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
128