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34
ON IRISH LEXICOGRAPHY.
My main efforts, therefore, will be directed to the publication of Irish texts of tolerably ascertainable meaning, so as to secure as large a number as possible of authoritatively established vocables, and at the same time to set forth in its true light the extant literature. Too much has been made, as I think, of the supposed relics of mythological lore contained in our Middle Irish MSS.: there is a good deal to be done on the simpler and more commonplace side, for there is abundance of material in these MSS. which it will repay the student to peruse, before he begins to expend labour in the wearying solution of poetical conundrum, or to dissipate energy over the wire-drawn speculations of the ingenious mythologist.
