of its master; better still perhaps are
the scenes when the boy falls sick of
a fever and is turned out of doors.
None will risk infection; but une labor-
ers steal time from their employer to
build him a rude hut by the roadside,
steal milk from the farmers' cows, and
feed him with messes that they pass
in on the end of a shovel, not ventur-
ing nearer, but tending him continu-
ally with no hope of reward but the
promise of his prayers. All this mix-
ture of tenderness, cowardice, dishon-
esty, and devotion is stated, like the
rest, with the frankness and convinc-
ing sincerity of true art. Then, alas,
the conventional intervenes in the per-
son of the virtuous absentee ignorant
of his agent's misdoings: the long arm
of coincidence is stretched to the utter-
most; and we have to wade through
pages of discussion upon the relations
of landlord and tenant till we are put
wholly out of tune for the beautiful
scene of Jimmy's return home in his
priestly dress.

showed their

Chaucer; the influence of the court fos-
tered poetry, and the close intercourse
with France kept Scotch writers in
touch with first-rate models. Dunbar,
strolling as a friar in France, may
have known Villon whom he often re-
sembles. In Ireland, till a century ago,
English was as much a foreign lan-
guage as Norman French in England
Among the
under the Plantagenets.
English Protestants, settled in Ireland
and separated by a hard line of cleav-
age from the Catholic population, there
arose great men in letters, Goldsmith,
Burke, Sheridan, who
Irish temperament in their handling of
English themes. But in Ireland itself,
before the events of 1782 added impor-
tance to Dublin, there was no centre
for a literature to gather round. Such
national pride as exists in English-
speaking Ireland dates from the days
of Grattan and Flood. And Irish na-
tional aspirations still bear the im-
press of their origin amid that period
of political turmoil, than which noth-
ing is more hostile to the brooding care
of literary workmanship, the long labor
and the slow result.

Irishmen have

Carleton did for the peasantry what
Miss Edgeworth had done for the up-
per classes. In her books the peasants
have only an incidental part, and she
describes them shrewdly and sympa-
thetically enough, but with a mind un-
touched either by their faith or by
their superstitions; seeing their good
and bad qualities clearly in a dry light,
but never in imagination identifying
herself with them. Carleton's was the
first voice proceeding from the Irish
peasantry which did not utter itself in
Gaelic. Superior to Miss Edgeworth
in power and insight, he is immeasur-
ably her inferior in literary skill. One
should remember, in commenting upon
the poverty of Irish literature, that it
is, so far as concerns imaginative work,
a thing of this century. Carleton only
died in 1869, Miss Edgeworth in 1849;
and before them there is no one.
On the other hand the
of
speech
Lowland Scots, with whose richness in
masterpieces our poverty is naturally
contrasted, has been employed for lit-
erature as long as the vernacular En-
glish. A king of Scotland wrote ad-
mirable verse in the generation after else, he knows the Bible

always shown a strong disinclination
The roll of Irish
to pure literature.
novelists is more than half made up
of women's names; Miss Edgeworth,
Lady Morgan, Miss Leary, Miss Law-
less, and

Miss Barlow. Journalists-
Ireland has produced as copiously as
orators; the writers of "The Spirit of
the Nation," that admirable collection
of stirring poems, are journalists work-
and Carleton, falling
ing in verse;
under their influence, became a jour-
nalist working in fiction. In his pages,
even when the debater ceases to argue
and harangue, the style is still journal-
istic, except in those passages where
his dramatic instinct puts living speech
into the mouths of men and women.
of
Politics so monopolize the minds
Irishmen, newspapers
make up
their whole reading, that the class to
which Carleton and the poet Mangan
belonged have never fully entered upon
the heritage of English literature. If
nothing
an English peasant knows
and very

SO

sion. Eily O'Connor, the victim, is a pretty and pathetic figure; the herovillain Hardress Cregan, and the mother who indirectly causes the crime, are effective though melodramatic; but the actual murderer, Danny the Lord, Hardress Cregan's familiar, is worthy of Scott or Hugo. Take the passage where he first suggests to his master that Eily should be put out of the way.

likely Bunyan; but a Roman Catholic ficed to make way for a stronger paspopulation has little commerce with that pure fountain of style. Genius cannot dispense with models, and Carleton and Mangan had the worst possible. Yet when it has been said that Carleton was a half-educated peasant, writing in a language whose best literature he had not sufficiently assimilated to feel the true value of words, it remains to say that he was a great novelist. He cannot be fairly illustrated by quotation; but read any of his stories and see if he does not bring up vividly before you Ireland as it was before the famine; Ireland still swarming with beggars who marched about in families subsisting chiefly on the charity of the poor; Ireland of which the hedge-school was plainly to him the most characteristic institution.

Carleton does not stand by himself; he is the head and representative of a whole class of Irish novelists, among whom John Banim is the best known name. All of them were peasants who aimed at depicting scenes of peasant life from their own experience. What one may call the melodramatic Irish story, in which Lever was SO brilliantly successful, has its first famous example in "The Collegians" of Gerald Griffin. The novel has no concern with college life, and is far better described by its stage-title, "The Colleen Bawn." Here at least is a man with a story to tell and no object but to tell it. Griffin belonged to the lay order of Christian Brothers; his book deals principally with a society no more familiar to him than was the household of Mr. Rochester to Charlotte Brontë; and his method recalls the Brontës by its strenuous imagination and its vehement painting of passion. The tale was suggested by a murder which excited all Ireland. A young southern squire carried off a girl with some money, and procured her death by drowning. He was arrested at his mother's house and a terrible scene took place, terribly rendered in the book. Griffin, of course, changes the motive; the girl is carried off not for money but for love, and she is sacri

"I'll tell you what it is, Master Hardress. Do by her as you do by dat glove you have on your hand. Make it come off as it came on, and if it fits too tight, take de knife to it."

"What do you mean?"

"Only gi' me the word, as I said before, an' I'll engage Eily O'Connor will never trouble you any more. Don't ax me any questions at all, only if you're agreeable take off dat glove and give it to me for a token. Dat'll be enough; lave de rest to Danny."

Take again the scene where he reproaches his employer.

"Did I not warn you not to touch her?" "You did," said Danny Mann, with a scorn which made him eloquent beyond himself, "an' your eye looked murder while you said it. After dis, I never more will look in any man's face to know what he manes. After dis, I won't believe my

senses.

If you'll persuade me to it, I'll own dat dere is nothing as I see it. You may tell me dat I don't stand here, nor you dere, nor dat de moon is shining trough dat roof above us, nor de fire burning at my back, an' I'll not gainsay you after dis. But listen to me, Masther Hardress. As sure as dat moon is shining, an' dat fire burning, an' as sure as I'm here an' you dere, so sure de sign of death was on your face dat time, whatever way your words went.

In his sketches of society, Hyland Creagh, the duellist, old Cregan, and the rest, Griffin is describing a state of affairs previous to his own experience, the Ireland of Sir Jonah Barrington's memoirs; he is not, as were Carleton and Miss Edgeworth, copying minutely from personal observation. Herein he resembles Lever who, when all is said and done, remains the chief, as he is

ever ingeniously travestied. His stories have no unity of action, but through a great diversity of characters and incidents they maintain their unity of treatment. That is not the highest ideal of the novel, but it is an intelligible one, not lacking famous examples; and Lever perfectly understood it.

If one wishes to realize how good an artist Lever was, the best way is to read his contemporary Samuel Lover. "Handy Andy" appeared somewhat later than "Harry Lorrequer." It is just the difference between good whiskey and bad whiskey; both are indigenous and therefore characteristic, but let us be judged by our best. Obviously the men have certain things in common; great natural vivacity, and an easy, cheerful way of looking at life. Lover can raise a laugh, but his wit is horseplay except for а few happy phrases. He has no real comedy; there is nothing in "Handy Andy" half so ingenious as the story in "Jack Hinton" of the way Ulick Bourke acquitted himself of his debt to Father Tom. And behind all Lever's conventional types there is a real fund of observation and knowledge which is absolutely wanting in Lover, who simply lacked the brains to be anything more than a trifler.

the most Irish, of Irish novelists. It is sion, which had life behind it, howtrue that Lever had two distinct manners; and in his later books he deals chiefly with contemporary society, drawing largely on his experiences of diplomatic life. Like most novelists he preferred his later work; but the books by which he is best known, "Harry Lorrequer" and the rest, are his earliest productions; and though his maturer skill was employed on different subjects, he formed his imagination in studies of the Napoleonic Wars and of a duelling, drinking, bailiffbeating Ireland. His point of view never altered, and the peculiar attraction of his writings is always the same. Lever's books have the quality rather of speech than of writing; wherever you open the pages there is always a witty, well-informed Irishman discoursing to you, who tells his story admirably, when he has one to tell, and, failing that, never fails to be pleasant. Irish talk is apt to be discursive; to rely upon a general charm diffused through the whole, rather than upon any quotable brilliancy; its very essence is spontaneity, high spirits, fertility of resource. That is a fair description of Lever. He is never at a loss. If his story hangs, off he goes at score with a perfectly irrelevant anecdote, but told with such enjoyment of the joke that you cannot resent the digression. Indeed the plots are left pretty much to take care of themselves; he positively preferred to write his stories in monthly instalments for a magazine; he is not a conscientious artist, but he lays himself out to amuse you, and he does it. If he advertises a character as a wit, he does not labor phrases to describe his brilliancy; he produces the witticisms. He has been accused of exaggeration. As regards the incidents, one can only say that the memoirs of Irish society at the beginning of this century furnish at least fair warranty for any of his inventions. In character drawing he certainly overcharged the traits; but he did so with intention, and by consistently heightening the tones throughout obtained an artistic impres

A very different talent was that of their younger contemporary J. Sheridan Le Fanu. The author of "Uncle Silas" had plenty of solid power; but his art was too highly specialized. No one ever succeeded better in two main objects of the story-teller; first, in exciting interest, in stimulating curiosity by vague hints of some dreadful mystery; and then in concentrating attention upon a dramatic scene. It is true that, although an Irishman, he gained his chief successes with stories that had an English setting; but one of the best, "The House by the Churchyard," describes very vividly life at Chapelizod in the days when this deserted little village, which lies just beyond the Phoenix Park, was thickly peopled with the families of officers stationed

their surroundings which is only seen ture of Irish people. So whether it be in working folk whose clothes are Mr. Frank Mathew or another that is stained with the color of the soil they to prove a literary avatar, there seem live by, and whose lives assimilate to be, if not grounds for confidence, themselves to its character. She has certainly at least grounds for hope.