paper on the " Opus Majus 

 of Eoger Bacon," in which he showed that the missing seventh part of 

 that work, devoted to moral philosophy, existed in the manuscript 

 of Bacon's treatise in Trinity College, Dublin, though unaccountably 

 omitted by Jebb in his edition of Bacon's work. This omission has 

 since been rectified in Mr. J. H. Bridges' edition of the Opus Majus. 

 An interval of twenty-two years was suffered to elapse between this 

 important paper and a " Note on a Fragment of an Ante-Hieronymian 

 Version of the Gospels," read in 1880, which was the first-fruits of 

 Ingram's appointment, in 1879, to the charge of the Library of 

 Trinity College. This was followed, in 1882, by a paper " On Two 

 Collections of Medieval Moralised Tales," and later in the same 

 year by another on " The Earliest English Translation of the 

 Be Imitatione Christi.''^ In this paper he gave the Academy, in 

 what proved to be the last of his contributions to our Proceedings, 

 an account of that previously unknown fifteenth- century version of 

 Thomas a Kempis's wonderful work, which he subsequently (1893) 

 edited for the Early English Texts Society. 



But by far the most characteristic exhibition of the qualities 

 by which Ingram was so peculiarly fitted to fill the Chair of this 

 Academy was, appropriately, that which he gave us in fulfilment of 

 the duties of the presidential office. His address at the Centenary 

 Banquet, when he contrived, within the limits of an after-dinner 



* Dr. Ingram's labours in connexion 'witli the Statistical Society have been 

 recorded in a "Memoir of John Kells Ingram, ll.d., late Vice-ProYOst of 

 Trinity College, Dublin, and sometime President of the Statistical and Social 

 Inquiry Society of Ireland," by C. Litton Falkiner, m.a., m.b.i.a. Dublin: 

 Sealy, Bryers, and Walker. 1907. 



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