norant ecclesiastics, simple preachers, and old-fashioned monks," to a speedy end by a radical change in their education. And how radical was the change he meditated, is abundantly shown by the ideal model which he proposed to the president, professors, and students of the great seminary at Douai, when compared with the picture which Erasmus draws of the ecclesiastical education of his day.

Campion had hoped to become a pioneer of Irish “civility” in the new University at Dublin; but the scheme failed. Though contributions were laid together, Sir Henry Sidney proffering 20/. in lands, and 100/. in money, and others following after their abilities and devotions; though Master Ackworth had devised a new name for it-Plantolinum, from Plantagenet, or Bulleyne, in honour of Elizabeth's mother; "yet while they disputed of a convenient place for it, and of other circumstances, they let fall the principal." The chief cause of failure was the underhand opposition of the Chancellor and some of the Bishops, who did not wish to see such an institution founded by Sidney and Stanihurst, or intrusted to Campion, who, though not then received into the Church, was suspected to be a Papist, and only saved from arrest through the protection of Sidney, who secretly promised James Stanihurst that, while he was Governor, "no busy knave of them all should trouble him for so worthy a guest as Mr. Campion," and performed it most honourably while he remained in Ireland. Weston, the Irish Chancellor, wrote to Cecil, the Lord Treasurer, March 12th, 1570,* that the motion for founding a university was universally well. liked; yet that the device, direction, and foundation of so godly a deed was a most worthy work for so virtuous, bountiful, and careful a sovereign and prince, and would

*See Note 9.

conservate to perpetual memory her Majesty's godly zeal to true religion and learning, and her merciful motherly care over her poor and rude subjects here. The work, thus taken out of the hands of the local authorities, and committed to Elizabeth, was brought to a conclusion twenty-five years afterwards by the foundation of Trinity College, Dublin.

After his educational projects were finally nipped by the departure of Sidney from Dublin, March 25, 1571, Campion had to devise some other method of accounting for his absence from England. He therefore devoted ten weeks at this time to a hasty knocking together of a History of Ireland, which, read by the light of the circumstances under which it was conceived, is almost as much a pamphlet to prove that education is the only means of taming the Irish as a serious history.

The work is dedicated to his "singular good lord" and patron, Leicester, the chancellor of his university, to whom he says, that, in order that his travel into Ireland might seem neither causeless nor fruitless, he had thought it expedient, as one of his lordship's honourable charge, to yield him that poor book as an account of his poor voyage. He hoped it was not the last or the best gift he should offer; but he was sure that it had been "more full of unsavoury toil for the time than any plot of work he ever attempted." It was long before he could find a copy of "Gerald of Wales;" and what this writer left untouched, he had been forced to piece out by the help. of foreign writers who incidentally touched upon Ireland, and by a number of brief extracts of rolls, records, and scattered papers, to handle and lay all which together he had not in all the space of ten weeks. He confesses, in his epistle to the loving reader, that, ever since his first

See Note 10.

arrival at Dublin, he, with the help of various gentlemen, had inquired out antiquities of the land. But he had no help from real Irish sources; though the native chronicles were "full fraught of lewd examples, idle tales, and genealogies, et quicquid Græcia mendax audet in historia," yet he was persuaded he might have sucked thence good store of matter, had he found an interpreter, or understood their tongue, which is so hard that it would have required a study of more years than he could spare months. He intended his book to be only a contribution to the subject, and desired the Irish antiquaries "hereafter at good leisure to supply the want of this foundation, and polish the stone rough-hewed to their hand," which, rough as it was, would have been much worse proportioned if the author had not been helped with the familiar society and daily table-talk of James Stanihurst, who, "beside all courtesy of hospitality, and a thousand loving turns not here to be recited, both by word and written monuments, and by the benefit of his own library, nourished most effectually" the writer's endeavour.

To the ordinary reader, the most interesting parts of the work will always be those which consist of the writer's own observations upon the soil and the inhabitants of Ireland, which "lieth aloof in the West Ocean, in proportion like an egg, blunt and plain at the sides, not reaching forth to sea in nooks and elbows of land as Britain doth." From these chapters I will give some extracts, since the book is scarce, as specimens of Campion's English style, in his own day greatly admired:

"The soil is low and waterish, and includeth divers little islands, environed with bogs and marishes: highest hills have standing pools in their top. The air is wholesome, not altogether so clear and subtle as ours of England. Of bees good store; no vineyards, contrary to the opinion of some writers, who both

in this and other errors touching the land may easily be excused, as those who wrote of hearsay. Cambrensis in his time complaineth that Ireland had excess of wood, and very little champagne ground; but now the English pale is too naked. Turf and sea-coals is their most fuel. It is stored of kine; of excellent horses and hawks; of fish and fowl. They are not without wolves, and grey-hounds to hunt them, bigger of bone and limb than a colt. Their kine, as also their cattle, and commonly what else soever the country engendereth (except man), is much less in quantity than ours of England. Sheep few, and those bearing coarse fleeces, whereof they spin notable rug mantle. The country is very fruitful both of corn and grass; the grass. for default of husbandry, not for the cause alleged in Polychronicon, groweth so rank in the north parts that ofttimes it rotteth their kine. Eagles are well known to breed here, but neither so big nor so many as books tell.... Horses they have, of pace easy, in running wonderful swift. Therefore they make. of them great store, as wherein at times of need they repose a great piece of safety.... I heard it verified by honourable to honourable that a nobleman offered, and was refused, for one such horse an hundred kine, five pounds lands, and an eyrie of hawks yearly during seven years.... Only because a frog was found living in the meadows of Waterford somewhat before the conquest, they construed it to import their overthrow.... Generally it is observed, the further west, the less annoyance of pestilent creatures; the want whereof is to Ireland so peculiar, that whereas it lay long in question to whether realm, Britain or Ireland, the Isle of Man should pertain, the said controversy was decided, that forasmuch as venomous beasts were known to breed therein, it could not be counted a natural piece of Ireland. Neither is this property to be ascribed to St. Patrick's blessing, as they commonly hold, but to the original blessing of God, who gave such nature to the situation and soil from the beginning. And though I doubt not but it fared the better in many respects for that holy man's prayer, yet had it this condition notified hundreds of years before he was born."

*

With regard to the dispositions of the people, whom

See Note II.

he divides into those of English descent and the mere Irish, he writes as follows:

..

The people are thus inclined: religious, frank, amorous, ireful, sufferable, of pains infinite, very glorious, many sorcerers, excellent horsemen, delighted with wars, great alms-givers, passing in hospitality. The lewder sort, both clerks and laymen, are sensual and loose to letchery above measure. The same, being virtuously bred up and reformed, are such mirrors of holiness and austerity, that other nations retain but a show or shadow of devotion in comparison of them. As for abstinence and fasting, which these days make so dangerous, this is to them a familiar kind of chastisement; in which virtue and divers others how far the best excel, so far in gluttony and other hateful crimes the vicious they are worse than too bad. They follow the dead corpses to the grave with howlings and barbarous outcries, pitiful in appearance, whereof grew, as I suppose, the proverb to weep Irish. The uplandish are lightly abused to believe and avouch idle miracles and revelations vain and childish. Greedy of praise they be, and fearful of dishonour: and to this end they esteem their poets who write Irish learnedly, and pen their sonnets heroical, for the which they are bountifully rewarded: but if they send out libels in dispraise, thereof the gentlemen, especially the mere Irish, stand in great awe. They love tenderly their foster-children, and bequeath to then a child's portion, whereby they nourish sure friendship, so beneficial every way that commonly five hundred kine and better are given in reward to win a nobleman's child to foster. They are sharp-witted, lovers of learning, capable of any study. whereto they bend themselves, constant in travail, adventurous, intractable, kind-hearted, secret in displeasure.

Hitherto the Irish of both sorts, mere and English, are affected much indifferently, saving that in these, by good order and breaking, the same virtues are far more pregnant: in those others, by licentious and evil custom, the same faults are more extreme and odious. I say, by licentious and evil custom, for that there is daily trial, of good natures among them, how soon they be reclaimed, and to what rare gifts of grace and wisdom they do and have aspired. Again, the very English of birth, conversant with the brutish sort of that people, become degen