The Roman Breviary. Translated out of Latin into English by JOHN, MARQUESS OF BUTE, K.T. Two Vols. Edinburgh and London : William Blackwood and Sons. 1879.

HESE two splendid volumes, the fruit of nine years' work, and the worthy tribute of a cultured Catholic to that Church which he has had the gift to recognise as his mother, are deserving of more than the brief notice we can at this moment accord them. When we state that each volume contains some 1500 pages (a portion, however, viz., the "Common" Office, being repeated), that there is an average of at least one foot-note, or reference, and at least five translator's annotations to the text, in every page, and that the great majority of these notes are concerned with matters of name, date, and citation; and when we consider that the whole text of the Breviary has been translated, newly and freshly, from the original Psalms, Hymns, Lessons, Anthems, Responsories, and Collects, the reader will easily understand that the labour must have been very great. We should hasten to add that Lord Bute has used the versions of others (chiefly Cardinal Newman) in the rendering of the hymns, and that in the Psalms, and in translating Holy Scripture generally, he has freely adopted existing translations when he considered them good.

A translation of the Breviary seems, doubtless, to some a little uncalled for. There is an idea that the Breviary is a book for priests, and perhaps, also, that there is just the slightest soupçon of a heterodox leaning in wishing to put a "Service Book" into the vernacular. This is a feeling which may be expected to vanish in its absurdity the moment it is reflected upon. No doubt there is some slight reason for it in the fact that there is a large party in the Church of England which is now extensively imitating, in English, our liturgical services, and which makes it a sort of reproach that we use an unknown tongue. There are times when innocent acts must be abstained from on account of scandal. But there is really nothing of the sort to be apprehended in the present case. A few Ritualistic clergymen will no doubt use this translation, and revel in the quaint effect of the antique phraseology in an English garb. A few "sisterhoods," and even congregations, will perhaps struggle for a short time with the big volumes and the small print; but it will do neither any harm. It will certainly not keep them a day longer from "going over." And, after all, the sacred words, the "prayers" of the Church, the uncompromising legends, and the influence of holy names, may be expected to be more than neutral-to be active-agents in preparing the way for the Faith. The Breviary is neither a secret formulary nor a collection of medieval legends. It contains, in its most authentic form, the spirit and mind of the Catholic Church as regards prayer and praise. Its selections of Holy Scripture are the most appropriate, its presentment of saints' names and virtues are the best and most deliberately considered, and its forms of invocation, adoration, and petition are the most truly and essentially Catholic of anything that exists outside the Missal and the Pontifical

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Lord Bute's work as a translator, let us say it at once, has been admirably done. His plan of proceeding is the only one really practicable. In rendering Scripture he has translated the Latin of the Breviary, not the Hebrew or the LXX., although he has made plentiful explanatory reference to both. In the Lessons of the second and third nocturns he has given, not a word-for-word translation, but a free and readable version, which, however, preserves, in a remarkable manner, the spirit of the original. It is in the rendering of the Legends of the Saints (the Lessons of the Second Nocturn) that he seems to have succeeded best, and to have really performed a feat in translation.

It would be easy to point out matters of detail, in an immense work like this, where difference of opinion might be expected. The Breviary is a sufficiently large subject to afford opportunities for infinite questioning. Many will resent "Elijah and "Elisha." It is difficult to blame the translator for the occasional quaintness of his version. A work must be taken as a whole. If you build in a certain style you may have strange gargoyles and curious bizarreries in figures and faces. The rule as to where quaintness is no longer affectation is not easy to lay down. Perhaps the question is one of degree. If you are consistently quaint, you are not quaint but archaic. At any rate, the occasional names and verbs which, in Lord Bute's excellent English, make themselves felt with a slight shock on the unaccustomed ear, even in the general flow of his evenly oldfashioned diction, have the effect of adding wonderful life to the picture. Doubtless some minds, afflicted with importunate associations, will be amused or offended with some of his expressions. But this wears off, and the real power of the translation comes home, more and more, at every reading.

Even the clergy may learn a great deal from a translation of the Breviary. It is not merely that they will find in this version useful and pregnant notes, numberless brief bits of information, supplied just at the right moment in the fewest words, exact references to the Homilies and other writings of the Fathers, which, perhaps, will send them to the original to finish what the Breviary merely begins; but the effect of seeing the familiar-too familiar-Latin turned into new forms of speech will be, as De Quincey says, to "brighten its suggestiveness," and give it a new power over the imagination. As for the laity, they have here what they never had before the whole Breviary in English. But even if it were of no use whatever, this translation would be welcome as a work of art. To the Breviary itself it is what engraving is to painting. A noble monument of the past, not antiquated, but only ancient, has here been reproduced with loving and laborious devotion, and the result is worthy the long spaces of studious leisure and seclusion which the work has required.

THE

DUBLIN REVIEW.

APRIL, 1880.

ART. I. THE BIRTHPLACE OF ST. PATRICK,
APOSTLE OF IRELAND.

1. Fac-similes of National Manuscripts of Ireland, selected and edited under the direction of the Master of the Rolls in Ireland. By J. T. GILBERT, F.S.A., &c., Public Record Office of Ireland, Dublin. Part I. 1874. Part II. 1878. Part III. 1879.

2. An Inquiry as to the Birthplace of St. Patrick. By T. H. TURNER, M.A., a Paper read for the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and published in "Archæologia Scotica." Vol. V. Part I. Edinburgh. 1874.

3. Three Middle-Irish Homilies, on the Lives of SS. Patrick, Brigit, and Columba. Edited by WHITLEY STOKES.

Calcutta. 1877.

4. Loca Patriciana. By the Rev. JOHN FRANCIS SHEARMAN, Dublin. 1879.

5. The Life of St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland. By M. F. CUSACK. Dublin. 1870.

6. The Life of St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland. By Rev. W. B. MORRIS, Priest of the Oratory. Second Edition. London. 1879.

T is only a little more than half a century since the opinion was first broached that Boulogne-sur-Mer, in the north of France, was the birth-place of our national Apostle St. Patrick; and yet so great was the learning and ability of the Rev. Dr. Lanigan, who propounded this opinion, and so highly esteemed were his labours in the revival of the study of the Ecclesiastical History of our country, that it at once took a firm hold of the VOL. XXXIV. NO. II. [Third Series.]

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popular mind, and has ever since been generally adopted by the popular writers of our history. Far different, however, was the opinion generally held for the past by those who had devoted their lives to illustrate the antiquities and the literature of Ireland. Colgan, in the seventeenth century, the golden age of Celtic studies, pointed to North Britain as the country hallowed by our Apostle's birth; and he declared this to be the common opinion of all who hitherto had written on the subject.* A century later the illustrious Innes was able to assert that "the learnedest of the Irish and other foreign writers" were agreed in assigning Kilpatrick, near Dumbarton, as the precise place where St. Patrick was born,† and Petrie and O'Donovan and O'Curry, the great masters of Irish literature in our own days, have adopted the same opinion.

The question is one of fact, and like other historical questions must be decided by the weight of the evidence that is produced in its favour. It is one, however, in which the spiritual children of St. Patrick take the deepest interest. Few nations have cherished for the first Fathers of their faith such love and reverence and honour as the Celtic race at home and abroad has ever shown to its great Apostle. The persistent efforts which, during the past years, have been made by Protestant writers to misrepresent his teaching, have only served to enliven more and more the ardour of the affection of his devoted sons, and perhaps there never was a time when his name was so honoured 'and each memorial of his blessed life so cherished, as at the present day.

To proceed with some order in our inquiry, I propose first to cite, with as much brevity as the matter will permit, the various passages of our writers, down to the close of the twelfth century, that bear upon this subject. I will then endeavour to recapitulate under a few heads the evidence which these witnesses of the tradition of Ireland shall have presented to us; and in conclusion I will add some remarks on the principal modern theories regarding the birthplace of our Apostle.

I.

Testimonies of ancient writers.

A.-I will commence with the testimony of St. Patrick himself. His "Confessio" or " Declaration of the Mercies of God,"

* Colgan, "Verior et communis nostrorum domesticorum, et exterorum Scriptorum sententia est, S. Patricium in Majori Britannia natum esse. Trias, p. 221.

Innes, "Civil and Eccles. Hist. of Scotland," edited by the Spalding Club, p. 34,

*

which all our writers now admit to be his genuine work, thus begins: "I Patrick, a sinner, the most unlearned and the least of all the faithful, and held in contempt by very many, had Calphurnius, a Deacon, for my father, the son of the late Potitus, a presbyter, who lived in the village of Bannavem Taberniæ. He had, close by, a small villa where I was made a captive (qui fuit vico Bannavem Taberniæ, villulam enim prope habuit, &c.)." I have followed in this passage the text of the Book of Armagh, which is more than a thousand years old and professes to be copied from the original written by St. Patrick's own hand. The MSS. in the Bodleian Library and the British Museum have "Banavem Táberniæ." The Bollandists read "Bonaven." The text published by Ware adds "villulam Enon prope habuit," which, if correct, would give us the name of the villa from which St. Patrick was led into slavery.

In the tenth chapter of the "Confessio" we read: “After a few years, I was again in Britain with my kindred (in Britanniis eram cum parentibus meis) who received me as a son, and earnestly besought me that then, at least, after the many tribulations I had endured, I should not go away from them any more." Again, in the nineteenth chapter: "Wherefore though I should have wished to leave (Ireland) that I might go unto Britain (in Britannias), a journey most desirable to me as unto my country and kindred (quasi ad patriam et parentes), and not thither only, but that I might go as far as Gaul (usque Gallias) to visit my brethren and to see the face of the Saints of the Lord."

In his letter to Coroticus, a British chieftain who had led away some of his converts into captivity, our Saint writes: "Among barbarians I dwell a stranger and an exile. . . . . for them I have given up my country, and my kindred, and even life itself unto death if I be found worthy. . . . . I have written and composed this letter to be sent and delivered to the soldiers to be forwarded to Coroticus, I do not say to my fellow-citizens (non dico civibus meis), nor to the fellow-citizens of the Roman Saints, but to the fellow-citizens of demons through their evil deeds. companions of the Scots† and apostate Picts: who is it that compelled me, constrained by the

*The whole of the text of the "Confessio" as found in the Book of Armagh, and in the Bodleian MS. (Fell. 1, fol. 7, seq.) is given by Gilbert in "Nat. Manuscripts of Ireland," part 2nd. The text printed by the Bollandists from a MS. formerly preserved at the Abbey of St. Vaast, at Arras (ad diem 17, Mart.), is considered to be the most accurate and complete now extant.

This was a pagan colony of Irish Scoti, who settled in Argyleshire in the third century. The Christian colony of Scoti did not proceed thither till the end of the fifth century.