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with the aspirate h or the monosyllable va prefixed, which was afterwards changed into the vowel O, and signifies one descended from some chieftain or head of a principal family, as O'Brien, O'Connor, O'Neill. Yet it must be confessed that some centuries after King Brien's reign numbers of families took no fixed or certain surnames. It has been observed by writers that about the year 1000, in Brien's reign, surnames also began to be ascertained in France, England, and Scotland, first among people of distinction, and afterwards by degrees among the inferior sort. Finally, after surnames were settled in Ireland, some particular children of Irish families had addi- | tional sobriquets or nicknames given them, as Bane - White, Boy-Yellow, Bacca-Lame, Moil-Bald, and the like; and the same custom also gradually crept in among some families of English birth.

THE ORIGIN OF THE IRISH.

It is certain there is nothing concerning the first original of nations to be found anywhere worthy of credit but in Holy Writ. Moses hath given us a catalogue of the posterity of Noah, whose children and grandchildren he recounts in order, probably not all, but the principal of them, from whom the most famous nations of the world have drawn their names and originals. "By the sons of Japhet the isles of the Gentiles were divided in their lands, every man after his tongue, and after their families in their nations." Commentators interpret the isles of the Gentiles to mean the maritime parts of Asia, and all Europe, to which the necessary passage is by sea. Josephus hath placed the posterity of Japhet in those countries of Asia which lie extended from the mountains Taurus and Amanus near the Mediterranean Sea, to the river Tanais northward of the Euxine, and from thence hath brought them into Europe, as far as the Gades, that is Cadiz or Cales, within the mouth of the Streights of Gibraltar. If then this be so, it is easy to conceive how the rest of Europe came in time to be peopled. For as the nature of man is inquisitive after novelties, and as the number of our ancestors increased, both necessity and curiosity forced them to go in quest of other countries, at once to gratify their ambition and find room for their people. From Cadiz we can easily see them dispersing themselves over Spain; from

VOL. I.

thence in process of time pushing one another forward into Germany, Gaul, &c., and across the narrow firth from Calis to the coast of Kent; from thence by degrees northward into that part of Britain since called Scotland, and south and south-west to Wales; from each of which countries Ireland is visible, and might easily receive colonies in their wicker corraghs, and other contrivances of these early ages. And this I take to be the most rational way of accounting for the first planting of Ireland; as it is most natural to suppose, that islands were first planted from countries that border nearest to them; which is the reason given by Tacitus why the Gauls first peopled Britain.

But as Ireland, with the rest of Europe, are descended from Japhet, the difficulty then remains from which of his sons we are to claim our original. In the time of Moses the names and fixed seats of the descendants of Noah were without question clear enough; but now, after the space of upwards of three thousand years, after so many flittings, changes, and confusions of nations, there remains nothing to rely upon. It is very observable what Josephus says upon this subject. "From this time forward (i.e. from the confusion of Babel) the multitudes dispersed themselves into divers countries and planted colonies in all places. Some there were also who, passing the sea in ships and vessels, first peopled the islands; and there are some nations likewise who at this day retain the names which in times past were imposed on them; some others have changed them, and others are altered into names more familiar and known to the neighbours, and deriving them from the Greeks, the authors of such titles. For they in latter time, having grown to great name and power, appropriated the ancient glory to themselves in giving names to the nations which they subdued, as if they took their original from them." We see here a lively picture of the dispersion and plantation of colonies in several parts of the world, and of the changes and variations of their names; we see the ambitious humour of the Greeks in seeking to draw other nations to a dependence on them for their originals; which hath afforded scope enough to later writers for invention. But to proceed. If we allow the progress and dispersion of our ancestors to be in the manner as before is set forth, then we must admit our descent from Gomer, the eldest son of Japhet, through the Britains, who are confessedly descended from that original. Josephus is my witness that

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Gomer was the founder of the Gomarians, whom the Greeks (says he) called Galatians, others Gallo-Grecians. Berosus styles Gomer himself Gomerus - Gallus, Gomer the Gaul. . . . But this descent from the Britains must be understood of the first and early colonies arriving in Ireland, which by the best account are allowed to be of British original, and consequently descended from Gomer. As to the Milesian or Scythian, which was the last that got footing in Ireland before the arrival of the English, Magog, another son of Japhet, was their ancestor. The sacred historian gives no manner of account of the sons of Magog; but Josephus makes him "the founder of the Magogians, called by the Greeks Scythians, and whom Ptolemy names the Massagetae. Keating hath given us a particular genealogy of the posterity of Magog to Milesius through twenty-two generations, and hath conducted them in their several voyages until he sets them down in Spain in as exact manner as if he had been their pilot.

OF THE LIFE OF ST. PATRICK.

This primitive bishop was a person of such exemplary piety and virtue, and his labours and success in converting this once pagan and barbarous nation to Christianity were so wonderful and useful, that the actions of his life were worthy of being transmitted to posterity by the most faithful and able pen. But unhappily this task hath fallen into the most weak and injudicious hands, who have crowded it with such numberless fictions and monstrous fables, that, like the legends of King Arthur, they would almost tempt one to doubt the reality of the person. It is observable that (as the purest streams flow always nearest to the fountain) so, among the many writers of the life of this prelate, those who lived nearest to his time have had the greatest regard to truth, and have been most sparing in recounting his miracles. Thus Fiech, bishop of Sletty, and contemporary with our saint, comprehended the most material events of his life in an Irish hymn of thirty-four stanzas. But in process of time, as the writers of his life increased, so his miracles were multiplied (especially in the dark ages) until at last they exceeded all bounds of credibility.

There is one consequence that hath followed such a legendary way of writing, which, had

authors of this turn foreseen, would probably have made them more cautious in this point. Miracles are things of so extraordinary a nature that they must be well attested in order to gain credit among men. But these writers, by introducing them on every frivolous occasion without number, measure, or use, have called the truth of everything they relate into question, and in this case have brought into discredit, and even ridicule, the real miracles which perhaps this holy man may have wrought. The lavish use they have made of them serveth only to oppress faith, as a profusion of scents overpowereth the brain. By this indiscretion they have made their writings to be generally looked upon as entirely fabulous, and their unskilful management hath only served to bring our great patron into contempt. I will not trouble the reader with my private opinion as to the truth of his miracles, which is a point that may admit of much dispute without any great benefit. On one side it may be said, that as God inspired him with the glorious resolution of adventuring himself to reclaim an infidel and barbarous people to Christianity, so he armed him with all the necessary powers and virtues to go through so great a work. There may seem to be the same necessity in this instance as in those of the apostles, the end and intention of their mission being the same. On the other side it may be said that several infidel nations have been converted to Christianity without miracles, and that the present missionaries in the East and West Indies work conversions without pretending to that extraordinary gift. I shall not engage in this dispute.

As seven cities contended for the birth of Homer, the prince of poets, so almost as many places have laid claim to the honour of having given birth to St. Patrick. Baronius and Matthew of Worcester, usually called Florilegus, say he was a native of Ireland, being deceived probably by an ambiguous expression in the martyrologists, "In Ireland, the nativity of St. Patrick." Whereas in the constant language of the martyrologists a saint's nativity is not esteemed the day of his entrance into this world, but the day of his death. I wonder Philip O'Sullevan hath from these great authorities omitted to claim our saint for his countryman. But he hath fallen into as gross an error, for he makes him a native of BasBretagne, in France. Another writer gives Cornwall in the south of England the honour of his birth, with as little reason as the former. The English translator of the Golden Legend

will have him a Welshman. Camden also tells | Usher could see no reason to depart. Yet us that St. Patrick was born in Ross Vale (in with reverence to these great authorities, I Valle Rosina), which signifies a verdant plain; must take the liberty to fix his birth a year and Humphrey Lloyd in Vale Rosea or Rosina, later, i.e. in 373, on the 5th of April. For the rosy plain. Sigebert of Gemblours and the most commonly received opinion is (with many others have called him a Scot, and the which Usher in another part of his work Scottish writers to a man will have him their agrees) that St. Patrick lived but 120 years, countryman. But this is grounded on two and that he died in 493. And this is further mistakes: First, from the language of ancient confirmed by the old Irish Book of Sligo, as martyrologists, as I observed before, which quoted by Usher, that St. Patrick was born, means by the nativity of a saint the day of his baptized, and died on the fourth day, Weddeath, so that when we meet in Bede, &c., nesday. Now the 5th of April, 373, fell on this passage, "On the 17th March in Scotia, Wednesday, and consequently was his birththe nativity of St. Patrick," it must be under- day that year. stood the day of his death. And it is well known that in the days of St. Patrick, and for many ages after, Ireland was known by the name of Scotia and not the modern Scotland. The second mistake hath been occasioned by the alteration of the bounds and limits of countries, so that Dun-Britain, near which St. Patrick was born, though it be now a part of modern Scotland, yet in his time it was within the British territories. Having thus cleared the different pretensions to his birth, I shall now proceed to fix the right place of it, and from thence go on to relate the several particulars of his life.

He was born in the extreme bounds of Britain (in that part of it which is now comprehended within the limits of modern Scotland), at a village called Banavan in the territory of Tabernia (as he himself saith in his confessions). Joceline explains Tabernia to signify the Field of Tents, because the Roman army had pitched their tents there, and adds "that the place of his father's habitation was near the town of Erupthor, bounding on the Irish Sea." From this description Usher points out the very spot where he was born, at a place called after him Kirk-Patrick or KilPatrick, between the castle of Dunbriton and the city of Glasgow, where the rampart which separated the barbarians from the Romans terminated.

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As there were various opinions concerning his country, so writers differ much as to the time of his birth. William of Malmesbury, Adam of Dornerham, and John the Monk of Glastonbury, place his birth in 361, with whom Stanihurst agrees, and all of them follow Probus, on whom we cannot depend. . . . The Annals of Connaught are yet more grossly mistaken in assigning his birth to the year 336. Henry of Marleburg says he was born in 376, Joceline in 370, but Florence of Worcester, nearer the truth, in 372; from whose calculation

I shall pass over his infancy without taking any notice of the miracles ascribed to him by the legend writers of his life. His contemporary, the venerable Fiech, is silent as to this particular; and St. Patrick himself ascribes his captivity to his ignorance of the true God, and his disobedience to his commands. He was educated with great care and tenderness by his parents, and his sweet and gentle behaviour rendered him the delight and admiration of all his neighbours.

His father, mother, brother, and five sisters undertook a voyage to Aremoric Gaul (since called Bas-Bretagne) to visit the relations of his mother Conchessa. It happened about this time that the seven sons of Factmude, some British prince, were banished, and took to the sea; that making an inroad into Aremoric Gaul they took Patrick and his sister Lupita prisoners. They brought their booty to the north of Ireland, and sold Patrick to Milcho-Mac-Huanan, a petty prince of Dalaradia.1 Others tell the story in a different manner and with a better face of probability, that the Romans having left Britain naked and defenceless, its inhabitants became an easy prey to their troublesome neighbours the Irish, and that our saint fell into the hands of some of these pirates and was carried into Ireland. But in this they all agree, and he himself confirms it, that he continued captive in Ireland six years. He was sold to Milcho and his three brothers, which gave the occasion of changing his name into Cothraig, or rather Ceathir-Tigh, because he served four masters, Ceathir signifying four, and Tigh a house or family. Milcho observing the care and diligence of this new servant, bought out

The south and south-east parts of the county of Antrim and all the county Down.

the shares of his brothers, and made him his own property. He sent him to feed his hogs on Slieu Mis.1

It was here he perfected himself in the Irish language; the wonderful providence of God visibly appearing in this instance of his captivity; that he should have the opportunity in his tender years of becoming well acquainted with the language, manners, and dispositions of that people to whom he was intended as a future apostle. Possibly the ignorance in these particulars of his predecessor Paladius might have been the cause of his failure in the like attempt.

A.D. 395. He continued six whole years in servitude, and in the seventh was released. There seems to have been a law in Ireland for this purpose, agreeable to the institution of Moses, that a servant should be released the seventh year.

The writers who deal in the marvellous tell you that the angel Victor appeared to him, and bid him observe one of his hogs, who should root out of the ground a mass of money sufficient to pay his ransom; but St. Patrick saith no such thing; he only informs us that he was 66 warned in a dream" to prepare for his return home, and that he arose and be took himself to flight, and left the man with whom he had been six years.

He continued abroad thirty-five years pursuing his studies, for the most part under the direction of his mother's uncle, St. Martin, bishop of Tours, who had ordained him deacon; and after his death partly with St. German, bishop of Auxirre (who ordained him a priest and called his name Magonius, which was the third name he was known by), partly among a colony of hermits and monks

| in some islands of the Tuscan Sea, and he spent a good part of the time in the city of Rome among the canons regular of the Lateran Church.

He was in his sixtieth year when he landed in Ireland in 432; Alfred, Cressy, and other writers, following the authority of William of Malmesbury and of John the Monk of Glastonbury, place his arrival in Ireland in 425, but this plainly contradicts the more early writers. He happily began his ministry by the conversion and baptism of Sinell, a great man in that country, the grandson of Finchad, who ought to be remembered, as he was the first-fruits of St. Patrick's mission in Ireland, or the first of the Irish converted by him. He was the eighth in lineal descent from Cormac, king of Leinster, and afterwards came to be enumerated among the saints of Ireland. Nathi, the son of Garchon, and king of that district, who the year before had frightened away Palladius, in vain attempted to terrify Patrick by opposing and contradicting his doctrine.

All the early Irish writers affirm that St. Patrick was buried at Down, in Ireland, and it is from such authorities that the truth must be drawn. . . . From these and many more early authorities we may safely conclude to give Down the honour of containing his remains, with which several of the English writers also agree; and Cambrensis affirms that the bodies of St. Patrick, St. Brigid, and St. Columb were not only buried at Down, but were also there taken up and translated into shrines by John de Courcy, conqueror of Ulidia, about the year 1185, and to this purpose gives us these verses:—

"In Down three saints one grave do fill,
Brigid, Patrick, and Columbkille."

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youth was entered a gentleman commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, where it seems he was “looked upon as a slow and dreaming young man by his seniors and contemporaries, and given more to cards and dice than his study; they could never then in the least imagine that he would ever enrich the world with his fancy or issue of his brain, as he afterwards did." At the end of three years he underwent his B.A. examination, and was sent to Lincoln's Inn to study law, which he did so far as his vice of gaming would allow him. After having been plundered by gamesters and severely reproved by his parents he acquired a sudden abhorrence of the evil practice, and wrote an essay against it, which he presented to his father. He also about this time added the study of poetry to that of laws, and produced a translation of the second book of Virgil's Æneid. In 1638 his father died, and immediately after Denham gave himself up to his old vice, and lost the money several thousand pounds-that had been left him.

In 1641, like a lightning flash out of a clear sky, appeared his tragedy called The Sophy, which was at once admired by the best judges, and gave him fast hold of the public attention. Speaking of the poet in connection with this piece, Waller said that "he broke out like the Irish rebellion, threescore thousand strong, when nobody was aware or in the least suspected it." Soon after this he was made highsheriff of Surrey and governor of Farnham Castle for the king, but not caring for, or not being skilled in military affairs, he quitted the post before long and retired to Oxford, where, in 1643, he published Cooper's Hill, a poem of some three hundred lines, on which his fame chiefly rests.1 Of this work Dryden says it is “a poem which for majesty of style is, and ever will be, the standard of good writing." An attempt was made to rob Denham of his laurels by what Johnson calls "the common artifice by which envy degrades excellence." In the "Session of the Poets," in some lumbering verses, it is said that the work was not his own, but was bought of a vicar for forty pounds.

1 It has been supposed that this poem was directly inspired by his residence at Egham. The writer of the additions to Camden's Britannia says, in speaking of Egham, "Here lived Sir John Denham the poet, who has immortalized Cooper's Hill adjoining."

* An anonymous poem which appeared in Dryden's Miscellanies.

The facts relating to Lady Denham's death are thus given in Notes and Queries, Sept. 28, 1872:-"Lady Denham had attracted the notice of the Duke of York; but in the midst of this liaison she was married, by the interposition of her friends, at the age of eighteen to Sir John Denham,

| "The same attempt," says Johnson, "was made to rob Addison of his Cato, and Pope of his Essay on Man."

In 1647 Denham began to mix in political matters, and in 1648 he conveyed James, Duke of York, into France, or at least so says Johnson and others, though Clarendon affirms that the duke went off with Colonel Bamfield only, who contrived his escape. Certain it is, anyhow, that Denham went to France, from whence he and Lord Crofts were sent ambassadors to Poland from Charles II. In that kingdom they found many Scotchmen wandering about as traders, and from these they obtained £10,000 as a contribution to the king. About 1652 he returned to England, where he was entertained by Lord Pembroke, with whom, having no home of his own, he lived for about a year. At the Restoration he was appointed to the office of surveyor-general of the king's buildings, and at the coronation received the order of the Bath.

After his appointment he gave over his poetical works to a great extent, and “made it his business," as he himself says, "to draw such others as might be more serviceable to his majesty, and, he hoped, more lasting." Soon after this, when in the height of his reputation for poetry and genius, he entered into a second marriage, in which he was so unhappy that for a time he became a lunatic. For this misfortune he was cruelly and ungenerously lampooned by Butler, but fortunately it did not last long, and he was again restored to his full health and vigour of mind.3 A few months after he wrote one of his best poems, that on the death of Cowley. This was his last work, for on March 19, 1669, he died at his office in Whitehall, and was laid in Westminster Abbey by the side of the poet he had just panegyrized.

Dr. Johnson says that "Denham is justly considered as one of the fathers of English poetry. He is one of the writers that improved our taste and advanced our language, and whom we ought, therefore, to read with

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