Considering the cheap issue of all standard works of reference a great boon
to the general student, I was predisposed to welcome heartily Mr. Bohn's
_Antiquarian Library_. If, however, _cheapness_ be accompanied by
_incorrectness_, the promised boon I conceive to be worthless; even one or
two glaring errors rendering the student distrustful of the entire series.
I was led to form the first of these conclusions on receiving vol. i. of a
translation of the _Annals of Roger de Hoveden_, by Henry T. Riley, Esq.,
barrister-at-law; who introduces the work by a flourish of trumpets in the
Preface, on the multifarious errors of the London and Frankfort editions,
and the labour taken to correct _his own_; to the second by observing,
whilst cutting the leaves, the following glaring errors, put forward too as
_corrections_:--Vol. i. p. 350., Henry II. is stated by the _Annalist_ to
have landed in Ireland, A.D. 1172, "at a place which is called _Croch_,
distant _eight miles_ from the city of Waterford." Here Mr. Riley, with
perfect gravity, suggests _Cork_[1] as the true reading!! Can it be, that a
barrister-at-law, with an ominously Irish-sounding name, is ignorant that
the city of Cork is somewhat more distant than _eight miles_ from the _urbs
intacta_, as Waterford loves to call herself? The fact is, however, that
Hoveden and his former editors were nearly correct: on {496} old maps of
the harbour of Waterford, Crook Castle is laid down inside Creden Head, on
the Waterford side of the harbour; and Crook is still the name of a place
at the point indicated, somewhat more however than eight miles from
Waterford.
Again, at p. 351. occurs Hoveden's well-known and valuable enumeration of
the Irish episcopal sees at the same period, of which Mr. Riley observes:
"Nearly all these are mis-spelt ... they are in a state of almost hopeless
confusion." And then, to make confusion worse confounded, his note on the
Bishop of Ossory (p. 352.) says "In the text, 'Erupolensis' is perhaps a
mistake for 'Ossoriensis.'" Now, _Erupolensis_ happens to be a correct
_alias_ of Ossoriensis: the former characterising the diocese from
Kilkenny, the cathedral city, which being seated on the Nore, or
Neor--Hibernicè _Eoir_, Latinè _Erus_, was sometimes called Erupolis--the
latter from the territory with which the see was and is co-extensive, the
ancient kingdom of Ossory.
How many more errors there may be in the first volume of the work, I cannot
say: but, at all events, what the reader has to complain of is, _not_ that
the translator was unable to tell all about "Croch" and "Erupolis," but
that, not knowing, he has made matters worse by his hardy elucidations.
Truly, at this rate, it were better that no cheap edition of Hoveden were
vouchsafed to the public.