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to the boasted civil and religious liberty of the age, should any longer remain a load upon the conscience of the United Kingdom and its legislature, especially as it is not proposed that Trinity College, as a college, should be deprived of anything, but only that a Catholic College should be raised to an equality with it, and the University of Dublin be made a truly national one, the ancient college remaining as it is for the Protestants of Ireland.

I believe that it would not be that in Ireland, where I write, the chief opposition to such a scheme would be found.

Some opposition there would no doubt be, but I cannot but think that Protestants who know the facts would admit that the Catholics have a grievance in this matter, which has not, up to this time, been completely redressed.

Now I will ask reasonable men in England, where the youth of the country have the advantages of the universities there all open to them, is this a very violent or revolutionary demand on the part of the majority in Ireland? I believe that the great opposition to the scheme for a national university with denominational colleges would come from the English Nonconformists and doctrinaires. Of course these classes are very much opposed to the Catholic creed; they stand, so to speak, at the opposite pole; but could it not be entertained by them in a spirit of fairness and concession, that the feelings of the Irish Catholics ought to be considered, and that they shall be placed on a just and equal footing with other subjects of the Queen ?

One sees the argument always brought forward, 'This is giving the power into the hands of the priests!' Well, is not the control of the youth of any country by religious influences in which their childhood has been reared, and in which they and their parents have confidence and faith, better than a godless system leading to indifference, if not infidelity?

The Irish Catholic bishops and clergy are taking now a prominent part in the leading of the people, and however much we may disagree with some views that are being expressed, may we not concede to them the belief that they are trying to guide their flocks into paths more likely to be safe than would be the case if they were left altogether to influences apart from any religious feelings at all?

I hope and trust that the Nonconformists of England, who are, in general politics, mainly if not entirely Liberals, may consider this, and not forsake their Liberalism because in Ireland those principles happen to tend in a different direction in educational matters from what they do in England. Do not they desire that, granting to Ireland as well as to Scotland or England control to such an extent as may be found possible and advisable over local matters, in which the circumstances of each country differ, the preserved, and at

union between the three kingdoms should be

the same time the reproach should be taken away from England

which is so often thrown in her face, that she does not rule Ireland according to Irish ideas? The educational system which appears, therefore, to be most suitable to Ireland would be somewhat on the lines of Mr. Gladstone's scheme of 1873, only that under the arrangement that there should be denominational colleges with a common university there would be no difficulty as to the teaching of philosophy and history in these separate institutions, and thus the greatest blot in his scheme would be effectually got rid of.

I believe that some such general idea as the following might meet the case. Let the two existing universities, apart from colleges, be merged in one, to be called the University of Dublin or of Ireland, with a governing body composed of Catholics as well as Protestants; Trinity College to remain, as now, the college for the members of the Protestant Episcopalian Church. Let the Queen's College at Cork and the one at Galway be distinctly denominational Catholic colleges, and the Belfast College be given to the Presbyterians. The present endowments of these colleges, it is said, would be sufficient as they are, and all should be affiliated to the University of Dublin. The Catholic college in Stephen's Green to be endowed in a manner commensurate with its importance as the chief Catholic educational institution in Ireland. Then, in the reformed University of Dublin, all students, Catholic as well as Protestant, Presbyterian as well as Episcopalian, would start fair in the race of life, and be absolutely equal in the examinations which they would have to undergo.

In conclusion, I may state what the endowment, in the opinion of others well qualified to judge, besides myself, should be, to give the satisfaction which is desired.

As I said above, it is considered that the present incomes of the three colleges at Cork, Galway, and Belfast are sufficient. All that would be required, therefore, as regards them, would be to declare the Cork and Galway colleges to be denominational Catholic colleges, making their governing bodies entirely Catholic, the Belfast college to be handed over in the same manner to the Presbyterians.

The endowment to be provided for the principal Catholic college in Stephen's Green should be sufficient for: (1) the purchase of a site and the erection of larger and more suitable buildings; (2) the library, museum, laboratories, physical cabinet, and all the material equipment of education in the departments of Arts, Medicine, Engineering and Law.

It should be observed that if the Royal University were wound up, there would be an annual sum of 20,000l. set free, which is the present endowment of that university. Then 700,000l. invested in the funds, it is computed, would produce 20,000l. a year more, making the required income for the Catholic college 40,000l. per annum. 300,000l. would be sufficient for the site, buildings and equipment mentioned as Nos. 1 and 2.

In this case one million sterling would be required.

The university would still have to be provided for, and Mr. Gladstone proposed in his Bill of 1873 that a definite fixed portion of the present endowment of Trinity College, as a university, should be applied to the one he proposed to establish, and, if that was done, the income of Trinity College would still considerably exceed the proposed income of the Catholic College.

But if, to prevent any difficulties with Trinity College, it was thought preferable to leave its endowments untouched, then the Royal University might remain, with its present endowment, as the University of Ireland, and an additional sum to produce 20,000l. per annum might be provided by the State, which would raise the total sum required for all purposes to 1,700,000l.

I venture to make an appeal to Englishmen and Scotchmen— Irishmen I need hardly appeal to: they know the pressing necessity for a settlement.

Will they give Ireland the greatest engine of civilisation that is possible, on lines which the Irish people understand and which would suit them and render it impossible for them in future to say with any justice that the State had not made a generous and liberal provision for their wants, or that there was any inequality between them and their Protestant fellow-countrymen?

POWERSCOURT.

THOMAS MIDDLETON.

Ir it be true, as we are told on high authority, that the greatest glory of England is her literature and the greatest glory of English literature is its poetry, it is not less true that the greatest glory of English poetry lies rather in its dramatic than its epic or its lyric triumphs. The name of Shakespeare is above the names even of Milton and Coleridge and Shelley: and the names of his comrades in art and their immediate successors are above all but the highest names in any other province of our song. There is such an overflowing life, such a superb exuberance of abounding and exulting strength, in the dramatic poetry of the half-century extending from 1590 to 1640, that all other epochs of English literature seem as it were but half awake and half alive by comparison with this generation of giants and of gods. There is more sap in this than in any other branch of the national bay-tree: it has an energy in fertility which reminds us rather of the forest than the garden or the park. It is true that the weeds and briars of the underwood are but too likely to embarrass and offend the feet of the rangers and the gardeners who trim the level flower-plots or preserve the domestic game of enclosed and ordered lowlands in the tamer demesnes of literature. The sun is strong and the wind sharp in the climate which reared the fellows and the followers of Shakespeare. The extreme inequality and roughness of the ground must also be taken into account when we are disposed, as I for one have often been disposed, to wonder beyond measure at the apathetic ignorance of average students in regard of the abundant treasure to be gathered from this widest and most fruitful province in the poetic empire of England. And yet, since Charles Lamb threw open its gates to all comers in the ninth year of the present century, it cannot but seem strange that comparatively so few should have availed themselves of the entry to so rich and royal an estate. The subsequent labours of Mr. Dyce made the rough ways plain and the devious paths straight for all serious and worthy students. And now again Mr. Bullen has taken up a task than which none more arduous and important, none worthier of thanks and praise, can be undertaken by any English scholar. In his beautiful and valuable edition of Marlowe there are but two points to which exception may be taken. It was, I think, a fault of omission to exclude the apocryphal

play of Lust's Dominion from a place in the appendix: it was, I am certain, a fault of commission to admit instead of it the much bepuffed and very puffy rubbish of the late Mr. Horne. That clever, versatile, and energetic writer never went so far out of his depth, or floundered. so pitifully in such perilous waters, as when he ventured to put verses of his own into the mouth of Christopher Marlowe. These errors we must all hope to see rectified in a second issue of the text: and meantime we can but welcome with all possible gratitude and applause the magnificent series of old plays by unknown writers which we owe to the keen research and the fine appreciation of Marlowe's latest editor. Of these I may find some future occasion to speak: my present business is with the admirable poet who has been promoted to the second place in Mr. Bullen's collection of the English dramatists.

The selection of Middleton for so distinguished a place of honour may probably not approve itself to the judgment of all experts in dramatic literature. Charles Lamb, as they will all remember, would have advised the editor to begin with the collected plays of Heywood' which as yet, like the plays of Dekker, of Marston, and of Chapman, remain unedited in any serious or scholarly sense of the term. The existing reprints merely reproduce, without adequate elucidation or correction, the corrupt and chaotic text of the worst early editions: while Middleton has for upwards of half a century enjoyed the privilege denied to men who are usually accounted his equals if not his superiors in poetic if not in dramatic genius. Even for an editor of the ripest learning and the highest ability there is comparatively little to do where Mr. Dyce has been before him in the field. However, we must all give glad and grateful welcome to a new edition of a noble poet who has never yet received his full meed of praise and justice: though our gratitude and our gladness may be quickened and dilated by the proverbial sense of further favours to

come.

The first word of modern tribute to the tragic genius of Thomas Middleton was not spoken by Charles Lamb. Four years before the appearance of the priceless volume which established his fame for ever among all true lovers of English poetry by copious excerpts from five of his most characteristic works, Walter Scott, in a note on the fifty-sixth stanza of the second fytte of the metrical romance of Sir Tristrem, had given a passing word of recognition to the horribly striking' power of some passages' in Middleton's masterpiece: which was first reprinted eleven years later, in the fourth volume of Dilke's Old Plays. Lamb, surprisingly enough, has given not a single extract from that noble tragedy: it was reserved for Leigh Hunt, when speaking of its author, to remark that there is one character of his (De Flores in The Changeling) which, for effect at once tragical, probable, and poetical, surpasses anything I know of in the drama of

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