give you of the attainments of Scotus Erigena will be found in the astonishment created by them in the highest and most literary circles of that time. Anastasius Bibliothecarius was a famous man in the ninth century, and is still a famous man. He was the librarian of the Roman Church; Vatican Librarian we should now say, like Cardinal Mai. The Emperor Charles the Bald, the patron of Johannes Scotus, sent his translation of Dionysius to the Pope. Anastasius acknowledged them in a letter still preserved in Ussher's "Sylloge" (Works, iv. 483), where Anastasius expresses his astonishment at the Greek attainments of Johannes Scotus in the following words: "I wonder how that barbarian, placed in the outskirts of the world, could understand and translate such things." The exact Latin being: Mirandum est quoque, quomodo vir ille barbarus, in finibus mundi positus, talia intellectu capere, in aliamque linguam transferre valuerit." This letter of Anastasius was written in 865; and with Johannes Scotus Erigena and his Greek scholarship and Greek translations, I think I may end my list of historical witnesses whom I have summoned to support my contention.

66

I have now given you, century by century, numerous quotations to prove that Greek was not an unknown tongue in Ireland from the year 500 to the year 900 A.D. But then, a persistent objector might say: Oh! you have only proved that the Irish scholars knew enough of Greek to stumble their way through a verse of the Greek Testament with the help of St. Jerome's Commentaries. You have not shown that they could write Greek as Irenæus, for instance, wrote it in Gaul in the second century. This objection is, indeed, a splendid specimen of the fallacy called ignoratio elenchi. I originally undertook merely to show that there was sufficient knowledge of Greek in Ireland and in Gaul to enable people to translate the Scriptures. Then when I have done this, an objector may say, "Oh, you have not proved at all that the Irish scholars could write and speak Greek"; a very different thing indeed from my original contention. But I will condescend to my supposed critic, because, even on this point I think I can satisfy you, though, by the way, if writing Greek and producing Greek manuscripts and Greek works be the only proof of Greek knowledge and scholarship, I fear very much that Greek must be an unknown tongue in Trinity College, Dublin, or at Oxford or Cambridge; for I have never heard of an original Greek manuscript being produced in any of these Universities.

1 John, in another letter, appeals to the Greek text, from which he translated as bearing out his views (Ussher iv, 478).

But I am quite willing to accept this test; and my reply is this: We have at least a dozen Greek MSS., principally Biblical, which owe their origin to this country; and surely men who wrote Greek MSS. must have known the Greek language.

As I have delayed you so long I must be very brief on this point, perhaps the most convincing of all that I have advanced. I have spoken concerning Sedulius, Abbot of Kildare about 820, and given you some proofs of his knowledge of Greek, derived from his theological and grammatical works. But what will you say when I tell you that I have here with me this afternoon a transcript of a Greek manuscript written with his own hand. Montfauçon was a great scholar, who lived in the first half of the last century. He produced more than 150 years ago a Greek work, "Palæographia Græca," where he describes (iii. 7, p. 236) a Psalter written in Greek by the hand of Sedulius, Abbot of Kildare, with this signature in his own writing, CHAYAIOC CKOTTOC EгN EгPAVA. That Psalter was, in Montfauçon's time, preserved in a convent of Lorraine. It has been. since removed to Paris, and is now in the library of the Arsenal. But Montfauçon is old-fashioned, though he gives us a transcript of a page of this Psalter which is accurate enough. Let us therefore hear a modern authority, and he shall be a German; free, therefore, from any narrow prejudices. Gardthausen is generally regarded as the great modern authority on Greek Palæography. He is a professor at Leipzig, where he published his work, "Griechische Paläographie," in 1879. Listen to him on this point. On p. 427, having told us that Alcuin learned Greek from Irish monks at York, he then proceeds, on p. 428: "Scanty but very characteristic remains of these IrishGreek books are to be found in a remarkable Psalter belonging to the Library of the Arsenal in Paris, as well as in the Codex Boernerianus,' and the 'Codex Sangallensis,' of which Rettig has published fac-similes. Both give the Greek text with a Latin translation. The ornaments are thoroughly Irish. Both manuscripts were certainly written by Irish monks." Now, that is the verdict of the greatest living German authority on Greek Palæography. Does he think that

This is simply an elementary fact in textual criticism of the N. T.: see, for instance, Scrivener's "Introduction," p. 170; Westcott and Hort, "Introd. to N.T." p. 149; where these learned Cambridge divines speak of the "preservative power of the seclusion of Greek learning in the West." A study of these Hiberno-Greek MSS., with their Latin translations, might have an important bearing on the text of the "Itala." Cf. also "Columbanus and his Library," in the Expositor for June and August, 1889.

the Irish scholars were ignorant of Greek in the ninth century? Or take up two authorities with which I did think all students of Irish philology were thoroughly acquainted. The first shall be Zimmer. Zimmer's "Glossæ Hibernica was published at Berlin in 1881. Read Zimmer's preface and what do you find? On p. xxiv. he describes a manuscript, now at Carlsruhe, written probably at Clonmacnois about A.D. 850. That manuscript contains the Gloria in excelsis in Greek, with an interlinear Latin translation. On p. xxxiii. of the same preface we find Zimmer giving us a regular Latin treatise on the "Codex Boernerianus," now at Dresden, which is a copy of St. Paul's Epistles written in Greek by an Irishman, who proves his nationality by a poem in Irish, and by Irish glosses and comments which he appends to the text. The poem, I may remark, puzzled all the scholars of the Continent till our own distinguished Academician, Dr. John O'Donovan, took it, showed that it was Irish, and not AngloSaxon, as they imagined, and duly translated it into English.1

Then take up another modern authority. D'Arbois de Jubainville published at Paris, in 1883, his Catalogue of Irish MSS.-a book called usually "La Litterature Epique de l'Irlande." On p. cxiv. of his historical preface he tells us of an Irish MS. at Laon which contains a Greek glossary or lexicon. On p. cxxiv. he tells of the Greek Gospels at St. Gall, with an interlinear Latin translation, all written by an Irish monk. On p. cxxvi. he describes an Irish manuscript of the eighth or ninth century, belonging to the Monastery of St. Paul in Carinthia, in which a Greek lexicon and a portion of a Greek grammar have been found; the Greek lexicon and the Greek grammar having been also duly noticed in Windisch's "Irische Texte," part 1., p. 313, published in 1880. But why should I weary the Academy with more evidence, and yet I have far more. I have only touched the very fringe of this subject. These eighth and ninth century Greek manuscripts, covered with Irish glosses and Irish poems and Irish notes, have engaged the attention of palæographers and students of the Greek texts of the New Testament during the last two centuries. Montfauçon was not the only scholar of the last century who dealt with them. Wetstein, who died in 1754, in his monumental work on the Greek Testament, discussed them. Westwood dealt with the Hiberno-Greek MSS. in his "Palæographia Sacra," and Keller discussed them in the Transactions of the Antiquarian Society of Zurich in the year 1851. Matthæi,

' This poem will be found in Scrivener, as quoted above, and in the Expositor for June, 1889, p. 471.

in 1791, wrote a special work on the Dresden Manuscript with the Pauline Epistles in Greek. Rettig, in 1836, published a large folio volume, giving a transcript and fac-similes of the Hiberno-Greek Gospels at St. Gall. That folio has been for the last fifty-six years lying on the shelves of our College Library. While to crown the matter, I shall conclude with quoting an authority which will be conclusive for the greater part of this Academy. Our late revered President was, as we all know, a man of singular self-repression, who consented to bury a vast deal of his immense learning in articles contributed to fugitive periodicals. In the year 1848, for instance, he contributed two articles to the Irish Ecclesiastical Journal (vol. v., p. 136), the only copy of which now existing in any Dublin library is found in Trinity College. The first of these articles dealt with the very topic-the knowledge of Greek in Ireland-which I have been now discussing. Dr. Reeves first goes through a number of different Hiberno-Greek MSS. The Codex of St. Gall, containing the Greek Gospels, the Codex of Dresden, containing the Greek Epistles, the Codex Augiensis at Cambridge, the Greek Psalter of Sedulius, are all duly analysed; and then he concludes his article with this statement-the last quotation with which I shall trouble you:-"The foregoing examples are sufficient proof of the early cultivation of the Greek language by the natives of Ireland."

1 The full title of this work is, "Antiquissimus quatuor Evangeliorum Canonicorum Codex Sangallensis Graeco-Latinus Interlinearis." H. C. M. Rettig.,

Taurici, 1836.

* Dr. Reeves says of this copy of the Gospels, in the articles referred to: "In the library of St. Gall is an exceedingly ancient and valuable MS. of the Four Gospels written in uncial Greek. The Greek characters are very similar to the occasional uncial letters which appear in the Book of Armagh." And again: "There can be no doubt that the writer of this MS. was an Irishman, or, at least, of the Irish School, which was unquestionably the most advanced of its day in sacred literature"; language of that eminent scholar which fully bears out my statement in "Ireland and the Celtic Church," that the Greek writing in the Book of Armagh is an evidence of Greek studies in the primatial city.

XVI.

ON A NEW SPECIES OF LERNÆOPODA FROM THE WEST COAST OF IRELAND; AND POLPERRO, CORNWALL. BY W. F. DE VISMES KANE, M.A.

[Read JANUARY 25, 1892.]

(Plates IX. and X.)

THE genus Lernæopoda, Blv., is composed of forms very nearly allied to those of Achtheres, the latter being chiefly distinguished from it and the rest of the family by its having preserved the thoracic segmentation, a character occurring elsewhere only in the immature stages of species, such as L. galei, L. elongata, Grant, and the present one, L. bidiscalis. Traces, however, of such segmentation are also distinguishable in the adult, L. galei. It seems, therefore, desirable to merge these two genera as was suggested long since by Van Beneden. The genus Brachiella is also linked to Lernæopoda by one species B. pastinacea, but the long neck which is generally characteristic of that genus allies it more closely with Anchorella. The family of Lernæopodidæ possess the following appendages according to Kürz:-Two pairs of antennæ, one pair of mandibles, one pair of maxillæ, and two pairs of maxillipeds. Posteriorly most species are further provided with two or more abdominal (?) lobes, and the females with two multiserial ovisacs as in Cyclops. Also I find that the males of L. bidiscalis, and L. galei are also furnished with a pair of cephalic lobular processes, projecting downwards from between the two pair of maxillipeds, the use and homology of which I am at a loss to decide, and which seem to have escaped the notice of previous observers. They will be again referred to in the description of the male. This new species was found by me in June, 1890, when on a cruise in the S.S. Fingal with the Rev. W. S. Green, H.M. Inspector of Irish Fisheries. When long-line fishing off the