THE WORLD’S DEBT TO THE IRISH 
book, their wings shining with glowing colors amid 
woven patterns of graceful design. The portraits 
and miniatures and the numerous faces centred in 
initial letters are not to be adjudged by the standard 
of anatomical drawing and delineation of the human 
figure, but rather by their effect as part of a scheme 
of ornamentation; for the Celtic illuminator was 
imaginative rather than realistic, and aimed al- 
together at achieving beauty by means of color and 
design. The Book of Kells is the Mecca of the 
illuminative artist, but it is the despair of the copy- 
ist. The patience and skill of the olden scribe have 
baffled the imitator; for, on examination with a 
magnifying glass, it has been found that, in a space 
of a quarter of an inch, there are no fewer than a 
hundred and fifty-eight interlacements of a ribbon 
pattern of white lines edged by black ones on a black 
ground. Surely this is the manuscript which was 
shown to Giraldus Cambrensis towards the close of 
the twelfth century and of whose illuminations he 
speaks with glowing enthusiasm; ‘they were,” he 
says, ‘supposed to have been produced by the direc- 
tion of an angel at the prayer of St. Brigid.’ ” 
The Book of Kells was probably, as we have seen 
in the chapter on St. Bridget, never at Kildare. 
Gerald Barry almost surely saw another illuminated 
copy of the Scriptures there but in default of the 
manuscript that he saw his expression fits the Book 
of Kells very well. 
What Sir Edward Sullivan says at the beginning 
of his Introduction to ‘The Book of Kells” (Lon- 
don, New York, 1914) may seem the language of an 
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