Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/174

158 PALAEOGRAPHY developed at an early period, became the general band of the country, and survives in the native writing of the present day. Of the earliest surviving MSS. written in Ireland none are found to be in pure uncial letters. That uncial MSS. were introduced into the country by the early missionaries can hardly be doubted, if we consider that that character was so commonly employed as a book- hand, and especially for sacred texts. Nor is it impossible that Irish scribes may have practised this hand. The copy of the Gospels in uncials, found in the tomb of St Kilian, and preserved at Wiirzburg, has been quoted as an instance of Irish uncial. The writing, however, is the ordinary uncial, and bears no marks of Irish nationality (Exempla, tab. 58). The most ancient examples are in half- uncial letters, so similar in character to the half-uncial MSS. of Italy and France, noticed above, that there can be no hesitation in deriving the Irish from the Koman writing. We have only to compare the Irish MSS. of the round type with the Continental MSS. to be convinced of the identity of their styles of writing. There are unfortu nately no means of ascertaining the exact period when this style of hand was first adopted in Ireland. Among the very earliest surviving examples none bears a fixed date : and it is impossible to accept the traditional ascription of certain of them to particular saints of Ireland, as St Patrick and St Columba. Such traditions are notoriously unstable ground upon which to take up a position. But an examination of certain examples will enable the palaeo- grapher to arrive at certain conclusions. In Trinity College, Dublin, is preserved a fragmentary copy of the Gospels (Nat. MSS. Ireland, i., pi. ii.) vaguely assigned to a period from the 5th to the 7th century, and written in a round half-uncial hand closely resembling the Continental hand, but bearing the general impress of its Irish origin. This MS. may perhaps be of the early part of the 7th century. Irish Half-uncial Writing, 7th century. (ad ille deiutus respondens [dicit, Nojli mihi molestus esse, iam osti[um clausum] est et pueri in cubiculo mecum [sunt]) Again, the Psalter (Nat. MSS. Ireland, i., pis. iii., iv.) traditionally ascribed- to St Columba (ol. 597), and perhaps of the 7th century, is a calligraphic specimen of the same kind of writing. The earliest examples of the Continental half-uncial date back, as has been seen above, to the end of the 5th or beginning of the 6th century. Now the likeness between the earliest foreign and Irish MSS. forbids us to assume anything like collateral descent from a common and remote stock. Two different national hands, although derived from the same source, would not independently develop in the same way, and it may accordingly be granted that the point of contact, or the period at which the Irish scribes copied and adopted the Roman half -uncial, was not very long, comparatively, before the date of the now earliest surviving examples. This would take us back at least to the 6th century, in which period there is sufficient evidence of literary activity in Ireland. The beautiful Irish calligraphy, ornamented with designs of marvellous intricacy and brilliant colouring, which is seen in full vigour at the end of the 7th century, indicates no small amount of labour bestowed upon the cultivation of writing as an ornamental art. It is indeed surprising that such excellence was so quickly developed. The Book of Kells has been justly acknowledged as the culminating example of Irish calligraphy (Nat. MSS. Ire/., L, pis. vii.-xvii. ; Pal. Soc., pis. 55, 56). The text is written in the large solid half-uncial hand which is again seen in the Gospels of St Chad at Lichfield (Pal. Soc., pis. 20, 21, 35), and, in a smaller form, in the English-written Lindisfarne Gospels (see below). Having arrived at the calligraphic excellence just referred to, the round hand appears to have been soon afterwards superseded, for gene ral use, by the pointed ; for the character of the large half- uncial writing of tlie Gospels of MacRegol, of about the year 800 (Nat. MSS. Irel., i., pis. xxii. -xxiv. ; Pal. Soc., pis. 90, 91), shows a very great deterioration from the vigorous writing of the Book of Kells, indicative of want of practice. Traces of the existence of the pointed hand are early. It is found in a fully developed stage in the Book of Kells itself (Pal. Soc., pi. 88). This form of writing, which may be termed the cursive hand of Ireland, differs in its origin from the national cursive hands of the Continent. In the latter the old Roman cursive has been shown to be the foundation. The Irish pointed hand, on the contrary, had nothing to do with the Roman cursive, but was simply a modification of the round hand, using the same forms of letters, but subjecting them to a lateral compression and drawing their limbs into points or hair-lines. As this process is found developed in the Book of Kells, its beginning may be fairly assigned to as early a time as the first half of the 7th century ; but for positive date there is the same uncertainty as in regard to the first beginning of the round hand. The Book of Dimma (Nat. MSS. Irel., i., pis. xviii., xix.) has been attributed to a scribe of about 650 A.D. ; but it appears rather to be of the 8th century, if we may judge by the analogy of English MSS. written in a similar hand. It is not in fact until we reach the period of the Book of Armagh (Nat. MSS. Irel., pis. xxv.-xxix.), a MS. containing books of the New Testament and other matter, and written by Ferdomnach, a scribe who died in the year 844, that we are on safe ground. Here is clearly a pointed hand of the early part of the 9th century, very similar to the English pointed hand of Mercian charters of the same time. The MS. of the Gospels of MacDurnan, in the Lambeth Library (Nat. MSS. Irel., i., pis. xxx., xxxi.) is an example of writing of the end of the 9th or beginning of the 10th century, showing a tendency to become more narrow and cramped. But coming down to the MS. of the llth -or 12th centuries we find a change. The pointed hand by this time has become moulded into the angular and stereotyped form peculiar to Irish MSS. of the later Middle Ages. From the 12th to the 15th centuries there is a very gradual change. Indeed, a carefully written MS. of late date may very well pass for an example older by a century or more. Later forms must be detected among the fairly written characters. A book of hymns of the llth or 12th century (Nat. MSS. Irel., i., pis. xxxii.-xxxvi.) may be referred to as a good typical specimen of the Irish hand of that period ; and the Gospels of Mselbrighte, of 1138 A.D. (Nat. MSS. Irel., i., pis. xl.-xlii. ; Pal. Soc., pi. 212), as a calligraphic one. In Irish MSS. of the later period, the ink is black, and the vellum, as a general rule, is coarse and discoloured, a defect which may be attributed to inexperience in the art of preparing the skins and to the effects of climate. When a school of writing attained to the perfection which marked that of Ireland at an early date, so far in advance of other countries, it naturally followed that its influence should be felt beyond its own borders. How the influence of the Irish school asserted itself in England will be presently discussed. But on the Continent also Irish monks carried their civilizing power into different countries, and continued their native style of writing in the monas teries which they founded. At such centres as Luxeuil in