Page:Foras feasa ar Éirinn - Keating; Comyn, Dinneen.djvu/14

iv perhaps inclined to attach undue importance to records which he believed to be of extreme antiquity, while carrying on his narrative by their help (he had no other), yet shows as much discrimination as writers on the history of other countries in his time. He recounts the story, in his own happy manner, as it was handed down in annals and poems, leaving selection and criticism to come after, when they have a 'basis of knowledge' to work upon. By this term he accurately indicates the contents of his principal work, in which not merely history, but mythology, archaeology, geography, statistics, genealogy, bardic chronicles, ancient poetry, romance, and tradition are all made to subserve the purpose of his account of Ireland, and to increase the reader's interest in the subject. From his style and method, his freedom from artificial restraint and his extensive reading, it may well be conjectured that, but for the unhappy circumstances of our country, he might have been the founder of a modern native historical school in the Irish language, the medium employed by him in all his works. We may well be glad of his choice, and much is due to him for this good service. He might have written in Latin like his friend Dr. John Lynch, or Rev. Stephen White, or Philip O'Sullivan, his contemporaries, or like O'Flaherty in the next generation; or in French, like the later Abbe Mac Geoghagan; or in English, like Charles O'Conor, and so many other vindicators of their country and her history. He was shut out from any opportunity of printing or publishing his work; but his own industry, and the devoted zeal of his literary friends and admirers who undertook the duty, secured its preservation. Printing in Gaelic was then rare and difficult, especially in Ireland, but the reproduction of manuscripts was an honourable calling actively pursued, and the copies were so clearly and beautifully executed by professional scribes that the native reader was never so bereft of literature as the absence of printed books might suggest.