any pioneer could have been so feeble in his efforts as not to have rendered material aid to any one who came after.
The next cause of delay was the necessity I felt of writing the Lectures at a greater length than would occupy six hours in the delivery. It arose chiefly from the fact, that the Celtic literature bearing on the history of Celtic paganism is so little known to the vast majority of English readers, that acquaintance with it could not be taken for granted. It remained for me, therefore, to give the substance of the sagas and epic tales in point at a length which has considerably increased the bulk of this volume. But it afforded many opportunities of making comparisons, never made before, between Irish and Welsh myths, comparisons which cannot but be of help in any future treatment of the subject, even though some of the more ambitious theories may prove untenable. I consider that event a certainty for several reasons, such as my innate liability to err, and the discovery of more Gallo-Roman remains on the Continent, or the publication of more Irish manuscripts hitherto comparatively inaccessible. Still the attempt to draw a comprehensive picture of Celtic Heathendom seemed to be worth making, even though it should prove nothing but that there is a great mass of data at one's service. Those data are not, it is true, such as the student of Greek or Latin paganism is wont to handle; but, taking them as they offered themselves, I found that, far from having reasons to complain of their scarcity, the slowness of my progress was aggravated by an embarras de richesse. This is all the more striking as many of my English friends wondered, at first, what in the world I should find to occupy half-a-dozen Lectures.
Having thus alluded to the quantity of the materials at my disposal, I would only add as to their nature, that a large proportion of them is of a philological order; and I fear that I have
