IRELAND
127
IRELAND
themselves antl als j, so to speak, l)orn and bretl to the
Hfe of the Enghsli metropolis. Her " Moral Tales" are
frequently reprinted even to this day. Miss Edge-
worth cannot in any political sense be called a nation-
alist writer. The cry of "Ireland a Nation" never
appealed to her, nor does she portray the struggle of
the native Irish against the English garrison, nor the
doings of the men
of '98, nor the feel-
ings of the natives
against the settlers.
With her began the
Irish novel, but not
the Irish political
novel. Her contem-
porary, Lady Mor-
gan (1783-1859),
wrote Irish novels
also, but no one
ever reads them
now, while Miss
Edgeworth's popu-
larity is perennial.
Of a different
temperament was
Thomas Moore
(1779-1852), the
first great Anglo-
Irish poet. It is true
that he had had some few predecessors, among whom
were Ned Lysaght, the poet of Grattan and the Volun-
teers, and William Drennan, the poet of the United
Irishmen, but he owed nothing to any of them. A
Catholic and in his youthful days a sympathizer with
the men of the '98 Rebellion, and with Irish national
aspirations, his muse spread the name and fame of his
native island throughout thousands upon thousands
of those giklcd drawing-rooms, where, before that,
Irish aspirations or even the very name of Erin would
have been met only by a scoff or perhaps by some still
more emphatic disapproval. While rescuing the ad-
mirable ancient music of Ireland from oblivion he
wedded it to the most melodious songs that the Eng-
lish language had yet produced, and he never shrank
from insisting upon the national character both of his
music and his verses, nor hesitated to depict the sad
and oppressed state of his mother country. Who can
say what considerable if indirect influence Moore's
verses must have exercised on the hearts of men, when
it came, as it soon after did, to dealing with the grav-
est Irish problems in the House of Commons, including
the emancipation of the Catholics. Just as Sir Walter
Scott's novels effected a profound change in the out-
look of England upon Scotland, and of the Lowlanders
upon the Highlanders, so Moore's "Melodies" must
have made hundreds of thousands of Englishmen and
loyalists for the first time familiar with the wrongs,
the aspirations, and the inner soul of Ireland. Not
that Moore was in any sense a poet of the people; he
was a poet rather of the cultured classes and of the
drawing-room, and thus the very antithesis of Burns.
It is safe to say that the Irish peasantry themselves
never grasped his melodies as a popular possession or
sang them commonly at their firesides. But with the
cultured classes his vogue was enormous. Probably
no poet ever lived whose lines penetrated into so many
drawing-rooms alien in sympathy to himself and his
ideals.
It has Ijeen of late years the custom on many sides to flecry Moore. It is, however, hard to subscribe to almost any of the complaints. It is true that divorced to a certain extent from the life of the native Gael, and being ignorant of the national language, he takes war tunes and welds them to love-songs and takes love songs and makes slogans of them. This is a real fault of commission; with regard to the other criticisms it is not always fair to judge a poet for faults of omission,
or in other words for not being what nature did not
make him. Above all it is hard to accuse of time-
serving or of pusillanimity a poet who could imperil
his popularity in England by such a vigorous melody
as that in which he compares the oppression of Ireland
to the captivity of the .Jews and prophesies the de-
struction of her tyrant. A great deal of Moore's success
as a poet is due to the national music of Ireland to
which his songs are wed, and lyrics such as " Avenging
and Bright", "The Minstrel Boy", "Let Erin remem-
ber", "When he who adores thee", and "She is far
from the land" have become almost embedded in the
life of Ireland and part and parcel of the national
mind.
Moore died in 1852, but long before his death there had sprung into being a distinctively Irish literature in the English language, inspired by Irish feelings and ideals, and looking not to an English but to an Irish public. The poets Callahan and Walsh were its pre- cursors. The foundation by Davis, Dillon, and Duffy of the weekly paper "The Nation" in 1842 produced a profound effect all over Ireland, but the Young Ireland writers who then arose never attempted to reach the people through any other medium than English, although at this time Irish was still the familiar speech of about four millions. Of the poets of the Young Ireland movement two stand out pre-eminently, Thomas Davis (d. 1845) and Clarence Mangan (d. 1849). Davis sang, not so much becau.se he was born with the divine afflatus, as because he deliberately set himself to act upon the soul of the people through the medium of poetry. In this he succeeded, for his vigor- ous political verse, ballads, and other national and patriotic songs, thrown off in haste and not always polished, though generally powerful, exercised a pro- found effect upon Ireland. Mangan on the other hand, though a Young Irelander by conviction, shrank from the glare and blare of political movements, and led a lonely life, consumed by the fire of his own thoughts. Though the effect of his poems upon the people was far less than that of Davis, he, when at his best, as in his "Dark Rosaleen", attained to heights which would have been impossible to the other. By far the greatest prose writer of the Young Ireland movement was that ardent rebel against English rule, John Mitchel (1815- 1872), of whom it is safe to say that no man born in Ireland, Swift alone excepted, ever made such powerful use of the English tongue as a medium for thought, instruc- tion, and invec- tive. His powers of sardonic scorn and indignation are very Swiftian, and his "Last Conquest of Ire- land (perhaps) " is one of the most scathing political works ever writ- ten, while his "Jail Journal" gives a good idea of the man himself.
At this time also appeared a group of novelists whose works have never ceased to be popular for nearly two generations. Of these the most remarkable was Carle- ton (1794-1859), who understood the peasantry and depicted their feelings in a way that no one else has ever done. In books like "Fardorougha the Miser", the "Black Prophet", and "Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry", he portrays not so much the life as the passions of the people with vividness and power.
Charles Lever
