Part 40

U-- niversity of Gottingen.

Like most of the great Anglo-Irishmen of his time, Canning favored Catholic emancipation. It is interesting to note that it was a letter of Canning's that led to the formulation of the Monroe Doctrine.

Henry Grattan (1746-1820), the hero of Grattan's parliament, was born in Dublin and studied at Trinity College. His history belongs to that of his country. Suffice it here to say that not only did he by great eloquence and real statesmanship secure a free parliament for Ireland In 1782, but also that he fought energetically, if unavailingly, against the abolition of that parliament in 1800, and that thenceforward he devoted his abilities to promoting the cause of Catholic emancipation. Dying in London, he was honored by being buried in Westminster Abbey. In an age of great orators he stands out among the very foremost. His speeches have become classics, and are constantly quoted.

Another brilliant Irish orator, as well as an eminent wit, of this period, was John Philpot Curran (1750-1817), who, born at Newmarket, Co. Cork, and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, achieved a wonderful success at the Irish bar. He defended with rare insight, eloquence, and patriotism those who were accused of complicity in the rebellion of 1798. As a member of Grattan's parliament, he voiced the most liberal principles, and, though a Protestant himself, he worked hard in the Catholic cause. He held the great office of Master of the Rolls in Ireland from 1806 to 1814. The memory of few Irish orators, wits, or patriots is greener today than that of Curran. His daughter Sarah, whose fate is so inextricably blended with that of the ill-starred Robert Emmet, has been rendered immortal by Moore in his beautiful song, "She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps".

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (1759-1797), the first advocate of the rights of women, though born in London, was of Irish extraction. Into the details of her extraordinary and chequered career it is not possible, or necessary, here to enter. Her published works include Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787); Answer to Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution (1791); Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792); and an unfinished Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution (Vol. I., 1794). Having in August, 1797, borne to her husband, William Godwin, a daughter who afterwards became Shelley's second wife, Mary Godwin died in the following month. Whatever her faults--and they were perhaps not greater than her misfortunes--she had something of the divine touch of genius, and, in a different environment, might easily have left some great literary memento which the world would not willingly let die.

Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849), though born at Blackbourton in England, belonged to a family which had been settled in different parts of Ireland and finally at Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford, for nearly two hundred years. She was the daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817), who was distinguished for his inventions, for his eccentricity, and for his varied matrimonial experiences, and who himself figures in literature as the author of Memoirs, posthumously published in 1820, and as the partner with his daughter in Practical Education (1798) and in an Essay on Irish Bulls (1802). Maria had a busy literary career and was before the public for fifty-two years from 1795 to 1847. She wrote Moral Tales; Popular Tales; Tales from Fashionable Life; and Harrington; but she is now best remembered for her three masterpieces dealing with Irish life and conditions, namely, Castle Rackrent (1800); The Absentee (1812); and Ormond (1817). By these works she inspired Scott, as he himself tells us, to attempt for his own country something "of the same kind with that which she had so fortunately achieved for Ireland", and in a later day she inspired Turgenief to do similarly for Russia. She excels in wit and pathos and gives a true and vivid presentation of the times and conditions as she viewed them.

Andrew Cherry (1763-1821), born in Limerick, became an actor, a theatrical manager, and a playwright. He wrote nine or ten plays, several of which were moderately successful. The one that is now remembered is The Soldier's Daughter. Some of his songs, such as "The Bay of Biscay", "Tom Moody, the Whipper-in", and, especially, "The Green Little Shamrock of Ireland", bid fair to be immortal.

Other Irish song-writers were Thomas Duffet (fl. 1676), author of "Come all you pale lovers"; Arthur Dawson (1700?-1775), author of "Bumpers, Squire Jones"; George Ogle (1742-1814), author of "Molly Asthore"; Richard Alfred Millikin (1767-1815), author of the grotesque "Groves of Blarney"; Edward Lysaght (1763-1811), author of "Our Ireland", "The Gallant Man who led the van Of the Irish Volunteers", and "Kate of Garnavilla"; George Nugent Reynolds (1770?-1802), author of "Kathleen O'More"; Thomas Dermody (1775-1802), author of the collection of poems and songs known as The Harp of Erin; James Orr (1770-1816), author of "The Irishman"; Henry Brereton Code (d. 1830), author of "The Sprig of Shillelah"; Charles Wolfe (1791-1823), author of "If I had thought thou couldst have died", and of "The Burial of Sir John Moore"; and Charles Dawson Shanly (1811-1875), author of "Kitty of Coleraine".

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-1798), born in Dublin, educated at Trinity College, and called to the Irish bar in 1789, fills a large space in the history of his country from 1790 to his death in 1798. Intrepid, daring, and resourceful, he was one of the most dangerous of the enemies to English domination in Ireland that arose at any time during the troubled relations between the two countries. Taken prisoner on board a French ship of the line bound for Ireland on a mission of freedom, he committed suicide in prison rather than submit to the ignominy of being hanged to which he had been condemned. He sleeps his last sleep in Bodenstown churchyard, in that county of Kildare to which he was connected by many ties. His grave is still the Mecca of many a pilgrimage, and the corner-stone of a statue to his memory has been laid for some years on a commanding site in the city of his birth. He is known in literature for his Journals and his Autobiography, both containing sad, but inspiring, reading for the Irishman of today.

* * * * *

Here this rapid survey of Irish writers of English must close. To tell in any sort of appropriate detail the story of the English literature of Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would require a separate volume--a volume which is now under way and will, it is hoped, be speedily forthcoming. There is all the less need to attempt the agreeable task here, because in other portions of this book much more than passing reference is made to the chief Irish authors who, in the last hundred and fifteen years, have distinguished themselves and shed lustre on their country. During that period Irish poets, playwrights, novelists, essayists, historians, biographers, humorists, critics, and scholars have fully held their own both in the quantity and the quality of the work produced, and have left an impression of power and personality, of graceful style and vivifying imagination, that in itself constitutes, and must for ever constitute, one of the distinctive Glories of Ireland.

REFERENCES:

Irish Literature (10 vols., New York, 1904); Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature (3 vols., Philadelphia and London, 1902-1904); Dictionary of National Biography; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Cambridge History of English Literature; D'Alton: History of Ireland (London, 1910); Lennox: Early Printing in Ireland (Washington, 1909), Addison and the Modern Essay (Washington, 1912), Lessons in English Literature (21st edition, Baltimore, 1913); Macaulay: Essays, History of England; Brown: A Reader's Guide to Irish Fiction (London, 1910), A Guide to Books on Ireland (Dublin, 1912).