The Latin Lives are contained mainly in four great collections.  The first and probably the most important of these is in the Royal Library at Brussels, included chiefly in a large Ms. known as ’Codex Salmanticensis’ from the fact that it belonged in the seventeenth century to the Irish College of Salamanca.  The second collection is in Marsh’s Library, Dublin, and the third in Trinity College Library.  The two latter may for practical purposes be regarded as one, for they are sister MSS.—­copied from the same original.  The Marsh’s Library collection is almost certainly, teste Plummer, the document referred to by Colgan as Codex Kilkenniensis and it is quite certainly the Codex Ardmachanus of Fleming.  The fourth collection (or the third, if we take as one the two last mentioned,) is in the Bodleian at Oxford amongst what are known as the Rawlinson MSS.  Of minor importance, for one reason or another, are the collections of the Franciscan Library, Merchants’ Quay, Dublin, and in Maynooth College respectively.  The first of the enumerated collections was published ‘in extenso,’ about twenty-five years since, by the Marquis of Bute, while recently the gist of all the Latin collections has been edited with rare scholarship by Rev. Charles Plummer of Oxford.  Incidentally may be noted the one defect in Mr. Plummer’s great work—­its author’s almost irritating insistence on pagan origins, nature myths, and heathen survivals.  Besides the Marquis of Bute and Plummer, Colgan and the Bollandists have published some Latin Lives, and a few isolated “Lives” have been published from time to time by other more or less competent editors.

The Irish Lives, though more numerous than the Latin, are less accessible.  The chief repertorium of the former is the Burgundian or Royal Library, Brussels.  The Ms. collection at Brussels appears to have originally belonged to the Irish Franciscans of Louvain and much of it is in the well-known handwriting of Michael O’Clery.  There are also several collections of Irish Lives in Ireland—­in the Royal Irish Academy, for instance, and Trinity College Libraries.  Finally, there are a few Irish Lives at Oxford and Cambridge, in the British Museum, Marsh’s Library, &c., and in addition there are many Lives in private hands.  In this connection it can be no harm, and may do some good, to note that an apparently brisk, if unpatriotic, trade in Irish MSS. (including of course “Lives” of Saints) is carried on with the United States.  Wealthy, often ignorant, Irish-Americans, who are unable to read them, are making collections of Irish MSS. and rare Irish books, to Ireland’s loss.  Some Irish MSS. too, including Lives of Saints, have been carried away as mementoes of the old land by departing emigrants.