Page:Foras feasa ar Éirinn - Keating; Comyn, Dinneen.djvu/13



stands alone among Gaelic writers: he has had neither precursor nor successor, nor, in his own domain, either equal or second. His works show the fullest development of the language, and his historical treatise, with which we are here concerned, marks an epoch in our literature, a complete departure from the conventional usage of the annalists. From the last and greatest of these, even from his illustrious contemporaries, the Four Masters, he is, in his style and mode of using his materials, as far removed as is Gibbon from earlier English writers on European affairs. The period, however, with which the English author deals is one for the history of which ample authentic materials existed, and nothing remained for the writer but to select and present the facts in his own style to the reader. But our author has to give an account of a country apart from the general development of European civilization, and to treat chiefly of remote ages without the support of contemporary documents or monuments. In this respect his field of inquiry resembles somewhat that of the portion of Dr. Liddell's work relating to the Kings and early Consuls of Rome, where the author, in a pleasing style, does his best with scanty and unsatisfactory materials, not altogether throwing aside, like the German critics, all data which cannot be confirmed by inscriptions or authentic records, yet skilfully exercising his discretion in the use of legend and tradition which had by earlier writers been received as trustworthy evidence. It will be seen, in the course of this work, that Keating, though often accused of being weakly credulous, and though he was