second half of the seventh century gives us a treatise – that known as Augustine De mirabilibus Scripturae – which, alike for its Latinity and for the wide reading of its author, deserves respect. "Augustine" has some acquaintance with ancient history, gathered from such sources as the Eusebian Chronicle and from Josephus; he is a student of Jerome, and seems to have read books on medicine and natural history. His allusions to Ireland, fewer in number than we could have wished, add a pleasant flavour to his book. Aileran the Wise, not far from this author in date, has left a tract on the interpretation of the names of our Lord's ancestors according to the flesh, in which there is not much sound philology.
At the end of the same century we have Adamnan. His two undoubted works, the account of Arculf's pilgrimage to Palestine, and the Life of Columba, are intrinsically two of the most precious books of their time. The value of the tract on the Holy Places to the archaeologist and topographer needs no exposition. It is worth much, also, as exemplifying the interest in all sorts of knowledge which characterised the Irish scholars of the day. The Life of Columba – less a biography than a collection of anecdotes – preserves a picture of that saint and seer which will never lose its charm. Evidence of Adamnan's grammatical studies, and of his knowledge of Greek (or at least of Greek words), abounds in this book; but there is a third work, a set of notes on the Bucolics and Georgics of Virgil, which, if it could be proved to be his, would be plain evidence of his distinction as student and as teacher. It is in the form of excerpts from three earlier commentaries, those of Philargyrius, Titius Gallus, and Gaudentius, which seem to have been written down by a class at the dictation of Adananus. Whether or not this Adananus was the Abbot of Hy, this work is an undoubted product of Irish scholarship. It witnesses to these facts: that the scientific study of "grammar," as the Romans understood it, was carried on by the Irish at a time when it was dead in continental Europe: and that complete texts of ancient commentaries on Virgil had made their way into the hands of an Irishman.
Exaggerated language has no doubt been used about the learning of the Irish, and about their share in the preservation of classical literature. When allowance has been made for this, it remains incontestable that, during the latter part of the seventh century, it was in Ireland that the thirst for knowledge was keenest, and the work of teaching was most actively carried on. There the Latin language (and in a less degree the Greek) was studied from the scholar's point of view. To the Irish, we must remember, Latin was no inheritance: they had not heard it commonly spoken among them: their knowledge of it was book-knowledge. They had to treat it very much as we do now – more nearly, perhaps, as it was treated in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when it was the recognised medium of communication for scholars of
