I should be wanting in proper respect to the gentlemanly and scholar-like editor of his works, if I omitted the mention of that celebrated tourist and topographer, GIRALD BARRI, or Giraldus Cambrensis; whose Irish and Welch itinerary has been recently so beautifully and successfully put forth in our own language.[255] Giraldus, long before and after he was bishop of St. David's, seems to have had the most enthusiastic admiration of British antiquities; and I confess it would have been among the keenest delights of my existence (had I lived at the period) to have been among his auditors when he read aloud (perhaps from a stone pulpit) his three books of the Topography of Ireland.[256] How many choice volumes, written and emblazoned upon snow-white vellum, and containing many a curious and precious genealogy, must this observing traveller and curious investigator have examined, when he was making the tour of Ireland in the suite of Prince, afterwards King, John! Judge of the anxiety of certain antiquated families, especially of the Welch nation, which stimulated them to open their choicest treasures, in the book way, to gratify the genealogical ardour of our tourist! [Footnote 255: There is a supplemental volume to the two English ones, containing the only complete Latin edition extant of the Welsh Itinerary. Of this impression there are but 200 copies printed on small, and 50 on large, paper. The whole work is most creditably executed, and does great honour to the taste and erudition of its editor, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, bart.] [Footnote 256: "Having finished his topography of Ireland, which consisted of three books, he published it at Oxford, A.D. 1187, in the following manner, in three days. On the first day he read the first book to a great concourse of people, and afterwards entertained all the poor of the town. On the second day he read the second book, and entertained all the Doctors and chief scholars: and on the third day he read the third book, and entertained the younger scholars, soldiers, and burgesses."--"A most glorious spectacle (says he), which revived the ancient times of the poets, and of which no example had been seen in England." This is given by Dr. Henry (b. iii., ch. 4, Sec. 2), on the authority of Giraldus's own book, _De rebus a se gestis_, lib. i. c. 16. Twyne, in his arid little quarto Latin volume of the _Antiquities of Oxford_, says not a word about it; and, what is more extraordinary, it is barely alluded to by Antony Wood! See Mr. Gutch's genuine edition of Wood's _Annals of the University of Oxford_, vol. i., pp. 60, 166. Warton, in his _History of English Poetry_, vol. i., Diss. ii., notices Giraldus's work with his usual taste and interest.] LIS. I wish from my heart that Girald Barri had been somewhat more communicative on this head!