Irish Books and Irish People | Page 3

suppress education, but to give the
responsibility of freedom.
I have left these papers in order as they were written, with dates
annexed. One of them, Literature among the Illiterates, was published
in an earlier volume, To-day and To-morrow in Ireland which is now
out of print. I include it here, because it completes the companion essay,
called The Life of a Song.
My acknowledgments are due to the various publications in which they
have all, except the last, previously appeared.
Dublin, March, 1919.

NOVELS OF IRISH LIFE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
"What Ireland wants," said an old gentleman not very long ago, "is a
Walter Scott." The remedy did not seem very practical, since Walter
Scotts will not come to order, but the point of view is worth noting, for
there you touch the central fact about Irish literature. We desire a
Walter Scott that he may glorify our annals, popularise our legends,
describe our scenery, and give an attractive view of the national
character. In short, we know that Ireland possesses pre-eminently the
quality of picturesqueness, and we should like to see it turned to good
account. We want a Walter Scott to advertise Ireland, and to fill the
hotels with tourists; but as for desiring to possess a great novelist
simply for the distinction of the thing, probably no civilised people on
earth is more indifferent to the matter. At present, indeed, a Walter
Scott, should he appear in Ireland, would be apt to have a cold welcome.
To write on anything connected with Irish history is inevitably to
offend the Press of one party, and very probably of both. Lever is less

of a caricaturist than Dickens, yet Dickens is idolised while Lever has
been bitterly blamed for lowering Irish character in the eyes of the
world; the charge is even repeated in the Dictionary of National
Biography. That may be patriotic sentiment, but it is not criticism.
Literature in Ireland, in short, is almost inextricably connected with
considerations foreign to art; it is regarded as a means, not as an end.
During the nineteenth century the belief being general among all
classes of Irish people that the English know nothing of Ireland, every
book on an Irish subject was judged by the effect it was likely to have
upon English opinion, to which the Irish are naturally sensitive, since it
decides the most important Irish questions. But apart from this practical
aspect of the matter, there is a morbid national sensitiveness which
desires to be consulted. Ireland, though she ought to count herself
amply justified of her children, is still complaining that she is
misunderstood among the nations; she is for ever crying out for
someone to give her keener sympathy, fuller appreciation, and exhibit
herself and her grievances to the world in a true light. The result is that
kind of insincerity and special pleading which has been the curse of
Irish or Anglo-Irish literature. I write of a literature which has its
natural centre in Dublin, not in Connemara; which looks eastward, not
westward. That literature begins with the Drapier Letters: it continues
through the great line of orators in whom the Irish genius (we say
nothing of the Celtic) has found its highest expression; and it produced
its first novelist, perhaps also its best, in the unromantic person of
Maria Edgeworth.
Miss Edgeworth had a sound instinct for her art, disfigured though her
later writings are by what Madame de Staêl called her triste utilité. Her
first story is her most artistic production. Castle Rackrent is simply a
pleasant satire upon the illiterate and improvident gentry who have
always been too common in her country. In this book she holds no brief;
she never stops to preach; her moral is implied, not expressed. A
historian might, it is true, go to Castle Rackrent for information about
the conditions of land tenure as well as about social life in the Ireland
of that day; but the erudition is part and parcel of her story. Throughout
the length and breadth of Ireland, setting aside great towns, the main

interest of life for all classes is the possession of land. Irish peasants
seldom marry for love, they never murder for love; but they marry and
they murder for land. To know something of the land-question is
indispensable for an Irish novelist, and Miss Edgeworth graduated with
honours in this subject. She was her father's agent; when her brother
succeeded to the property she resigned, but in the troubles of 1830 she
was recalled to the management, and saved the estate. Castle Rackrent
is, therefore, like Galt's Annals of the Parish, a historical document; but
it is none the worse story for that. The narrative is put dramatically into
the mouth of old Thady, a lifelong servant