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—383 NOTES.sufficient a disguise as any other; and if these volumes wer0unintelligible to all but the Druids, how could St. Patrick knowtheir obnoxious contents, or whence could arise the necessity ofburning them.I have thus followed PinJcarton and J7ines throughtheir different arguments ; and it is not a little strange, that,though both set out with the avowed intention of proving thatSt. Patrick was the first who introduced letters into Ireland, yetboth have been obliged to recoil, and to subvert the very pointwhich they wished to establish.But though we might safely rest the use of letters in Irelandprior to St. Patrick, on the reluctant evidence of these twogentlemen, still there is not the slightest occasion for so gratuitousan alternative. The evidences on this head are numerousand irresistible. Had St. Patrick really found the Irish totallyilliterate, why do none of his biographers plainly tell us so ? Allthathe did, was writing somewhat more than 365 alphabets.See Tuland^s quotation from Nemiius^ p. 96. That the saintintroduced the Roman alphabet, as a preliminary step to theintroduction of the Roman language, no one will pretend to dispute;but we can no more hence infer that the Irish were, priorto that period, destitute of letters, than that they were destituteof language. Dudley Forbes^ and Dr, Kennedy^ (see Toland,p. 105) testify that St. Patrick burnt from 180 to 300 volumesof Irish records. The compilation of these volumes must havehQ^n the work of many ages, and I hope no one will say that theIrish could compile thera without the use of letters.But, saysMr. InneSy (vol. 2. p. 466) these volumes were written in hieroglyphicalletters. This would be a phenomenon indeed.Egypt the parent (as far as we know) of hieroglyphics, wasnever possessed of one volume, and how can Ireland be supposedto possess 300 ? This assertion of Mr, Innes is perfectly foolishand gratuitous, when he had previously admitted, (v. 2. p. 451.)that the Irish had the partial use of letters prior to the arrival ofSt. Patrick. Had the saints' biographers considered him, orindeed wished him to be considered, as the father of Irish letters,lh?y would never have acted so inconsistently as to tell us.