"On plate 7, I have given a reduction after Westwood of a page from an Irish MS. now in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth. Although it is of comparatively late date (the ninth century), and the writing is the Irish script in its second or wholly minuscule stage, the ornamentation is sufficient to show what Irish work had been and still was. The marvelously elaborate convolutions and interlacements, the dexterous use of colors, the utter absence of gold, and the introduction of grotesque animal figures, are all seen in this plate from the Gospelbook of MacDurnan. (While I write I am reminded of a personal experience which I may be forgiven for setting down in print. When Westwood's great book had come out, I was one day speaking with an English lady of high social position, cultivated and accomplished in many branches of knowledge, to whom after mentioning Westwood I expressed my admiration of what the Irish calligraphers had done in the seventh and eighth centuries, when art was so low in most of the other lands of Europe. The lady listened with patient good-breeding, till I paused, and then said quietly, "I presume that you are yourself an Irishman!" She had evidently mistaken one unfamiliar accent for another, and her remark was a polite criticism upon my credulity or veracity.)"
Plates from O. V. Palaeography: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22
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