between the two countries. Taken
prisoner on board a French ship of the line bound for Ireland on a
mission of freedom, he committed suicide in prison rather than submit
to the ignominy of being hanged to which he had been condemned. He
sleeps his last sleep in Bodenstown churchyard, in that county of
Kildare to which he was connected by many ties. His grave is still
the Mecca of many a pilgrimage, and the corner-stone of a statue to
his memory has been laid for some years on a commanding site in the
city of his birth. He is known in literature for his _Journals_ and
his _Autobiography_, both containing sad, but inspiring, reading for
the Irishman of today.

* * * * *

Here this rapid survey of Irish writers of English must close. To
tell in any sort of appropriate detail the story of the English
literature of Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would
require a separate volume--a volume which is now under way and will,
it is hoped, be speedily forthcoming. There is all the less need to
attempt the agreeable task here, because in other portions of this
book much more than passing reference is made to the chief Irish
authors who, in the last hundred and fifteen years, have
distinguished themselves and shed lustre on their country. During
that period Irish poets, playwrights, novelists, essayists,
historians, biographers, humorists, critics, and scholars have fully
held their own both in the quantity and the quality of the work
produced, and have left an impression of power and personality, of
graceful style and vivifying imagination, that in itself constitutes,
and must for ever constitute, one of the distinctive Glories of
Ireland.

REFERENCES:

Irish Literature (10 vols., New York, 1904); Chambers's Cyclopaedia
of English Literature (3 vols., Philadelphia and London, 1902-1904);
Dictionary of National Biography; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Cambridge
History of English Literature; D'Alton: History of Ireland (London,
1910); Lennox: Early Printing in Ireland (Washington, 1909), Addison
and the Modern Essay (Washington, 1912), Lessons in English
Literature (21st edition, Baltimore, 1913); Macaulay: Essays, History
of England; Brown: A Reader's Guide to Irish Fiction (London, 1910),
A Guide to Books on Ireland (Dublin, 1912).

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Glories of Ireland
by Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox

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