Thomas Davis, selections from his prose and poetry

Library of Irish Literature
INTRODUCTION.
At the University he sought no academic distinctions, but read omnivorously. History, philosophy, economics, and ethics were the subjects into which he flung himself with ardour, and which, in after days, he was continually seeking to turn to the uses of his country. By the time he had left College and was called to the Bar (1837) he had disciplined himself by thought and study, and was a very different being from the dreamy and backward youth described for us by the candid friends of his schooldays. A dreamer, indeed, he always was, but he had learned from Bishop Butler, whom he reverenced profoundly and spoke of as the Copernicus of ethics, that there is no practice more fatal to moral strength than dreaming divorced from action. Some concrete act, some definite thing to be done, was now always in his mind, but always, it may be added, as the realisation of some principle arrived at by serious and accurate thinking. He had acquired clear convictions, his powers of application were enormous, he had a boundless fertility of invention, and was manifestly marked out as a leader of men. It is interesting to go through the pages of Davis's Essays and to note how many of his practical suggestions for work to be done in Ireland have been taken up with success, especially in the direction of music and poetry, of the Gaelic language, and of the study of Irish archaeology and the protection of its remains. But a new Davis would mark with keener interest the many tasks which yet remain to be taken in hand.
His connection with the Bar was little more than nominal; from the beginning, the serious work of his life seemed destined to be journalism. After some experiments in various directions, he, with Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon, during a walk in the Phœnix Park in the spring of 1842, decided to establish a new weekly journal, to be entitled, on Davis's suggestion, The Nation . Its purpose, which it was afterwards to fulfil so nobly, was admirably expressed in its motto, taken from a saying of Stephen Woulfe: To create and foster public opinion in Ireland, and to make it racy of the soil. Davis's was the suggestion of making national poems and ballads a prominent feature of the journal—the feature by which it became best known and did, perhaps, its most impressive, if not its most valuable, work. His Lament for Owen Roe, which appeared in the sixth number, worked in Ireland like an electric shock, and woke a sleeping faculty to life and action. Henceforth Davis's public life was bound up with the Nation . Into this channel he threw all his powers. What kind of influence he exerted from that post of vantage the pages of this book will tell.