586) may compare with Dunstan, Eloy, Tuotilo, and others.
To apply these observations to the style of illumination which now comes
under our notice it may be said that if we allow the cross and arch to
be copied from the Byzantine MSS. introduced from abroad, the details
are undoubtedly supplied by the wickerwork and textile netting familiar
to the everyday life of the artist. Assisted by the fertile imagination
of bardic lore in snakes, dragons, and other mythic monsters of heroic
verse, the illuminator produces a pencilled tapestry of textile fabric
or flexile metal-work as marvellous as it is unique. No amount of
description can give a true idea of what Celtic work is like; it must be
seen to be comprehended. One glance at a facsimile of such a MS. as the
Book of Kells or the Lindisfarne Gospels, or those of St. Chad at
Lichfield, or wherever, as at St. Gall, such work is to be met with,
will supersede the most laboured attempt at description. We must
therefore at once refer the reader to the facsimile. When that has been
inspected, we may proceed. In the first place it may be noted that with
these Occidental MSS. begins the importance and development of the
initial, which, indeed, as regards the illumination of Western Europe,
is the very root of the matter.
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