th a certain Mr. Pickwick, whom it was, oddly
enough, the duty of one of Dickens' sons to call as a witness in an
English law-suit not many years ago. Even Homer sometimes nods--at least
according to the critics, of whose opinion Lucian credits him with so
low an estimation--and the great Bollandists had their historical
equanimity--much as experience must have already taught it to bear--so
upset by the brilliancy of the fable that they have omitted to print
the real life at all, a life which is, at the worst, no more startling
than a good many with which they have enriched their pages--e.g., those
of Patrick, Brigid, and Columba--and after a denunciation of what their
authorities call the _vana, fictaque vel apocrypha deliramenta_, 'the
silly, lying, or apocryphal ravings,' simply proceed to give a
compilation of isolated notices drawn from a variety of different
sources.

Prof. O'Curry, in his _Lectures on the MS. Material of Ancient Irish
History_, page 289, mentions four ancient Irish romances in the form of
voyages, of which the voyage of Brendan is one. He gives an epitome of
that of the sons of Ua Corra, which seems at least in parts to be almost
equally wild. But that of Brendan has certainly been the most popular.
M. Achille Jubinal, who edited one Latin and two French translations of
it, says that it also exists in Irish, Welsh, Spanish, English, and
Anglo-Norman. The Spanish, English, and Anglo-Norman I have never read,
and of the Welsh I have never heard. Of the Latin I once made a complete
translation from the Latin text published by Jubinal, but I have lost
it, and have had to do the work again so far as necessary for the
present lecture. I remember, however, that from several features, I came
to the conclusion that the Latin text was a translation from Irish, and
the Irish text must present considerable variants, as Dr. Todd in his
book on _St. Patrick, Apostle of Ireland_, page 460, cites from 'An
Irish Life of St. Brendan,' but which must evidently be the fabulous
voyage, four incidents, of which one is about the finding of a dead
mermaid, another about one of the voyagers being devoured alive by
sea-cats, and the third about an huge sea-cat as large as an ox which
swam after them to destroy them, until another sea-monster rose up and
fought with the cat, and both were drowned, none of which incidents
occur in the Latin. However, to the Latin version my defective knowledge
must confine me, and there is