§6. James Ussher. IX. Anglo-Irish Literature. Vol. 14. The Victorian Age, Part Two. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two.

IX. Anglo-Irish Literature.

§ 6. James Ussher.

But the first seventeenth century writer whose works are familiar to contemporary Englishmen was James Ussher, one of the first students of Trinity college, Dublin, afterwards archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland, who, without doubt, was one of the most remarkable of Irish scholars, being, according to Selden, ad miraculam doctus. He wrote in English as well as in Latin, and, moreover, was an Irish scholar. He discovered the long lost Book of Kells, a MS. of the four Gospels, the finest specimen of Irish illuminated art in existence, and, indeed, unparalleled for beauty by any other work of the kind, and he bequeathed it, with the rest of his books and MSS., to Trinity college, Dublin, in 1661. His writings are mainly concerned with theological or controversial subjects, which had a great vogue in his days. But his opus magnum is Annales Veteris et Novi Testamenti, a chronological compendium in Latin of the history of the world from the Creation to the dispersion of the Jews under Vespasian, which brought him European fame. Ussher’s specially Irish works are mentioned in the bibliography.