When we hark back to the period when MS. writing first began to pass into modern type, we discover that no book of any kind was printed in this country before 1477. In that year Caxton issued in London the earliest publication from an English printing press. Other books quickly followed, but nearly a century elapsed before any Gaelic writing passed through the inky mill. The first printed work in that language is the translation of John Knox’s _Liturgy_ by Bishop Carsewell, published in Edinburgh in 1567. Carsewell, or Carsuel, as the name is sometimes spelt, a native of Kilmartin, was superintendent of the diocese of Argyll, and well versed in the Highland vernacular. It was he who, in the preface to his work, denounced the ancient _ursgeuls_ or Gaelic prose tales as lying fables, and inaugurated a clerical campaign against the popular ballads. Yet he merits our approbation for getting into print so early a book which modern philologists regard as uncommonly valuable. Only three copies exist of the original issue,—one, complete, in the possession of the Duke of Argyll, and two others imperfect. Of the twain, one is now in Edinburgh University Library, the other in the British Museum. The Duke’s was lost for a time, but recovered in 1842, and doubtless restored to its ancient place in Inverary Castle. This rare book is five inches long and three and a half broad, containing 247 pages, on the 246th of which occurs the couplet:— Gras Dé is na thós atáimid Ni ránuic sé fós finid. And on the last page the following:— DO BVAILE adh so agclo an Dvn Edin Le Ro ibeart Lekprevik 24 Aprilis 1567. In 1872 the Rev. Dr. Maclauchlan transcribed it entire for a new edition which was published the following year, 1873. Nearly another century glides slowly by after the printing press disgorged Carsewell’s translation before any further Gaelic printing—that we know of—took place, if we except the translation of Calvin’s Catechism issued at Edinburgh in 1631. In fact, three psalm-books complete the list for the whole of that seventeenth century, namely, the first fifty Psalms of David with the Shorter Catechism, published by the Synod of Argyll in 1659, exactly ninety-two years after the Liturgy; another Psalter by John Kirke in 1684, and the Synod of Argyll’s finished in 1694. Thus in the sixteenth century we have just one Gaelic printed book; in the seventeenth, three and a catechism; and all these merely translations from other languages. Not till 1741 do we encounter any original work, and even then it is simply a Gaelic Vocabulary by Alexander Macdonald, the gifted bard of Ardnamurchan. So that till after the Forty-five, Gaelic Scotland had no printed literature of its own—neither poetry nor prose of any kind.