No More Learning

During the nineteenth century, many other expeditions left
Great Britain to explore the natural history of the world, some
the result of public, some of private, enterprise. They are too
numerous to mention. But a word must be said about the
wonderful exploration of central America which has just been com-
pleted, under the auspices of F. D. Goodman and 0. Salvin. The
results are incorporated in a series of magnificently illustrated
quarto volumes which have been issued during the last thirty-six
years. Fifty-two of these relate to zoology, five to botany and
six to archaeology. Nearly forty thousand species of animals
have been described, of which about twenty thousand are new,
and nearly twelve thousand species of plants. There are few
remote and partially civilised areas of the world whose zoology
and botany are on so secure a basis, and this is entirely owing
to the munificence and enterprise of the above mentioned men of
science.
With regard to our own shores, one of the features of the
latter part of the nineteenth century has been the establishment
of marine biological stations, the largest of which is that of the
Marine Biological association at Plymouth. The Gatty laboratory
at St Andrews, the laboratories at port Erin in the isle of Man,
and at Cullercoats, have, also, for many years, being doing ad-
mirable work. All these establishments have devoted much
technical skill and time to solve fishery and other economical
problems connected with our seas.


## p. 298 (#328) ############################################

298 The Literature of Science [CH.
By far the most important event in the history of biology in
the nineteenth century was the publication, in 1859, of The Origin
of Species. This statement might be strengthened, for the publi-
cation of this book changed the whole trend of thought not only
in biology, not only in other sciences, but in the whole intellectual
outlook of the world. There were, of course, many British
evolutionists before Darwin, amongst whom may be mentioned
Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, Wells, Patrick
Matthew, Pritchard, Grant, Herbert-some of these writers even
hinted at natural selection. Above all, Robert Chambers, whose
Vestiges of Creation remained anonymous until after his death,
strongly pressed the view that new species of animals were being
evolved from simpler types.
During the incubatory period of Darwin's great work, as Alfred
Newton has remarked, systematists, both in zoology and botany,
had been feeling great searchings of heart as to the immutability
of species. There was a general feeling in the air that some light
on this subject would shortly appear. As a recent writer has
reminded us,
In studying the history of Evolutionary ideas, it is necessary to keep in
mind that there are two perfectly distinct lines of thought. . . . First. The
conviction that species are not immutable, but that, by some means or other,
new forms of life are derived from pre-existing ones. Secondly. The con-
ception of some process or processes, by which this change of old forms into
new ones may be explained 1.
Now, as we have seen, the first of these lines of thought had been
accepted by many writers. Darwin's great merit was that he
conceived a process by means of which this evolution in the
ganic kingdom could be explained.
After his return from the voyage in the ‘Beagle,' and after a
short residence in London, Darwin, in 1842, settled at the village
of Down in Kent, and here it was, he says, 'I can remember the
very spot on the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the
solution occurred to me. ' The 'solution' was natural selection
'
by means of the survival of the fittest. ' Darwin had written out
his views so early as 1842, but he had confided them only to
a few, and were it not for a strange coincidence, they might have
remained in manuscript even later than 1858.
For, in the spring of 1858, Alfred Russel Wallace, a traveller
and explorer who made his living as a collector, was lying
sick of fever at Ternate, and his thoughts turned, as Darwin's
had done years before, to the writings of Malthus? , of Jesus
The Coming of Evolution, by Judd, John W. , Cambridge, 1912.
: On Population.
>


## p. 299 (#329) ############################################

VIII] The Origin of Species 299
college, Cambridge. The idea of natural selection flashed across
his mind. He lost no time in setting it down in writing and in
sending it to Darwin by the next post. The story is too well
known to repeat here with what mutual magnanimity Wallace and
Darwin behaved. Each always gave the other the fullest credit
of the inspiration.
The publication of The Origin of Species naturally aroused
immense opposition and heated controversy. But Darwin was no
controversialist. Patient and entirely unresponsive under abuse,
he was, at the same time, eager for criticism (knowing that it might
,
advance the truth). His views offended, not only old-fashioned
naturalists, but theologians and clerics. Huxley wrote shortly
after Darwin's death,
None have fought better, and none have been more fortunate, than Charles
Darwin. He found a great truth trodden underfoot, reviled by bigots, and
ridiculed by all the world; he lived long enough to see it, chiefly by his own
efforts, irrefragably established in science, inseparably incorporated with the
common thoughts of men, and only hated and feared by those who would
revile, but dare not. What shall a man desire more than this 1 ?
Darwin, also, was fortunate in his supporters, though some of
the leading biologists of the time conspicuous among them was
Owen-rejected the new doctrine. In Hooker, on the botanical side,
in Huxley, on the zoological side, and in Lyell, on the geological
side, he found three of the ablest intellects of his country and
of his century as champions. None of these agreed on all points
with his leader; but all three gave a more than general adherence to
his principles and a more than generous aid in promulgating his
doctrine. Lyell was an older man, and his Principles of Geology
had long been a classic. This book inspired students destined to
become leaders in the revolution of thought which was taking
place in the last half of the nineteenth century. One of these
writes :
Were I to assert that if the Principles of Geology had not been written,
we should never have had the Origin of Species, I think I should not be going
too far: at all events, I can safely assert, from several conversations I had
with Darwin, that he would have most unhesitatingly agreed in that opinions.
Sir Joseph Hooker, whose great experience as a traveller and a
systematic botanist, and one who had in his time the widest know-
ledge of the distribution of plants, was of invaluable assistance to
Darwin on the botanical side of his researches. Those who
1 Huxley, T. H. , Collected Essays, vol. II, p. 247.
? Judd, J. W. op. cit.


## p. 300 (#330) ############################################

300 The Literature of Science [CH.
remember Hooker will remember him as a man of ripe ex-
perience, sound judgment and a very evenly balanced mind. But
all these high and by no means common qualities were combined
with caution, and with a critical faculty which was quite invaluable
to Darwin at this juncture. Huxley was of a somewhat different
temperament. He was rather proud of the fact that he was
named after the doubting apostle; but, whatever Huxley doubted,
he never doubted himself. He had clear-cut ideas which he was
capable of expressing in the most vigorous and the most culti-
vated English. Both on platform and on paper he was a keen
controversialist. He contributed much to our knowledge of
morphology. But never could he have been mistaken for a
field-naturalist. In the latter part of his life he was drawn away
from pure science by the demands of public duty, and he was,
undoubtedly, a power in the scientific world. For he was ever
one of that small band in England who united scientific accuracy
and scientific training with influence on the political and official
life of the country.
It is somewhat curious that the immediate effect of the publi-
cation of The Origin of Species and of the acceptance of its
theories by a considerable and ever-increasing number of experts
did not lead to the progress of research along the precise lines
Darwin himself had followed. To trace the origin of animals and
plants and their interconnection was still the object of zoologists
and' botanists, but the more active researchers of the last part
of the nineteenth century attacked the problem from standpoints
in the main other than that of Darwin. The accurate description
of bodily structure and the anatomical comparison of the various
organs was the subject of one school of investigators : Rolleston's
Forms of Animal Life, re-edited by Hatchett Jackson, Huxley's
Vertebrate and Invertebrate Zoologies, and Milnes Marshall's
Practical Zoology testify to this. Another school took up with
great enthusiasm the investigation of animal embryology, the
finest output of which was Balfour's Text-book of Embryology,
published in 1880. Francis Maitland Balfour occupied a chair,
especially created for him at Cambridge university, in 1882,
and, for a time, Cambridge became a centre for this study, and
Balfour's pupil, Sedgwick, carried on the tradition. Members of
yet another school devoted themselves to the minute structure
of the cell and to the various changes which the nucleus under-
goes during cell-division. Animal histology has, however, been
chiefly associated with physiology; and, as this chapter is already


## p. 301 (#331) ############################################

VIII] Schools of Biological Thought 301
greatly overweighted, we have had to leave physiology on one
side. The subjects of degeneration, as shown by such forms as
the sessile tunicata, the parasitic crustacea and many internal
parasitic worms, with the last of which the name of Cobbold
is associated, also received attention, and increased interest was
shown in the pathogenic influence of internal parasites upon
their hosts.
Towards the end of our period, a number of new schools of
biological thought arose. As Judd tells us :
Mutationism, Mendelism, Weismannism, Neo-Lamarckism, Biometrics,
Eugenics and what not are being diligently exploited. But all of these
vigorous growths have their real roots in Darwinism. If we study Darwin's
correspondence, and the successive essays in which he embodied his views at
different periods, we shall find, variation by mutation (or per saltum), the
influence of environment, the question of the inheritance of acquired
characters and similar problems were constantly present to Darwin's ever
open mind, his views upon them changing from time to time, as fresh facts
were gathered.
Like everything else, these new theories are deeply rooted in
the past.


## p. 302 (#332) ############################################

CHAPTER IX
ANGLO-IRISH LITERATURE
THE early classical culture of Ireland, her literary technique
in her native Gaelic and the equipment of solid learning that
enabled her missionaries to evangelise much of western Europe,
have always been a source of puzzled surprise to the modern
historian.
Only quite recently has the veil been lifted from this perplexing
historical problem. For Zimmer has proved that the remarkable
early Irish erudition was due to an exodus of Gaulish scholars
into Ireland owing to the devastation of their country by the
Huns, Vandals, Goths and Alans. They avoided England, which,
at the time, was suffering from continental invasions; they sought
Ireland because it was known, through the traders plying between
the mouths of the Loire and Garonne and the south and east
coasts of Ireland, to be not only a fertile and prosperous country
but, also, to be already favourable to the Christian religion. Two
circumstances conspired to establish the success of the influx of
Gaulish scholars and divines with their precious manuscripts. For
they reached Ireland with a learning that, as has been said,
was still to the full extent the best tradition of scholarship in Latin Grammar,
Oratory and Poetry, together with a certain knowledge of Greek-in fact
the full classical lore of the 4th Century.
They arrived, also, at a time when the Irish were most ready to
receive them. For they found native schools of Irish oratory and
poetry in which their Brehons or jurists and Filidh (Filé) or poets
were being laboriously trained. To use Bede's expression, it was
not book-Latin but a living speech and a literature in the making
that was now heard in many parts of Ireland. '
No wonder, then, that a fusion of Gaelic and classical literature
began to take place. Thus, Irish bards fell into the metres of
Latin hymns sung in the churches, and introduced final and
internal rime, and a regularly recurring number of syllables, into


## p. 303 (#333) ############################################

CH. IX
]
Gaelic Poetry
303
their native poetry from the Latin; though Sigerson and others
would have us believe that rime came into Latin from the Gaels
or their kinsmen the Gauls, and that Cicero's famous O fortunatam
natam me Consule Romam shows this Celtic influence on Latin
poetry. Moreover, there was drawn into the Gaelic tongue a form
of rhythmic prose to be found in very early Gaelic writings,
notably the incantation of Amorgen, known as rosg, which still
has its counterpart in the Welsh preachers' hwel or rhetorical
cadence.
So complete a removal, westward, of classical scholarship
was thus made in the fourth century that, at the end of the fifth
century, Sidonius Apollinaris declares that he knew of but one
scholar at Trèves, Argogastis, who could speak and write pure
Latin. But the lucky Irish, all this while, were enjoying the full
gift of classical learning, and that at a time before scruples had
arisen in the minds of professors of Christianity against the study
of classics, owing to the pagan doctrines which pervaded them.
They, therefore, gave themselves up whole-heartedly to it, and when,
as missionaries and scholars, they carried back this classical
learning to the continent at the end of the fifth century, they
were amazed to find that they and their fellow-countrymen were
almost its sole possessors.
The interfusion of the Gaulish classical and Christian and the
Gaelic schools of literature, thus early in Irish history, not only
made for a singular forbearance towards such pagan themes as are
to be found in The Colloquy of St Patrick with Oisin (Ossian),
but, also, gave to the religious poems of the Irish saints and the
curiously free Gaelic translations from Vergil and other classical
writings a picturesque individuality which makes them delightful
reading.
Gaelic poetry resolves itself roughly into fairy poetry or
pagan supernatural poetry, early and later religious poetry, nature
poetry, war poetry, love poetry and what may be termed official
poetry, i. e. that of the bards as court poets, and as poets
attached to the great chieftains whose exploits and nuptials they
celebrated and whose dirges they sang; while, here and there,
specimens of Irish satirical poetry are to be met throughout the
three periods of ancient, middle and later Irish, into which
leading scholars are agreed in dividing the works left to us in
Irish Gaelic.
The early war poetry does not call for special comment beyond
this; as
as was to have been expected, it largely consists of


## p. 304 (#334) ############################################

304
[CH.
Anglo-Irish Literature
6
6
laudations of chieftains of a fiercely barbaric kind, and abounds with
picturesque descriptive phraseology. Thus, in Deirdre's Lament
over the Sons of Usnagh, they are variously described as 'three lions
from the Hill of the Cave,' 'three dragons of Dun Monidh' and
three props of the battle-host of Coolney. ' But, running through
the savage and demonic incidents that characterise the early
Irish epics, there is a vein of generosity of one heroic combatant
towards another, the desire to fight fair and even to succour
a failing enemy, strangely anticipatory of the spirit of medieval
chivalry.
Of official poetry, it may be said that its technique is extremely
elaborate and, since it was necessary to put as much thought as
possible into each self-contained quatrain, its condensations often
make very hard sayings of these early ranns. A love of, or
tendency towards, the supernatural permeates early and middle
Irish poetry, as, indeed, it also pervades The History of Ireland
by Geoffrey Keating, the Irish Herodotus, who wrote as late as
1634; and much of the fascination of Gaelic verse is due to the
intrusion of the glamour of the other world' into its pages.
Love poetry, among the earliest of its kind in Europe, not
only finds poignant expression in such an early Irish poem as What
is Love? -an expression as definite in its description of the
sufferings of a lover as can be found even in Shakespeare's Sonnets
a
- but the love lyrics interspersed among Irish prose romances are
generally uttered by famous women whose adventures are there
described with a passionate purity and tender, delicate feeling
rarely met with in the heroines of the Arthurian cycles.
One other characteristic distinguishes old Gaelic poetry from
that of contemporary European writers—that love of nature
described by Matthew Arnold as natural magic and, according
to him, specially characteristic of early and medieval Irish and
Welsh poetry. This feature of Gaelic poetry is not only to be
noticed in the open air Fenian Sagas, but, even in an early hymn
to the Virgin, we find her described as:
Branch of Jesse's Tree, whose blossoms
Scent the heavenly hazel wood!
and
Star of knowledge, rare and noble,
Tree of many blossoming sprays!
Indeed, the love of nature suffuses all Irish Gaelic poetry.
The bard of early days felt it even among the icy rigours of winter,
while the cheerful companionship with nature of the Irish monk


## p. 305 (#335) ############################################

IX]
Translations from Irish Poetry
305
or anchorite is in marked contrast with the fakir-like indifference
to her influences of a St Simeon Stylites or the voluntary with-
drawal from them of the enclosed Orders of later days. Enough
has been said here to suggest that there is much in Irish Gaelic
literature, which, if well translated into English verse or prose,
might have a stimulative effect upon English letters. Stopford
Brooke set himself to prove this by an instructive essay entitled
The Need and Use of getting Irish Literature into the English
Tongue, written three and twenty years ago, in which he showed
that there is a vast body of that literature untranslated or in-
adequately translated, and that very much of it, in good hands,
might be so rendered as to prove a substantial gain to English
literature.
There has been a considerable response to his appeal, and it
is not a little remarkable that, more than a hundred years ago,
an early scion of the same literary stock, Charlotte Brooke, daughter
of Henry Brooke, the dramatist, had conceived the same view of
the importance of recruiting English literature from Irish Gaelic
sources, and put it into practice by her own volume of translations
from Irish poetry.
Unfortunately, however, the artificial, not to say affected,
English verse of her day was about the worst vehicle for the
reproduction of the best Gaelic poetry, and the contributors to
Hardiman's Irish Minstrelsy, which followed her volume, and even
later writers in the nineteenth century, were found wanting as
effective translators from the Irish. But a new impulse to, and
pleasure in, the study of Gaelic poetry was contributed by the
vivid versions in kindred English forms of the great Irish prose
epics, and of the lyric passages with which they are studded,
as well as of the poems of the earlier and later bards wrought by
such writers as Edward Walsh and Sir Samuel Ferguson, Mangan
and Callanan, Whitley Stokes and Standish Hayes O'Grady, and
the editors of the Ossianic society's publications.
A band of contemporary authors, some of whom had already
translated many poems, have further answered to the call. This
became more easy, owing to the impetus given to the study of Irish
by the foundation of the Gaelic league. The Irish Text society was
started, and more than a dozen volumes of important English
translations from Irish classics have been issued by it. Many
translations have been the work of Irishwomen, while further
translations of Irish lyric poetry, Irish heroic tales and myths and
Irish dramatic poetry have been made. It is only during the last
20
E. L. XIV.
CH. IX.


## p. 306 (#336) ############################################

306
[CH.
Anglo-Irish Literature
twenty-five years that the language of this poetry has been
carefully studied, and later scholars have had the advantage
over their predecessors in being able to introduce with great
effect reminiscences of the characteristic epithets and imagery
which formed a large part of the stock-in-trade of the medieval
bard.
We have indicated that the interesting individual character of
early Irish literature makes it worth while getting that literature
more fully represented in the English language through translation,
adaptation and the use of Irish themes in original English writings.
It may be desirable to point out here that, when Irish literature
had a wider recognition in Britain and on the continent than it
now commands, it thus found its way into European and Welsh and,
therefrom, into English literature. The Anglo-Norman conquerors
of Ireland, no doubt, clung to their French prose and verse
romances, and the native Irish chieftains were as conservative of
their native hero tales and poems. Yet, as E. C. Quiggin well puts it,
few serious scholars will be prepared to deny that the Island contributed in
considerable measure to the common literary stock of the Middle ages. In
the literature of vision, very popular in Ireland, a chord was struck which
continued to vibrate powerfully until the time of the reformation, and The
Vision of Tundale (Tnudgal), written with striking success by an Irishman
named Marcus at Regensburg about the middle of the twelfth century, was
probably known to Dante, and, in addition to the numerous continental
versions, there is a rendering of its story into middle English verse.
Apart from its visions, there is a section of Irish Gaelic literature
known as that of imrama or voyages. The earliest romance of the
kind is the voyage of Maeldun, to Joyce's translation of which, in
his Old Celtic Romances, the writer of this chapter called Tenny-
son's attention. Hence the appearance of Tennyson's wellknown
poem. A still more famous Irish imram is The Voyage of
St Brendan, which passed through all the Christian continent and,
therefore, as Quiggin points out, 'figures in The South English
Legendary. ' "The episode of St Brendan and the Whale, moreover,
was probably the ultimate source of one of Milton's best known
similes in his description of Satan. But the legend of St Brendan,
as told in Irish literature, differs both from the Latin version and
from those of France and Germany. Matthew Arnold's poem is
based on these foreign versions and introduces the incident of
Judas Iscariot being allowed out of hell for one day in the year,
because of an act of humanity when on earth.
The question is still vexed as to how far the characteristics of
Arthurian legends are due to their being possessed in common by


## p. 307 (#337) ############################################

IX]
Celtic Influence
307
6
the Irish and the Welsh, or to Irish influences over Welsh romantic
literature dating back to the days of Gruffydd ap Cynan. He was
the son of an Irish princess, who had spent much of his life as an
exile in Ireland and, on his return to Wales, undoubtedly brought
with him Irish bards and shenachies, who through their superior
literary knowledge and technique and musical skill, greatly
advanced the Cymric culture of his day.
But it now seems fairly certain, in the opinion of Windisch and
other Celtic scholars, including Quiggin, that
some of the Welsh rhapsodists apparently served a kind of apprenticeship
with their Irish brethren, and many things Irish were assimilated at this time
which, through this channel, were shortly to find their way into Anglo-French.
Thus it may now be regarded as certain that the name of the 'fair sword,'
Excalibur, by Geoffrey called Caliburnus (Welsh Caletfwlch) is taken from
Caladbolg, the far famed broadsword of Fergus Mac Roig. It does not
appear that the whole frame-work of the Irish sagas was taken over, but, as
Windisch points out, episodes were borrowed as well as tricks of imagery.
So, to mention but one, the central incident of Syr Gawayn and the Grene
Knyght is doubtless taken from the similar adventure of Cuchulain in
Bricriu's Feast. Thus, the share assigned to Irish influence in the matière
de Bretagne is likely to grow with the progress of research1.
Matthew Arnold considers Shakespeare full of Celtic magic in
his handling of nature, and makes a fine discrimination between
his Greek and Celtic nature notes; but whence did he come by the
latter? Was it, at second hand, through Edmund Spenser, or his
friend Dowland the lutenist, who, if not an Irishman, had an Irish
association, or was his mother, Mary Arden, who came from the
Welsh border, and whose distant kinsfolk were connected with
the Welsh Tudor court, of Cymric blood ? Yet the Celtic note
is there. But, while Shakespeare describes Welsh character
brilliantly, in three special types, those of Glendower, Fluellen
and Sir Hugh Evans, he only sketches one feather-headed Irish-
man, records not a single Irish incident in any of his plays and only
makes a few passing allusions to kerns and gallowglasses, and to
the marvellous powers of prophecy and of riming rats to death
claimed by Irish bards, weaving into his musical and lyrical
framework half a dozen Irish airs and a couple of references to
Irish folk-lore-if, indeed, his queen Mab is the Irish queen Medb
—
and his Puck is the Irish Puca, whose gambols and appearance are
very similar to Puck's.
Probably, Shakespeare was not unnaturally prejudiced against
the Irish, with whom, for much of his life, his country was at war,
and whom Spenser had described in unflattering terms, and at
1 'Irish Influence on English Literature,' Quiggin, E. C. , in The Glories of Ireland.
20—2


## p. 308 (#338) ############################################

308
[CH.
Anglo-Irish Literature
whose hands he and Essex and other Englishmen with whom
Shakespeare must have been in intellectual sympathy had suffered
much. Spenser's own writings, also, suggest that, although his
Faerie Queene, largely written on the banks of the southern
Blackwater, has its scenery as a background in book y and else-
where, the bardic poetry which he had caused to be translated
for him, and which, in his opinion, was 'of sweet wit and good
invention,' made no personal appeal to him. Indeed, considering
how savagely hostile it was to his countrymen, as he declares, it
was not likely to have had any further effect upon him.
To what must we attribute the literary silence of the English-
speaking settlers in Ireland from the end of the twelfth to the
close of the sixteenth century? The causes are threefold. Irish
and Latin, for the mass of the inhabitants of Ireland, were their
written and spoken languages, and writers in English would have
had a very small hearing. Constant wars with the native Irish,
and a very precarious hold upon their property, made the pursuit
of English letters almost out of the question with the Anglo-Irish
of the Pale. Finally, the remarkable tendency of the Anglo-Norman
and Englishman to become, in course of time, more Irish than the
Irish, owing to intermarriage and fosterage and separation from
their kinsfolk in England and Wales, drew them away from
English and Welsh into Irish-Gaelic literature.
With the exception, therefore, of merely technical books such
as John Garland's Organum, a musical treatise in Latin, and
Lionel Power's first English treatise on music, in 1395, no Anglo-
Irish literary works are to be noted till we reach Stanyhurst's
Description of Ireland, together with part of a history of Ireland,
written, under the direction of Edmund Campion the Jesuit, for
Holinshed's Chronicles, published in 15781.
Works by Anglo-Irish writers of the seventeenth century are
largely in Latin and, therefore, are not dealt with here. A reference
to the bibliography of this chapter will, however, show that
a few of these have been rendered into English and should be
consulted, in this or in their original form, by students interested
in Irish history, archaeology and hagiology, secular and religious,
and in the treatment of these subjects by such distinguished con-
temporary writers as John Colgan, Sir James Ware—whom arch-
bishop Ussher had educated into an interest in Irish history and
antiquities--Luke Wadding and Philip O'Sullivan Beare. These,
too, were the times of Geoffrey Keating, the first writer of modern
1 See, ante, vol. II, p. 319.


## p. 309 (#339) ############################################

IX]
James Ussher.
The Sheridans
309
Irish who can claim to possess literary style, and of the O'Clery
family. Keating was a poet as well as a historian, and his lyric
Geoffrey Keating to his Letter on its way to Ireland is one of the
most charming of Irish patriotic poems. Keating's History of
Ireland has been recently issued by the Irish Text society, with
an excellent English translation facing the original Irish, and
Annals of the Four Masters may also be consulted in a satis-
factory English version.
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.
&
а
Passing to later centuries, we shall find few instances of a here-
ditary talent so persistent as that of the Sheridan stock. Richard
Brinsley Sheridan himself inherited poetic tastes from his mother,
born Frances Chamberlaine, from his father Thomas Sheridan, a
noted actor and playwright, his dramatic bent, and from his grand-
father, Thomas Sheridan, Swift's intimate, a classical style. His own
brilliant wit descended to his son Tom Sheridan, father of Caroline
Sheridan, afterwards Mrs Norton-(the supposed prototype of George
Meredith's Diana of the Crossways), and, also, of Helen Sheridan,
lady Dufferin. From the Sheridan stock, too, descends the Le Fanu
talent; for Alice, Richard Brinsley Sheridan's sister, a clever
writer of verse and plays, was grandmother of Joseph Sheridan
Le Fanu, while Sheridan Knowles, the popular actor and dramatist,
was, also, of the Sheridan-Le Fanu stock. Caroline Norton does
See, ante, vol. XIII, chap. VI.


## p. 310 (#340) ############################################

310
[CH.
Anglo-Irish Literature
a
not escape the influence of the sentimentality which marked the
verse of her time, as her sister lady Dufferin escapes it. The
simplest themes seemed to attract lady Dufferin most. Living a
happy domestic life amid Irish surroundings, her warm heart beats
in such close sympathy with her peasant neighbours that, in I'm
sitting on the stile, Mary, and The Bay of Dublin, she writes as
if she were one of themselves, while her sense of fun floats through
her Irish poems with a delicate breeziness.
A writer of the Sheridan blood nearer to present day literary
tastes than James Sheridan Knowles? was Joseph Sheridan Le
Fanu, Sheridan's great grand-nephew. T. W. Rolleston does not
say too much in Le Fanu's praise as a master of the mysterious and
terrible when he thus writes of him :
In Uncle Silas, in his wonderful tales of the supernatural, such as The
Watcher, and in a short and less known but most masterly story, The
Room in the Dragon Volant, he touched the springs of terror and suspense,
as perhaps no other writer of fiction in the language has been able to do.
His fine scholarship, poetic sense, and strong, yet delicate handling of
language and of incident give these tales a place quite apart among works
of sensational fiction. But perhaps the most interesting of all his novels is
The House by the Churchyard, a wonderful admixture of sentimentalism,
humour, tragedy, and romance.
To this may be added the belief that, in Le Fanu's verse and,
notably, in his drama Beatrice, the qualities above indicated are
often conveyed with a finer touch, and, at times, with extraordinary
directness of suggestion. Again, the lurid terror of his poetical
narratives is happily relieved by interludes of such haunting
beauty of colour and sound, that we cannot but lament the late-
ness of this discovery of his highest artistic self. Indeed, our
literature can ill afford to lose lyrical dramas with such a stamp
of appalling power upon them as is impressed on Beatrice, or
old-world idylls so full of Gaelic glamour as The Legend of
the Glaive, or so terrible a confession by a drunkard of how he
had fallen irrevocably into the toils of the enchantress drink as
The Song of the Bottle and such stirring Irish ballads as Shamps
O'Brien and Phaudrig Crohoore.
William Drennan was one of the founders and the terary
champion of 'The Society of United Irishmen’; for his Letters of
Orellana drew a large number of Ulstermen into its ranks, while
his fine lyrics The Wake of William Orr and Erin, admired by
Moore, earned him the title 'The Tyrtaeus of the United Irishmen,'
1 See, ante, vol. XIII, chap. VIII.


## p. 311 (#341) ############################################

1x]
National Folk-ballads
311
Mary Tighe, born Blachford-notable, like Mrs Hemans, for her
beauty, poetical talent and unhappy marriage----was the authoress
of Psyche, adapted from the story of Cupid and Psyche in The
Golden A88 of Apuleius—a long, harmonious, fanciful and un-
affected poem, in the Spenserian stanza, which had a wide
circulation in its day, influenced the work of Keats and won
Moore's praise in his lyric Tell me the witching Tale again.
With the later years of the eighteenth century begins that
period in Anglo-Irish literature when the brief but brilliant era
of Irish parliamentary independence gave an impulse to literature,
art and music in Ireland which survived the passing of the Act
of union for quite a generation. Apart from the patriotic poems of
Drennan and such national folk-ballads as The Shan van Vocht, and
The Wearing of the Green, and the brilliant oratory of Grattan,
Flood and Curran—there was a revival of interest in Irish native
poetry and music, evidenced by the publication of Charlotte
Brooke's Reliques of Irish Poetry, the holding of the Granard and
Belfast meetings of Irish harpers and the consequent issue of
Bunting's first and second collections of Ancient Irish Music,
which inspired Moore's Irish Melodies. Magazines began to
appear in Dublin, Belfast and Cork, which gave employment to
Irish men and women of letters. Learned societies sprang up and
flourished. Schools of art were founded and state-aided popular
education succeeded the hedge-schools. But these movements
were interrupted and marred by intermittent political agitations,
and Dublin lost more and more of its prestige as a capital. The
writers, artists and musicians who would have rallied around the
leaders of an independent Ireland were gradually led to seek their
living in London; and, for the same reasons, the mental vitality
they had showed at the end of the previous century declined
even more decidedly in Belfast, Cork and Limerick.
Two groups of Irish patriots, however, the one more purely
political, the other, owing to race, less actively so, conferred
literary credit upon Ireland even at a time when she was suffering
from unsatisfactory land laws and the imposition of a poor
law contrary to the character of her people.
One of these groups, the Young Irelanders, carried on its
literary propaganda very much as a protest against what they
regarded as the continuous misgovernment of their country; the
other group remained faithful to literary efforts for Ireland in spite
of the existing condition of the country; and, thus, though in
a large measure opposed to one another in politics, the two bodies


## p. 312 (#342) ############################################

312
[CH.
Anglo-Irish Literature
worked side by side, more especially in universities and learned
societies.
George Petrie, a distinguished artist, archaeologist, musician
and man of letters, and a man of as much personal charm as
versatility of talent, drew around him the most eminent of the
non-political group of Irish writers referred to, in association
with Caesar Otway, who, somewhat late in life, discovered literary
gifts of a high order which he employed in writings descrip-
tive of Irish life, scenery and historic remains. He started
The Dublin Penny Journal and conducted it with spirit and
marked ability for a year, and, ten years later, The Irish
Penny Journal, which he carried on, this time as sole editor,
with equal enthusiasm and skill for the same short period.
The physician William Stokes, whose Biography of George
Petrie is a standard Irish work of its kind, is, however, con-
strained to say, that, though, next to politics and polemics, the
subjects treated of in these two illustrated magazines, namely,
the history, biography, poetry, antiquities, natural history,
legends and traditions of the country, were most likely to attract
the attention of the Irish people, yet,
there is no more striking evidence of the absence of public opinion or the
want of interest in the history of the country on the part of Irish society
than the failure of these two works, and it is remarkable that the principal
demand for them was from London and the provincial towns of England.
In literary merit, they were anything but failures and, indeed, it is told of
Southey, that he used to say, when talking of these volumes, that he prized
them as among the most valuable of his library.
The Irish writers who deserved this favourable verdict from
Southey were Carleton and the Banims, Crofton Croker, Mrs S. C.
Hall, Anster, Martin Doyle, Wills, D'Alton and Furlong.
Besides Petrie himself, author of two archaeological works
-Origin and uses of the Round Towers and Essay on Tara
Hill—each a masterpiece of scientific reasoning, and of a series of
descriptive articles relating to Clonmacnoise, the isles of Arran
and other places of Irish antiquarian and other interests, which
possess a charm as delicate and wistful as his Welsh and Irish
water-colour paintings, we find ourselves in the company of Otway,
of whom Archer Butler has well said :
a
Among all the panegyrists of Irish natural beauty, none has ever
approached him. You are not, indeed, to expect much method or system in
his sketches, but he had a higher and rarer gift. He was possessed by what
he saw and felt. His imagination seemed to revel in the sublimities he
described: his sentences became breathing pictures, better, because more
suggestive, than painting itself.


## p. 313 (#343) ############################################

IX]
Maginn, Lever and Lover
313
And now we may hark back a little to the writers who, after
qualifying for the task in Maga and other British magazines,
were to establish and carry on for a long season the brilliant
Dublin University Magazine. First and foremost of these was
William Maginn? This was the time when Lamb, De Quincey,
Lockhart and Wilson were giving most of their writings to maga-
zines, and Maginn proceeded to follow their example. His
classical scholarship gave him style, to which he added remarkable
versatility of literary power. It is said that he conceived the
idea of the famous Noctes Ambrosianae and wrote many of these
dialogues. He was the author of such brilliantly humorous,
if truculent and devil-may-care, verses as The Irishman and the
Lady and St Patrick; while, among his satiric writings, his
panegyric of colonel Pride may stand comparison even with Swift's
notable philippics; and his Sir Morgan O'Doherty was the
undoubted ancestor of Maxwell's and Lever's hard-drinking,
practical-joking Irish military heroes. Maginn, no doubt, suggested
to William Hamilton Maxwell, another Trinity college graduate,
the idea of laying himself out to write military novels ; hence, his
Stories of Waterloo. Maxwell was a great sportsman, if a poor
parson, and his Wild Sports of the West of Ireland enjoyed
a great, and, in the opinion of Christopher North,' a deserved,
popularity.
Charles Lever, as a young man, sat at Maxwell's feet, but
soon surpassed his master in popularity as a writer of the new
form of fiction originated by Maginn. He, too, was educated at
.
Trinity college, Dublin, and took a medical degree there and at
Louvain, but practised the healing art far more effectively than
Goldsmith. Most of his earlier work, like that of Maxwell,
appeared in The Dublin University Magazine, which he edited
when it was in its prime, and, here, his spirited and brilliant,
if somewhat rough and ready, military novels first saw the light.
In his later years, when he was consul at Trieste, his more
finished, if less popular, works, Cornelius O'Dowd and Lord
Kilgobbin, a novel of Fenian times, appeared. In verse as in
prose, Lever has a lighter and more human touch than Maginn,
without his masterfulness of style.
But he does not escape
from the somewhat selfish atmosphere in which the hard-
drinking, hard-riding squires and squireens of his day had their
being.
Samuel Lover, a protestant Irishman, took a stand against
1 See, ante, vol. xn, chap. VI.


## p. 314 (#344) ############################################

314
[CH.
Anglo-Irish Literature
the Irish verse of his day and made a study, if not a deep one,
of his catholic compatriots. Lover has always been compared
with Lever, by whom, however, as a recent writer in The Quarterly
Review justly says,
he was overshadowed. Yet, within his limited sphere, he was a true
humourist, and the careless whimsical, illogical aspects of Irish character
have seldom been more effectively illustrated than by the author of Handy
Andy and The Gridiron. Paddy, as drawn by Lever, succeeds in spite of
his drawbacks, much as Brer Rabbit does in the tales of Uncle Remus.
Lover's heroes' liked action but they hated work'; the philosophy of thrift-
lessness is summed up to perfection in Paddy's Pastoral Rhapsody:
Here's a health to you, my darlin'
Though I'm not worth a farthin';
For when I'm drunk I think I'm rich,
I've a feather-bed in every ditch.
Still, it must be conceded that Lover made a strong step forward
as a writer of national songs and stories, even though he cannot be
held to possess the style and glamour that characterises some
latter day Irish novelists and poets.
The treatment of national stories was first raised to the level of
an art by Crofton Croker, in his Fairy Legends and Traditions of
Ireland, first published, anonymously, in 1825—a set of folk-tales
full of literary charm. For, just as Moore took Irish airs, touched
them up and partnered them with lyrics to suit what was deemed
to be British and Irish taste, so Croker gathered his folk-tales
from the Munster peasantry with whom he was familiar and,
assisted by literary friends, including Maginn (who is credited by
D. J. O'Donoghue with the authorship of that humorous pearl
of great price Daniel O'Rourke), gave them exactly the form and
finish needful to provide the reading public of his day with a
volume of fairy lore.
William Carleton and the brothers John and Michael Banim
followed Crofton Croker with what Douglas Hyde rightly describes
as folklore tales of an incidental and highly manipulated type.
William Carleton, one of the most remarkable of Irish writers, was
born at Prillisk, county Tyrone, the youngest of the fourteen
children of a poor peasant. His father was not only a man of
amazing memory, but a walking chronicle of old tales, legends
and historical anecdotes, which he loved to recount to his children,
and with which he delighted his son William. His mother, too,
was specially gifted; for she had a beautiful voice and sang old
Irish songs and ballads with great charm. He was intended
for the Roman catholic ministry, but his parents were too


## p. 315 (#345) ############################################

IX]
Carleton and Kennedy
315
poor to afford him an education at Maynooth, and, therefore, he
passed his time in desultory reading until he secured the appoint-
ment of tutor in the family of a well-to-do farmer. Tired of this
employment, he made his way to Dublin and, after many vicissi-
tudes, obtained employment from Caesar Otway on his periodical
The Christian Examiner. To this, he contributed thirty sketches
of Irish peasant life, which were collected and published (1832)
in a volume entitled Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry.
Carleton, at the time, was thirty-six years of age; but the success
of his book was great and immediate. A second series appeared
in 1833, and a kindred volume, Tales of Ireland, was issued in 1834.
Some of these sketches and stories appeared in The Dublin Penny
Journal as before stated, and later contributions of the kind in
The Irish Penny Journal. These stories and sketches, which
had a great vogue, are perfectly faithful to the Irish peasant
life they depicted, and, for their sudden and surprising alternation
of wild humour and profound melancholy, are a unique contribution
to folk literature. Challenged by critics who doubted his being
able to give the world anything but brief disconnected tales, he
replied with Fardorougha the Miser, an extraordinarily powerful,
if sombre, story of a man whose soul is divided between passion
for money and deep affection for an only son. The women's
characters as well as the men's are finely conceived. Other,
less successful, novels by Carleton are Valentine M Clutchy and
The Black Prophet. He left behind him an unpublished story,
Anne Cosgrave, which contains some remarkable chapters, but
which was written when he was in feeble health and broken spirits
caused by family bereavement. But he will be best remembered
by his descriptions of Irish peasant life, at an unsophisticated
period, rather than by his humorous folk-tales, which, though
extremely clever, lack the literary touch given to kindred work by
Maginn, Crofton and, it may be added, Patrick Kennedy.
Patrick Kennedy was, indeed, a genuine writer of Irish folk-tales.
His Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celt and Fireside Stories of
Ireland, Bardic Stories of Ireland, Evenings in the Duffrey and
Banks of the Boro' were put on paper much as he heard them when
a boy in his native county Wexford, when they had already passed,
with little change in the telling, from Gaelic into the peculiar
Anglo-Irish local dialect which is distinctly west-Saxon in its
character. Kennedy is a true story-teller, animated and humorous,
but not extravagantly so, like Carleton and Lover at times ;
indeed, his artistic restraint is remarkable.


## p. 316 (#346) ############################################

316
Anglo-Irish Literature [CH.
a
Francis Sylvester Mahony, better known as Father Prout, was
born in Cork in 1804. Ordained as a Jesuit, he became a master
at Clongowes college and, when there, began to write for English
magazines and journals—Fraser's Magazine, where the first of the
celebrated Reliques in prose and verse appeared with the afterwards
wellknown signature 'Father Prout P. P. of Watergrasshill, Co.
Cork’; The Daily News, to which he contributed a series of letters,
as Roman correspondent, under the designation 'Don Jeremy
Savonarola’; Bentley's Miscellany and The Cornhill. Afterwards,
he became Paris correspondent of The Globe, of which he was part
proprietor. He died in Paris in 1866. A learned and witty essayist
and a brilliant versifier in English and Latin, he had the audacity
to turn some of Moore's Irish Melodies into Latin verse and then
claim that his translations were the originals. He is now, how-
ever, best known by The Bells of Shandon and a droll imitation
of an Irish hedge-school ballad, entitled The Sabine Farmer's
Serenade.
The brothers Banim, John and Michael, are best known by
their joint work Tales of the O'Hara Family-one brother passing
on his work to the other for suggestions and criticism. Their several
gifts, as shown in their popular Irish tales, are in pleasant contrast.
'John's,' writes Katharine Tynan, 'was the stronger and more versatile,
Michael's the more humane and sunshiny. John's, occasionally in a page of
dark tragedy, recalls that grinding melancholy of Carleton, which is almost
squalid. It is a far cry from Father Connell to The Nowlans; in fact, the
two stories represent almost the extremes of human temperament. Michael's
was the gentler and more idealising nature, though no one should deny
tenderness to the author of Soggarth Aroon and Aileen. '
No doubt, John Banim's work was coloured by the melancholy
from which he suffered, due, in the first instance, to the death of his
betrothed, and, afterwards, to a somewhat morbid temperament.
Through the influence of his friend Sheil, he produced a successful
tragedy Damon and Pythias at Covent garden, and wrote a series
of clever essays Revelations of the Dead, satires on the follies and
affectations of the day, which were much read at the time.
Michael Banim was the best of brothers. Quite apart from the
modest manner in which he held back from claiming his share
in the popularity gained by John, through the success of The
Tales of the O'Hara Family, he begged him, when news came
of his failing health, to return with his wife from his work to
Kilkenny and make his home there with him, insisting that 'one
brother should not want while the other can supply him. ' Though


## p. 317 (#347) ############################################

IX]
Thomas Osborne Davis
317
the elder, Michael outlived John by thirty years, during which
period he produced Father Connell, one of his best novels, Clough
Fion and The Town of The Cascades.
We may here revert to the group of Irish writers who made
national Irish politics the vehicle for their literary propaganda
and, wise in their generation, thus secured a far wider hearing
than Petrie and Otway gained by means of their three magazines.
Thomas Osborne Davis, the son of parents of strictly unionist
principles, and with but little Irish blood in his veins, went,
as a protestant, to Trinity college, Dublin, but then began
to show his independence of mind. He did not lay himself out
for college distinction, which he could easily have gained, but
read omnivorously, won influence with his fellow-students and,
ultimately, became president of the Historical society, the leading
university debating-club. Called to the bar, he began to practise
in the revision courts and to dabble in political journalism.
This latter work attracted the attention of Charles Gavan Duffy,
the brilliant young editor of a Belfast national journal, and a
Roman catholic. The two men became friends, and a walk taken
by them and John Blake Dillon in Phoenix park led to the
establishment of The Nation, from which sprang what was soon
known as “The Young Ireland Movement,' and which, as Duffy
afterwards wrote, “profoundly influenced the mind of his own
generation and made a permanent change in the opinion of the
nation. '
At first, Davis, who was joint editor of The Nation, with Duffy,
was opposed to the introduction of verse into this journal. After-
wards, however, he recognised how readily his countrymen would
respond to this kind of appeal; and, in the third and sixth numbers
of the paper, respectively, there appeared two of his finest political
lyrics My Grave and his Lament for Owen Roe O'Neill. There-
after, he wrote much verse in The Nation, little of it, however,
deserving the name of poetry. Nor was this surprising. He had
not time to polish his lines ; besides, he wrote for “the enlighten-
ment and regeneration of the people,' and his verse, therefore,
tended to become didactic. Yet, in his few leisure hours, when
he could carefully think out and finish a poem, or when he was
under the inspiration of an ardent personal patriotism, he was a
true poet—as in bis Boatman of Kinsale, O the Marriage, the
Marriage and his historical ballad The Sack of Baltimore. But
Davis will further be remembered by his essays. Gavan Duffy, also,
broke into spirited, unaffected verse in The Nation : witness his
>


## p. 318 (#348) ############################################

318
[CH.
Anglo-Irish Literature
Lay Sermon, The Irish Chief, Innishowen and The Patriots
Bride. But there were two other constant contributors to The
Nation who excelled both him and Davis in poetic craft-Denis
Florence MacCarthy and Thomas D'Arcy MºGee. One of
MacCarthy's finest poems is in honour of the clan MacCaura, of
which he came, and his lyrics The Pillar Towers of Ireland and
Waiting for the May have become popular—the first, deservedly
so; the latter, in spite of its somewhat sickly cast of thought. His
translations of Calderon's dramas are accepted as standard works
of the kind ; while his Shelley's Early Life from original sources
is interesting as showing what that poet's efforts were for the
amelioration of the government of Ireland.
Thomas D'Arcy MºGee was the most considerable of The
Nation poets. He visited America at the age of seventeen, and,
two years later, became editor of The Boston Pilot, but, meanwhile,
the echo of a brilliant speech made by him reached O'Connell
across the Atlantic, and led to the offer of a post on The Freeman's
Journal, which he accepted, but, afterwards, abandoned in favour
of more congenial work, under Duffy, in The Nation. There is
a mystical splendour about his most remarkable poem The Celts,
contributed to its pages, and his patriotic poems I left two loves
on a distant strand, My Irish Wife and Home Thoughts deserve
remembrance as does The Sea-divided Gaels, which might serve
as a pan-Celtic anthem. His career was remarkable. Concerned
in the Irish rebellion of '48, and with a price set on his head, he
again found a home in the United States, started the New York
Nation, and, afterwards, at Boston, The American Celt. Meanwhile,
his political views underwent much modification. He passed into
Canada, entered the Canadian parliament and so distinguished
himself there that he became Canadian minister of agriculture.
But he so completely abandoned his revolutionary, in favour of
constitutional, views on the subject of Irish grievances that he
incurred the bitter hostility of the Fenians, and, on denouncing
their agitation, was assassinated.
Richard D'Alton Williams, author of The Munster War Song,
lady Wilde (“Speranza '), who wrote remarkable rhetorical verses
upon the Irish potato famine, and John Kells Ingram, author
of the immortal Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight? , who ended
his life as vice-provost of Trinity college, Dublin, are other poets
to be had in remembrance.
Meanwhile, Davis had died at a tragically early age, and Duffy,
after carrying on The Nation till its suppression on political


## p. 319 (#349) ############################################

IX]
Sir Samuel Ferguson
319
grounds and reviving it again, when he narrowly escaped trans-
portation for life on a charge of treason, sought and found a new
field for his indomitable energies in Australia. Here he rose to be
premier of Victoria, was knighted and returned to this country to
found the Irish literary societies of London and Dublin, and to
edit The New Irish Library, thus taking a prominent part in
what is now known as the Irish literary renascence.
Sheil possessed remarkable literary as well as oratorical gifts 1.
He wrote half-a-dozen tragedies, two of which, The Apostate and
Evadne or the Statue, were produced with marked success at
Covent garden, Eliza O'Neill, Kemble and Macready being included
in the cast of the first of these plays. He also wrote, for The New
Monthly Magazine, Sketches of the Irish Bar, in conjunction
with W. H. Curran. These became popular and were afterwards
republished. John Philpot Curran, the orator, was a witty and
graceful writer of verse, and his Deserter's Meditation, and Cushla
ma Chree have caught the Irish popular fancy and are still often
sung and recited. Samuel, afterwards Sir Samuel, Ferguson, came
into notice as a poet by the appearance of his Forging of the
Anchor contributed to Blackwood when he was but twenty-one,
in May 1832; a little later, The Return of Claneboy, a prose
romance which also appeared in Maga, may be regarded, to quote
himself, as the first indication of my ambition to raise the native
elements of Irish history to a dignified level. ' 'This ambition,' he
adds, ‘I think may be taken as the key to almost all the literary
work of my subsequent life. ' But, while casting about for nobler
themes to work upon than were to be found in Irish bardic and
peasant poems, finely rendered by him into English verse in the
pages of The Dublin University Magazine, he wrote his elegy
Thomas Davis, 1845, a poignant expression of his grief at the
death of the famous young nationalist leader. This poem was
not included in his published works, and appeared for the first
time in Sir Samuel Ferguson in the Ireland of his day, a
biography of her husband, by lady Ferguson, born Mary Guinness,
who had previously written an interesting Story of Ireland
before the English Conquest, finely illustrated by passages from
Sir Samuel's heroic poems.
The elegy on Davis certainly shows Ferguson at his highest as
a lyric poet, and is rightly described by Gavan Duffy as the most
Celtic in structure and spirit, of all the poetical tributes to the lost
leader. ' Ferguson was held back from his higher literary work
1 See, ante, chap. II.
a
6


## p. 320 (#350) ############################################

320 Anglo-Irish Literature
[ch.
8
6
by the exigencies of the Irish potato famine and expressed his
feelings at its mismanagement in verse full of bitter invective; but
he lived to turn his fine satiric gift against the successors of the
Young Ireland poets and patriots, with whom he had sympathised,
when he found them descending to what he characterised as 'a
sordid social war of classes carried on by the vilest methods. In
his satiric poems At the Polo Ground, he analyses, in Browning's
manner, Carey's frame of mind before giving the fatal signal to the
assassins of Burke and lord Frederick Cavendish ; and, in his
Dublin eclogue In Carey's Footsteps, and in The Curse of the Joyces,
he unsparingly exposes the cruelties of the Boycotting system. In
1864 appeared Lays of the Western Gael, containing a series of
Irish ballads full of much finer work than he had yet achieved. Of
these, The Tain Quest is, perhaps, the noblest effort ; but the mag-
nificently savage lay The Welshmen of Tirawley is the most striking.
In 1872 appeared Congal, a splendid story of the last heroic stand
by Celtic paganism against the Irish champions of the Cross, in
which the terrible shapes of Celtic superstition, the Giant Walker'
and the Washer of the Ford,' loom monstrously before us, and
in which the contending hosts at Moyra are marshalled with
fine realism. But Ferguson's genius was to break into even
finer flower at the last, and, in Deirdre and Conary, published
in his final volume of 1880, he reaches his fullest height as a poet.
Ferguson's tendency to act, at times, as a commentator on his
own work and to present it at other times in a too ponderously
Latinised form, as well as the careless, not to say bluff, disregard for
verbal delicacies into which, now and then, he lapses, are the only
habits to which exception can be taken in his technique. For
his method is uniformly manly, and his occasional periods of
inspiration sweep minor critical objections before them, as the blast
from his Mananan's mantle swept the chieftain and his hound
into the valley, like leaves before the wind.
Gerald Griffin, who has caught much of the quality of Oliver
Goldsmith's style, though his work is more consciously Irish, stands
midway between Anglo-Irish and Irish-Irish writers. He was
the author of The Collegians, perhaps the best of Irish novels
written in the nineteenth century. He also wrote a successful play,
Gisippus, and some charming ballads. He had a quiet sense of
humour, and carried this into his novels and Irish stories, and his
musical ear and deft use of unusual metres give him an enduring
place among our lyrical writers. He has a leaning towards Gaelic
words, and introduces them freely into the refrains to his songs :


## p. 321 (#351) ############################################

IX]
National Songs
321
but he neither attempts the Hiberno-English vernacular cultivated
by Lover, nor the form of Gaelic-English adopted by Walsh
and Ferguson, and, while his milieu is essentially, though not
obtrusively, Irish, his phraseology is distinctly English, or, at
any rate, Anglo-Irish.
William Alexander, archbishop of Armagh and sometime
professor of poetry at Oxford, deals very beautifully with Irish
scenery in many of his poems, and writes with delicate spirituality;
but his wife, Cecil Frances Alexander, born Humphreys, had a more
Irish heart with a wider range of sympathy, and the pulse beats
as quickly to her Siege of Derry as it does to 'Charlotte Eliza-
beth's' The Maiden City. Her hymns and sacred poems, including
The Burial of Moses, much admired by Tennyson, are household
words, and her less wellknown lyric The Irish Mother's Lament, is
one of the most poignant appeals of the kind ever uttered.
The recent death of T. D. Sullivan, long editor of The Nation
in its latest phase of political existence, removed from the field
of Irish patriotic literature its most distinguished veteran. For,
although he wrote stirring narrative poems entitled The Madness
of King Conchobar and The Siege of Dunboy, the stronghold of
the O'Sullivans of Beara, and shared with Robert Dwyer Joyce the
honour of giving to fine English verse the beautiful early Irish
Story of Blanaid, it was as a writer of patriotic Irish songs and
ballads that he made his special poetical mark. His God Save
Ireland, if but as a makeshift, has become the Irish national
anthem. His much finer Song from the Backwoods is widely
and affectionately known, as is, also, his impetuous rebel ballad
Michael Duyer, and his simple but most pathetic A Soldier's
Wake will not be forgotten.
The Fenian movement, unlike that of the Young Irelanders, was
unassociated with literary effort. Yet it had an organ, The Irish
People, whose staff included men of ability: T. Clarke Luby,
John O'Leary and C. J.