tenant till we are put wholly out of tune for the beautiful scene of
Jimmy's return home in his priestly dress.

Carleton did for the peasantry what Miss Edgeworth had done for the
upper classes. In her books the peasants have only an incidental part,
and she describes them shrewdly and sympathetically enough, but with a
mind untouched 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. Superior to Miss Edgeworth in
power and insight, he is immeasurably her inferior in literary skill.
One should remember, in commenting upon the poverty of Irish literature
in English, that, so far as concerns imaginative work, it began in the
nineteenth century. Carleton only died in 1869, Miss Edgeworth in 1849;
and before them there is no one.

On the other hand the speech of Lowland Scots, with whose richness in
masterpieces our poverty is naturally contrasted, has been employed for
literature as long as the vernacular English. A king of Scotland wrote
admirable verse in the generation after Chaucer; the influence of the
Court fostered 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 resembles. In Ireland, till
a century ago, English was as much a foreign language as Norman French
in England under the Plantagenets. Among the English Protestants,
settled in Ireland, and separated by a hard line of cleavage from the
Catholic population, there arose great men in letters, Goldsmith, Burke,
Sheridan, who showed their Irish temperament in their handling of
English themes. But in Ireland itself, before the events of 1782 added
importance 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 national aspirations still
bear the impress of their origin amid that period of political turmoil,
than which nothing is more hostile to the brooding care of literary
workmanship, the long labour and the slow result. Irishmen have always
shown a strong disinclination to pure literature. The roll of Irish
novelists is more than half made up of women's names; Miss Edgeworth,
Lady Morgan, Miss Emily Lawless, and Miss Jane Barlow. Journalists
Ireland has produced as copiously as orators; the writers of _