16 DECEMBER 1922, Page 26

It is unnecessary for us to do more than hang

a small wreath on such a monument of hagiological scholarship as these two volumes. represent. They are an invaluable supplement to Mr. Plummer's Latin Lives, Vitae San ctorum Iliberniae, published by the Clarendon Press in 1910. The biographies of seventeen Irish saints are here edited from the original MSS.—fifteen of them for the first time—and translated into sound, often eloquent English. Mr. Plummer is notably successful with the versified portions : his translation of the metrical life of Coemgin is something of a triumph if we consider the innumerable chevilks and passages of idiomatic rhetoric in which the original abounds. The volumes contain a glossary that is necessarily restricted, but they arc fully annotated and indexed, with a textual introduction.