ecalled. I have never professed enthusiasm for
Thomas Moore, but I am far indeed from agreeing with a recent critic who
would claim literary rank for him rather in virtue of the _Fudge Family_
than of the Irish Melodies. That satire does not seem to get beyond
brilliancy; it is very clever, and not much more. Still, there are
passages in it which cannot be read without enjoyment; and one quotation
may be permitted, since it puts with perfect distinctness what it is
always permissible to put--the English case against Ireland.

I'm a plain man who speak the truth.
And trust you'll think me not uncivil
When I declare that from my youth
I've wished your country at the devil.
Nor can I doubt indeed from all
I've heard of your high patriot fame,
From every word your lips let fall,
That you most truly wish the same.

It plagues one's life out; thirty years
Have I had dinning in my ears--
Ireland wants this and that and t'other;
And to this hour one nothing hears
But the same vile eternal bother.
While of those countless things she wanted,
Thank God, but little has been granted.

The list of writers of humorous verse in Ireland is a long one, but a
catalogue of ephemera. Even Father Prout at this time of day is little
more than a dried specimen labelled for reference, or at most preserved
in vitality by the immortal _Groves of Blarney_. But neither that work,
nor even _The Night before Larry was stretched_, nor Le Fanu's ballad of
_Shemus O'Brien_, can rank altogether as literature. About the humorous
song I need only say that, so far as my experience goes, there is one,
and one only, which a person with no taste for music and some taste for
literature can hear frequently with pleasure, and that song of course is
_Father O'Flynn_. To recall the delightful ingenuity and the nimble wit
shown by another Irishman of the same family in the _Hawarden Horace_,
and in a lesser degree by Mr. Godley in his _Musa Frivola_, leads
naturally to the inquiry why humour from Aristophanes to Carlyle has
always preferred the side of reaction--a question that would need an
essay, or a volume, all to itself.

But the central question is after all why in a race where humour is so
preponderant in the racial temperament does so little of the element
crystallise itself in literature. Humour ranks with the water power as
one of the great undeveloped resources of the countr