destinies which in those golden days seemed nearer at hand than they can to the most sanguine now :

The elements of Irish nationality are not only combining -in fact, they are growing confluent in our minds. Such nationality as merits a good man's help, and awakens a true man's ambition-such nationality as could stand against internal faction and foreign intrigue-such nationality as would make the Irish hearth happy, and the Irish name illustrious, is becoming understood. It must contain and represent all the races of Ireland. It must not be Celtic; it must not be Saxon; it must be Irish. The Brehon law, and the maxims of Westminster-the cloudy and lightning genius of the Gael, the placid strength of the Sacsanach, the marshalling insight of the Norman - a literature which shall exhibit in combination the passions and idioms of all, and which shall equally express our mind in its romantic, its religious, its forensic, and its practical tendencies-finally, a native government, which shall know and rule by the might and right of all, yet yield to the arrogance of none-these are the components of such a nationality. - DAVIS'S ESSAYS.

The keynote of all the poetry which gave wings to the purposes and propaganda of The Nation, and which has served more than anything else to keep the fame of the Young Irelanders fresh to day, was the doctrine of Irish nationality. Nationality is indeed the diapason of all worthy imaginative literature,' but in the case of The Nation poets—at least, those of the first period, up to 1848-it was generally also the immediate theme or motive of their writings. They wrote for a directly political purpose-to inspire their countrymen with national pride, and faith in the cause of Repeal, and also with hatred of English rule. Lyrics of pure emotion like 'My Grave,' by Davis, or Judge O'Hagan's beautiful poem, 'The Old Story,' were rather by-products of their toil; their direct object was to influence opinion and action. Poetry produced under this stimulus may not take rank with the creation of the artist dreaming on eternal truths, eternal beauty, and expressing them in the rich and arduous harmonies of music and thought

Der stärkste Antrieb zu geistigem und wirtschaftlichem Schaffen.'Petition of German Authors and Professors to the Czar for the Liberties of Finland.

which we call poetry. Yet if the Young Irelanders worked for an immediate practical aim, none the less did high truth and noble passion inspire and inform their work, and their influence on the mind and heart of their readers was altogether for good. They awakened the intellect of Ireland from slumber, and they made the written word a power in the land.

How, it may be asked, did all this poetic talent spring up so suddenly? One hardly knows. Duffy originated the idea of publishing National songs and ballads in The Nation, and Davis inaugurated the scheme with the finest poem he ever wrote, the Lament for Owen Roe.' Other writers-some of them peasants, some artisans, some exiles who had made their homes in far-distant lands—whose gift for verse or sympathy with their country would otherwise perhaps never have found utterance, were inspired by the example of Davis and the passion of the time. The Nation went far and wide through the country; it reached the priest, the student, the schoolmaster, the Repeal Committee man. Soon it found its way to the artisan and the peasant; it was read aloud in the chapel-yard on Sundays, or round the forge fire of an evening. It told the people of an Ireland they had never heard of before; not the Ireland of burlesque, or of bigoted misrepresentation, inhabited by Handy Andies and Scullabogue murderers, but an old historic island, the mother of soldiers and scholars, whose name was heard in the roar of onset on a thousand battlefields, for whose dear love the poor homesick exile in the garret or cloister of some foreign city toiled or plotted . . . the one mother country which a man loves as he loves the mother who held him to her breast.' To express the throng of new ideas, emotions, aspirations, which crowded on the mind of the people, the Irish genius turned naturally to song. From wholly new and unsuspected quarters poems began to pour in upon The Nation

now it was some student who in a flame of patriotic passion wrought a lyric to which the hearts of Irishmen will quiver for all time; now it was some gifted lady of the dominant classes who stepped from her pride of place to become the stormy 1 C. G. Duffy.

voice of an oppressed and perishing people; now it was some schoolboy in a provincial town who sent up, in a scarcely legible manuscript, verses throbbing with fiery energy; or a girl nurtured in seclusion and in an atmosphere of tender piety who added a strain of delicate sweetness to the martial music which came most frequently and naturally to the poets of The Nation.

Intensely patriotic as this poetry was, there was yet one important aspect of patriotism which found, and perhaps could find, no distinct expression in it; it had little or nothing of the Gaelic note. In reading Mangan, whose orbit coincided for a while with that of The Nation, but who must, on the whole, be considered as a star that dwelt apart, and Ferguson, who was united to The Nation writers by ties of friendship and of political sympathy, but not by literary association, one feels that these writers have behind them the moulding influences of a body of literature quite other than the Englisha literature marked by a peculiar strain of mingled homeliness and grandeur, of simplicity and elaboration, of sensuousness and mysticism. This was the ancient literature of the Gael -the one literature of modern Europe which grew up spontaneously, untouched by the mighty influences of classic culture. And Mangan and Ferguson are the progenitors of those writers of our own day, like Standish O'Grady and Yeats, who are the representatives of the old Gaelic tradition, though they hand it forward in the English tongue. The Nation writers, however, recall not the Gaelic but the English tradition. Davis's 'Lament for Owen Roe' has a certain Gaelic afflatus, and Edward Walsh knew how to turn a simple verse true to the Gaelic ear'; but for the most part, though the poets of The Nation loved to sprinkle their verses with Irish phrases, the qualities which remind us that there was once a Gaelic literature lie rather on the surface than in the substance of their work. Nor at that time could it well have been otherwise. The ancient tongue was still living; but Nationalist opinion, represented by O'Connell, regarded it as a sort of incubus, and of the old literature little was known or understood.

With this general introduction the poets of The Nation may now be left to speak for themselves. The selections which follow are taken from the two excellent collections of The Nation poetry, the SPIRIT OF THE NATION (Jas. Duffy, Dublin) and the NEW SPIRIT OF THE NATION (T. Fisher Unwin, London), and also in some cases from the other writings of authors who are represented in these volumes, and who won their earliest or principal distinction as writers for The Nation during the editorship of Charles Gavan Duffy. After his emigration the paper was ably conducted, and with special care for its literary repute, by Mr. A. M. Sullivan ; but no poetic movement comparable to that which is illustrated in the two volumes I have mentioned has ever again been associated with politics or journalism in Ireland.

T. W. ROLLESTON.

THOMAS DAVIS

THE poetical work of Thomas Davis fell within the last three years of his short life, from the date when he joined The Nation enterprise in 1842 to his death in 1845. He never put forth his full strength in this direction, and his history, which has been fully written by his friend and colleague, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, is the history of a man of action, not of a littérateur. His songs were things which he paused to dooften hastily, and by the way—as he was pressing forward to his aim. Yet his poetry, written as it was straight from the heart and on the themes that vitally interested and moved him, was not only a powerful auxiliary to his work as a political guide and teacher, but has high and enduring attractions of its own, and has added peculiar fragrance to a memory worthy on so many grounds of being cherished by his countrymen. It was in his poetry that he most intimately revealed himself. And though Thomas Davis was extraordinarily fertile in ideas, and indefatigable in methodic industry, the best thing he gave to

the Irish people was not an idea or an achievement of any sort, but simply the gift of himself. He was the ideal Irishman. North and south, east and west, the finest qualities of the population that inhabit this island seemed to be combined in him, developed to their highest power, and coloured deeply with whatever it is in character and temperament that makes the Irish one of the most separate of races. The nation saw itself transfigured in him, and saw the dreams nourished by its long memories and ancestral pride coming true. Hence the intense personal devotion felt towards Davis by the ardent and thoughtful young men who were associated with him, and the sense of irreparable loss caused by his early death. He stood for Ireland-for all Ireland as no other man did, and it was hardly possible to distinguish the cause from his personality. Yet perhaps the best evidence of the potency and the nobility of his influence was the fact that this sense of loss was overcome by the recollection of the ideals he had held up, and that his memory was honoured by the undaunted pursuance of his work, and the maintenance of the pure and lofty ardour with which he wrought.

Thomas Davis was born in 1814 at Mallow, County Cork. His father was a surgeon in the Royal Artillery, of Welsh origin; his mother belonged to a well-known Irish family, the Atkins of Firville. As a boy he is said to have been shy, very sensitive, and not at all quick at learning; but at Trinity College the passion of the student took possession of him, and though he never competed for honours and prizes he became, and remained all his life, a diligent and omnivorous reader. He was called to the Bar in 1838, but speedily abandoned that profession for literature and journalism. With Charles Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon he took part in the founding of The Nation and in its subsequent management. His 'Lament of Owen Roe' was among the first of the National poems and ballads which soon formed so marked a feature in the propaganda carried on by that paper. On September 16, 1845, he died of scarlet fever, and was followed to his grave by the lamentations of his countrymen of every creed and every