Same subject continued.

Now Dr. Talbot died in the year 1680, *forty-eight years before Dr. Mac Mahon wrote the "Jus Prim. Armac." His own book, which was printed during his life, bore quite another title, and was an answer to a disquisition, written by Dr. Oliver Plunket, styled "Jus Primatiale." Mac Mahon refuted this answer, in the work in question, which was not printed, as Dr. Ledwich asserts, in 1724, but in 1728.+ From all these circumstances it is pretty clear that our antiquary knew very little indeed of Talbot's "Primatus Dubliniensis," of which he speaks in such favourable and decisive terms. If the reader be curious to see the principal passage to which Dr. Ledwich alludes, and of which he gives a garbled quotation, he will find it c. 228, p. 133, of the Jus. Prim. Armac. "It asserts, inter alia, that Saint Patrick's pall was chimerical, wretched, a vague individual, woven from goat's wool, suspended and flying through the air, stitched to the relics of Stephen the Proto-martyr." Such trifling, in a Catholic prelate, is justly styled by Dr. Mac Mahon, " cachinnatio," giggling chatter. Has it acquired any dignity or force by Dr. Ledwich's repetition? No; its echo is still but cachinnatio.

Our antiquary's quotations should be received and credited with extreme caution. We have already seen

• Ware's writers, p. 193, + Title page, Jus Prim. Armac.

Strange misquotation of

him conjuring up the ghost of Herodotus and compelling him to bear testimony, in the spirit, of things which he had not known in the flesh, that he might barbarize Alexander the Great. We have witnessed his misquotations and his perversions of Ware, and of other authors, that he might be the better enabled to destroy the glory of the more illustrious Patrick. At present, it may suffice, if we adduce another instance of still more extraordinary misquotation, which his rage for modernizing the antiquities of Ireland, has induced him to hazard.

"It is noticed," says Dr. Ledwich, "that in 1145, Gelasius, archbishop of Armagh, made a limekiln, seven yards in diameter. Would this be told if the calcination of lime was then generally practised? For there is nothing extraordinary in the size of the kiln." The conclusion he wishes his readers to draw from this circumstance is, that stone and lime buildings were little used in Ireland, before that period. In support of the passage, he refers to Ware's bishops, page 57. The reader will be astonished when he consults that author, to find the following words :-" In 1145, he (Gelasius) set strenuously about building and repairing the cathedral of Armagh and other religious houses adjoining to it, and for that end, is said to have erected a limekiln of such an enormous size, as to exceed sixty feet in dimensions, every way." There is nothing remarkable in the size of

a passage in Ware.

the kiln, says Dr. Ledwich-The size of the kiln was enormous, says the author of the passage to which he refers as his authority! It was twenty-one feet, in breadth, says Dr. Ledwich-It was sixty feet, in breadth, says Harris's Ware!

Colgan, on whom Harris, in his edition of Ware, relies, in his account of this kiln, writes thus :-"Gelasius cogitans, de Ardmachana basilica aliisque sacris ædibus adhærentibus reparandis, extruxit pro calce et cœmento in hunc finem excoquendo, ingentis molis fornacem, cujus latitudo, ab omni parte, erat sexaginta pedes protensa." "Gelasius studious of repairing the Armagh cathedral, and other sacred edifices adjoining to it, for this purpose, constructed a kiln (or furnace) of vast magnitude, for preparing (or coking) lime and cement, whose breadth, in every direction, extended sixty feet."*

Thus the breadth of the kiln was twenty yards, instead of twenty-one feet. It was probably of a rectangular or square figure. Similar kilns, and perhaps of even greater dimensions, exist, at this moment, (I believe) in Scotland and in Sweden. It appears to have been constructed, not for the purpose of preparing cement for new stone and lime edifices, but for the repair of old ones,

• Colgan Trea. Tham. vii, Appen, p. 305,

Other inaccurate references and

then in a state of dilapidation. The quotation, therefore, is, in every point of view, most inapplicable to the purpose for which our antiquary has brought it forward. Yet he seems so preposterously fond of the erroneous deduction which he draws from it, that he repeats it in the twelfth page of the "Introduction to ancient Irish Architecture," prefixed to the second volume of a work which he has dignified with the title of "The Antiquities of Ireland by Francis Grose, &c." He there says, "It is recorded as a memorable fact, the building of a lime kiln seven yards, in diameter, by Gelasius, archbishop of Armagh,"

The following passage will furnish the reader with another instance of Dr. Ledwich's incautious assertions and inaccurate references. In page 354, he says, that Columbanus," in his letter to Pope Boniface the third, charges him with heresy, and suspects his church to be in error. In another letter, he tells the Pope that he had written to his predecessor Gregory, concerning the differences between the Irish and Roman churches, and entreated to be permitted to retain his national customs, &c." and again, "but clerical resentment is not soon appeased, our missioner was expelled his abbey, after which he returned to Bobbio, and erected a monastery there." The gross errors contained in this passage, are pointed out in Dr. Milner's Inquiry, and, on his authority, I now state some of them to my readers.

groundless assertions made by Dr. Ledwich.

"The letter was not addressed to *Pope Boniface the Third, but to Boniface the Fourth. It was not in this, but a former letter to the Pope, that Columban requested to be left to his national observance of Easter; a singular petition this from a pious abbot to an heretical prelate, with whom he is supposed to break off communion! The letter in question was not written from Luxieu, in Burgundy, but from Bobbio, in Italy.+ Saint Columban was not expelled from the former place in consequence of the freedom of his letter to the Pope, or of any other kind of clerical resentment, but, in consequence of the resentment of a libidinous king, Theodoric, and an ambitious princess, Brunehault, whose crimes he was obliged to reprove." Dr. Milner also says that, in the letter in question, Columban declared, "that he himself continued indivisibly attached to the Chair of Saint Peter."||

The arguments urged by Dr. Ledwich to prove the nonentity of Saint Patrick, are merely negative, and of the most unsatisfactory and inconclusive nature. On the

"Dom. Cellier Hist. des Auteur sacr. Tom. xvii, p. 489.

"I hope the Rev. Dr. Ledwich will not manifest any of this clerical resentment,' at the present exposure of his numerous gross errors.

"§ Mabillon Annal, Bened. t. 11.”

See Milner's Inquiry, p. 139, who, besides the above references, quotes Bibliotheca Petrum tom. xii. in support of Columban's adherence to the church of Rome,