The Lives of the Saints Volume 1 - St. Patrick's Basilica

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similar to the beautiful prayer addressed to them by Bollandus at the
end of his general preface, and which may be thus abridged: "Hail, ye
citizens of heaven! courageous warriors! triumphant over the world! from
the blessed scenes of your everlasting glory, look on a low mortal, who
searches everywhere for the memorials of your virtues and triumphs. Show
your favor to him; give him to discover the valuable monuments of former
times; to distinguish the spurious from the legitimate; to digest his
work in proper order and method; to explain and illustrate whatever is
obscure. Take under your protection all who have patronized or assisted
him in his undertakings: obtain for all who read his work, that they
imitate the examples of virtue which it places before their eyes; and
that they experience how sweet, how useful, and how glorious it is to
walk in your steps."
In the preface to the French translation, the work is said to have cost
our author the labor of thirty years. It was his practice, when he began
to write the life of any saint, to read over and digest the whole of his
materials, before he committed any thing to paper. His work evidently
shows, that his mind was full of its subject, {030} and that what he
wrote was the result of much previous information and reflection. On
many occasions he must have written on subjects which were new to him;
but, such is the mutual connection and dependence of every branch of
literature, that a mind stored like his was already in possession of
that kind of knowledge, which would make him apprehend, with great ease,
whatever he had to learn; and would instruct him, though the subject
were new to him, where he might express himself decisively, and where he
should doubt. How extensive and profound his general knowledge was,
appears from this, that a person who happens to have made any subject,
treated of by him, his particular study, will seldom read what our
author has written upon it without finding in it something original, or,
at least, so happily expressed or illustrated as to have the merit of
originality. In some instances, as in his account of the Manichæns, in
the life of St. Augustine, and of the crusades, in the life of St.
Lewis, he shows such extent and minuteness of investigation, as could
only be required from works confined to those subjects. In other
instances, where his materials are scanty, so that he writes chiefly
from his own mind, as in the lives of St. Zita or St. Isidore of
Pelusium, he pours an unpremeditated stream of piety, which nothing but
an intimate acquaintance with the best spiritual writers could produce.
The sameness of a great number of the most edifying actions which our
author had to relate, made it difficult for him to avoid a tiresome
uniformity of narrative: but he has happily surmounted this difficulty.
Another difficulty he met with, was the flat and inanimate style of the
generality of the writers from whom his work was composed. Happy he must
have been, when the authors he had to consult were St. Jerome, Scipio,