Newman. Eugene O'Curry, in
these lectures of his, taking as his standard the quarto page of Dr.
O'Donovan's edition of the Annals of the Four Masters (and this
printed monument of one branch of Irish literature occupies by
itself, let me say in passing, seven large quarto volumes, containing
4,215 pages of closely printed matter), Eugene O'Curry says, that the
great vellum manuscript books belonging to Trinity College, Dublin,
and to the Royal Irish Academy,--books with fascinating titles, the
Book of the Dun Cow, the Book of Leinster, the Book of Ballymote, the
Speckled Book, the Book of Lecain, the Yellow Book of Lecain,--have,
between them, matter enough to fill 11,400 of these pages; the other
vellum manuscripts in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, have
matter enough to fill 8,200 pages more; and the paper manuscripts of
Trinity College, and the Royal Irish Academy together, would fill, he
says, 30,000 such pages more. The ancient laws of Ireland, the so-
called Brehon laws, which a commission is now publishing, were not as
yet completely transcribed when O'Curry wrote; but what had even then
been transcribed was sufficient, he says, to fill nearly 8,000 of Dr.
O'Donovan's pages. Here are, at any rate, materials enough with a
vengeance. These materials fall, of course, into several divisions.
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