THE WORLD'S DEBT TO THE IRISH
you behold a majestic face divinely drawn, there the
mystical forms of the evangelists, each having some-
times six, sometimes four and sometimes two wings;
here an eagle, there a calf, there a human face and a
lion and other figures in infinite variety, so cleverly
wrought together that if you looked carelessly at
them, they would seem like a uniform blot composed
without skill or special study, rather than art. But,
if you look closely with all the acuteness of sight
that you can command and examine the inmost
secrets of that wondrous art, you will discover such
delicate, such subtle, such fine and closely wrought
lines, twisted and interwoven in such intricate knots
and adorned with such fresh and brilliant colors that
you will readily acknowledge the whole to have been
the result of angelic rather than human skill. The
more frequently I behold it, the more diligently I
examine it, the more numerous are the beauties I
discover in it, and the more I am lost in renewed
admiration of it.”
With regard to the possibility that the Book of
Kells and the wonderful manuscript of the Gospel
which Giraldus Cambrensis saw at Kildare are the
same or not, after reviewing the whole situation Sir
Edward Sullivan says:
“One can only conclude that the book which the
historian did see was one of the many beautiful
illuminated manuscripts that have since disappeared,
though not the Kells volume; and that commentators
have been somewhat too ready to adopt without
much investigation a theory for which there seems
to be but very little evidential support.”
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