THE MODERATOR OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY.
TO THE EDITOR OP THE FREEMAN.
The Manse, Ballinasloe, 22nd March, '86.
Dear Sir—I have read with great interest the advanced copy of your able article on "The Best Hundred Irish Books." With many of the books mentioned I have no intimate acquaintance, but so far as I am able to judge, your remarks, with one of two abatements from my point of view, are most judicious and impartial. Presbyterians, in common with others, have suffered from the partial and partisan character of the historians of former times, and they gladly welcome every effort to shed forth light on the true records of our country. I heartily join you in the opinion that a good general history worthy be placed alongside the productions of Hume, Green, and others, is still a desideratum.—With best respects, believe me faithfully yours.
The Moderator of General Assembly.
THE PRESIDENT OF MAYNOOTH COLLEGE.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE FREEMAN.
St Patrick's College, Maynooth,
March 21st.
Dear Sir—I beg to acknowledge, with thanks, your advanced copy of "The Best Hundred Irish Books." "Historicus" has done his work well, supplying a useful and instructive analytical list of a hundred books in the very small space within which he has had to confine so large a subject.
Such a list, however, from the very nature of the subject, will appear defective to the many who win scrutinise it from different standpoints. Thus, when dealing with the early periods of Irish history, to pass over in silence Harris's Ware's "Antiquities," "Bishops," and "Irish Writers;" Colgan's "Acta Sanctorum," Reeves' "Adamnan's Life of St Columba," Lynch's "Cambrensis Eversus," translated by the Rev Dr Kelly; and contributions of members of the Royal Irish Academy will seem to some a grave omission. Then, when the "broad and beaten highway" of Irish history is to be trodden, Haverty's "History of Ireland" ought to be named as a very useful guide and companion.
In providing for the Cromwellian period tha student would do well to put on the same shelf with Mr. Prendergast's admirable work Father Murphy's "Cromwell in Ireland." And on the period of sad interest for Irishmen, the period of the famine, the best as well as the fullest book on the subject is, I suppose, Canon O'Rourke's "Famine of '47."
The works on Irish Ecclesiastical History might with advantage be more fully enumerated; and from any such list Renehan's "Collections," Kelly's "Essays," O'Hanlon's "Introduction to the Lives of the Irish Saints," and Malone's "Church History of Ireland," should not be omitted.
Among the novelists why not find a place for Kickham, whose delineation of Irish character, as developed in the south, is considered by many to be little less excellent than the pictures which Carleton himself has drawn—I am faithfully yours.
R Browne.
THE LIBRARIAN OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE FREEMAN.
British Museum, March 20.
Sir—I do not feel competent to revise, except by supplementary suggestion, the list of books furnished by "Historicus," to whom I feel indebted for much valuable information. In saying this, I must not be understood to express an abstract approval of all the books indicated, but merely to agree with the compiler that all, or nearly all, on one ground or another, deserve a place in a standard Irish library. I should be reluctant to criticise omissions without knowing on what grounds they have been made, or whether they are merely accidental. It may have been thought that works not treating of Ireland as the principal subject should be excluded. As, however, Macaulay's History of England is very rightly named, "Historicus" will agree that a similar compliment ought to be paid to Professor Gardiner for the portions of his great history relating to the Ulster Plantation and the massacre of 1641, to be followed by the Cromwellian Conquest and Administration. The portion of the Wellington Despatches relating to Ireland, and the Correspondence of Castlereagh and Cornwallis should be included on a similar principle. The omission of Miss Hickson's "Ireland in the Seventeenth Century," and of Bagwell's "Ireland under the Tudors," can only be accidental. There is also a class of compilations not pretending to literary merit, but still indispensable I may instance Ryan's "Biographia Hibernica," Reed's "Irish Cabinet" (the only approach to an Irish literary history, so far as I know), the collective Lives of the Lord Chancellors, and the Anecdotes of the Irish Bar. The mention of Skelton among authors treating of the social state of Ireland suggests the extreme desirableness of republishing his tracts on this subject apart from his theological writings, and also that the biography of him prefixed to his collected works deserves enumeration among Church histories as a most vivid picture of the Protestant Church of Ireland in the eighteenth century. Miss Cusack's work on St Patrick might also be added to this division. Returning to books on the social condition of Ireland, I would suggest the addition of Dr Thomas Campbell's "Tour" and remark that Mr. Allingham's "Laurence Bloomfield," unaccountably omitted by "Historicus," might figure almost equally well in this department, or, among poems. Petrie's classical work on the Round Towers of Ireland should certainly be included. Coming to imaginative literature, it is extraordinary that Mr. Ruskin, in recommending Miss Edgeworth's Irish novels, should have omitted "Castle Rackrent," by much the most racy and spirited, and, indeed, a work of genius of a very high order. I should have thought that Lever's "Knight of Gwynne" merited special mention from its historical interest. Mr. De Vere's poems on Irish themes and Mrs Hartley's pictures of Dublin life deserve a place. But of all Irish works of imagination, by far the best are those which belong to the remote past. No other country has so beautiful legendary literature. I would bring out Joyce's Irish Legends, with additions from kin bed sources in the cheapest possible form, and place them in the hands of every boy and girl in the country—Hoping that those remarks may be useful I remain, sir, yours very faithfully,
Richard Garnett.
