It is not
much that the English Government does for science or literature; but
if Eugene O'Curry, from a chair of Celtic at Oxford, had appealed to
the Government to get him copies or the originals of the Celtic
treasures in the Burgundian Library at Brussels, or in the library of
St. Isidore's College at Rome, even the English Government could not
well have refused him. The invaluable Irish manuscripts in the Stowe
Library the late Sir Robert Peel proposed, in 1849, to buy for the
British Museum; Lord Macaulay, one of the trustees of the Museum,
declared, with the confident shallowness which makes him so admired
by public speakers and leading-article writers, and so intolerable to
all searchers for truth, that he saw nothing in the whole collection
worth purchasing for the Museum, except the correspondence of Lord
Melville on the American war. That is to say, this correspondence of
Lord Melville's was the only thing in the collection about which Lord
Macaulay himself knew or cared. Perhaps an Oxford or Cambridge
professor of Celtic might have been allowed to make his voice heard,
on a matter of Celtic manuscripts, even against Lord Macaulay. The
manuscripts were bought by Lord Ashburnham, who keeps them shut up,
and will let no one consult them (at least up to the date when
O'Curry published his Lectures he did so), 'for fear an actual
acquaintance with their contents should decrease their value as
matter of curiosity at some future transfer or sale.
Pages:
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166