The Book of Trinity College Dublin 1591-1891 — John Shaqi
The Book of Trinity College Dublin 1591-1891Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland)
History
The Book of Trinity College Dublin 1591-1891
Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland)
Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland)
But most probably the great want in Dublin was the want of books.
There must have been a very widespread complaint of this, when it
occurred to the army which had defeated the Spaniards at Kinsale
(in 1601) to give a large sum from their spoil for books to endow
the new College.[23] This sent the famous James Ussher to search
for books in England, and laid the foundation for that splendid
collection of which the Archbishop’s own books formed the next
great increase, obtained by the new military donation of Cromwell’s
soldiers in 1654. There is probably no other so great library in
the world endowed by the repeated liberality of soldiers. Still
we hear that, even after the founding of the collection, James
Ussher thought it necessary to go every third year to England, and
to spend in reading a month at Oxford, a month at Cambridge, and
a month in London, for the purpose of adding to that mass of his
learning which most of us would think already excessive. Yet it is
a pity that smaller men, in more recent days, did not follow his
example, and so save the College from that provincialism with which
it was infected even in our own recollection.
Let us now turn to the internal history of the College. The great
crises in the first century of its existence were the Rebellion
under Charles I. and the civil war under James II., ending with
the Settlements by which Charles II. and William III. secured the
future greatness of the Institution. This brief sketch cannot
enter into details, especially into the tedious internal quarrels
of the Provost and Fellows; we are only concerned with the
general character of the place, its religion, its morals, and its
intellectual tendencies. Upon all these questions we have hitherto
rather been put off with details than with a philosophical survey
of what the College accomplished.
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