his vagabond nature, and such psychical interest as might possibly
attach to stories of his mediumistic temperament, it would be rather
hum-drum. Brendan, however, has had the ill luck to be selected by some
unknown antient Irish novelist as the hero of a romance of the wildest
kind, which has certainly spread his name, if not his fame, in quarters
which in all his travels he could never have anticipated. Even in the
Canary Islands, the natives apply the term 'Isla de San Borondon' to a
peculiar effect like mirage, showing a shadowy presentiment of land,
which is sometimes seen off their coasts. His character as an hero of
romance, somewhat of the type of Sinbad the Sailor, if not of that of
Gulliver, has even injured him as a subject of serious study. There has
been a sort of custom, to which may be applied a celebrated phrase of
Newman, 'aged but not venerable,' of confounding the hero of the romance
with the real man. It would be just as proper to identify the hero of
the _Pickwick Papers_ with 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