H. M.
LETTER XXV.
TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.
Just as I had finished my last, the Prince sent for me to his room; I found him alone, and sitting up in his bed! he only complained of the effects of years and sickness, but it was evident that some recent cause of uneasiness preyed on his mind. He made me sit by his bed-side, and said, that my good-nature, upon every occasion, induced him to prefer a request, he was induced to hope would not meet with a denial. I begged he would change that request to a command, and rely in every instance on my readiness to serve him. He thanked me, and told me in a few words, that the priest was going on a very particular, but not very pleasing business for him (the Prince) to the north; that the journey was long, and would be both solitary and tedious to his good old friend, whose health I might have observed was delicate and precarious, except I had the goodness to cheat the weariness of the journey by giving the priest my company. “I would not make the request,” he added, “but that I think your compliance will be productive of pleasure and information to yourself; in a journey of a hundred miles, many new sources of observation to your inquiring mind will appear. Besides, you who seem to feel so lively an interest in all which concerns this country, will be glad to have an opportunity of viewing the Irish character in a new aspect; or rather of beholding the Scotch character engrafted upon ours.”
“But,” said the Prince, with his usual nationality, “that exotic branch is not very distinguishable from the old stock.”
I need not tell you that I complied with this request with seeming readiness, but with real reluctance.
In the evening, as we circled round the fire in the great hall, I proposed to Father John to accompany him on his journey the following day.
The poor man was overjoyed at the offer while Glorvina betrayed neither surprise nor regret at my intention, but looked first at her father, and then at me, with kindness and gratitude.
Were my heart more at ease, were my confidence in the affections of Glorvina something stronger, I should greatly relish this little tour, but as it is, when I found every thing arranged for my departure, without the concurrence of my own wishes, I could not check my pettishness, and for want of some other mode of venting it, I endeavoured to ridicule a work on the subject of ancient Irish history which the priest was reading aloud, while Glorvina worked, and I was trifling with my pencil.
“What,” said I, after having interrupted him in many different passages, which I thought savoured of natural hyperbole, “what can be more forced than the very supposition of your partial author, that Albion, the most ancient name of Britain, was given it as though it were another or second Ireland, because Banba was one of the ancient names of your country?”
“It may appear to you a forced etymology,” said the priest, “yet it has the sanction of Camden, who first risked the supposition. But it is the fate of our unhappy country to receive as little credit in the present day, for its former celebrity, as for its great antiquity, * although the former is attested by Bede, and many other early British writers, and the latter is authenticated by the testimony of the most ancient Greek authors. For Jervis is mentioned in the Argonautica of Orpheus, long before the name of England is anywhere to be found in Grecian literature. And surely it had scarcely been first mentioned, had it not been first known.”
* It has been the fashion to throw odium on the modern
Irish, by undermining the basis of their ancient history,
and vilifying their ancient national character. If a
historian professes to have acquired his information from
the records of the country whose history he writes, his
accounts are generally admitted as authentic, as the
commentaries of Garcilasso de Vega are considered as the
chief pillars of Peruvian history, though avowed by their
author to have been compiled from the old national ballads
of the country; yet the old writers of Ireland, (the Psalter
of Cashel in particular) though they refer to these ancient
re cords of their country, authenticated by existing manners
and existing habits, are plunged into the oblivion of
contemptuous neglect, or read only to be discredited.
“Then you really suppose,” said I, smiling incredulously, “we are indebted to you for the name of our country?”
“I know,” said the priest, returning my smile, “the fallacies in general of all etymologists, but the only part of your island anciently called by any name that bore the least affinity to Albion, was Scotland, then called Albin, a word of Irish etymology, Albin signifying mountainous, from Alb, a mountain.”
“But, my dear friend,” I replied, “admitting the great antiquity of your country, allowing it to be early inhabited by a lettered and civilized people, and that it was the Nido paterno of western literature when the rest of Europe was involved in darkness; how is it that so few monuments of your ancient learning and genius remain? Where are your manuscripts, your records, your annals, stamped with the seal of antiquity to be found?”
“Manuscripts, annals, and records are not the treasures of a colonized or conquered country,” said the priest; “it is always the policy of the conqueror, or the invader, to destroy those mementi of ancient national splendour which keep alive the spirit of the conquered or the invaded; * the dispersion at various periods ** of many of the most illustrious Irish families into foreign countries, has assisted the depredations of time and policy, in the plunder of her literary treasures; many of them are now mouldering in public and private libraries on the Continent, whither their possessors conveyed them from the destruction which civil war carries with it, and many of them (even so far back as Elizabeth’s day) were conveyed to Denmark. The Danish monarch applied to the English court for some learned men to translate them, and one Donald O’Daly, a person eminently qualified for the task, was actually engaged to perform it, until the illiberality of the English court prevented the intention on the poor plea of its prejudicing the English interest.”
* Sir George Carevy, in the reign of Elizabeth, was accused
of bribing the family historian of the McCarthies to convey
to him some curious MSS. “But what,” says the author of the
Analect, “Carevy did in one province [Munster] Henry Sidney,
and his predecessors did all over the kingdom, being charged
to collect all the manuscripts they could, that they might
effectually destroy every vestige of antiquity and letters
throughout the Kingdom.” And St. Patrick, in his apostolic
zeal, committed to the flames several hundred druidical
volumes.
** Fourteen thousand Irish took advantage of the articles of
Limerick, and bade adieu to their native country forever.
“I know myself that many of our finest and most valuable MSS. are in libraries in France, and have heard, that not a few of them enrich the Vatican at Rome.” *
* In a conversation which passed in Cork between the
author’s father and the celebrated Dr. O’Leary, the latter
said he had once intended to have written a history of
Ireland. And added, “but, in truth, I found, after various
researches, that I could not give such a history as I would
wish should come from my pen, without visiting the
Continent, more particularly Rome, where alone the best
documents for the history of Ireland are to be had. But it
is now too late in the day for me to think of such a journey
or such exertions as the task would require.”
“Mr. O’Halloran informs me [says Mr. Walker, in his Memoirs of the
Irish Bards, p. 141], that he lately got in a collection
from Rome, several poems of the most eminent Bards of last
centuries.”
“But,” said I, “are not many of those MSS. supposed to be monkish impositions?”
“Yes,” replied the priest, “by those who never saw them, and if they did, were too ignorant of the Irish language to judge of their authenticity by the internal evidences they contain.”
“And if they were the works of monks,” said the priest, “Ireland was always allowed to possess at that era the most devout and learned ecclesiastics in Europe, from which circumstance it received its title of Island of Saints. By them, indeed, many histories of the ancient Irish were composed in the early ages of Christianity, but it was certainly from Pagan records and traditions they received their information; besides, I do not think any arguments can be advanced more favourable to the histories, than that the fiction of those histories simply consists in ascribing natural phenomena to supernatural agency.”
“But,” returned I, “granting that your island was the Athens of a certain age, how is the barbarity of the present day to be reconciled with the civilization of the enlightened past?”
“When you talk of our barbarity,” said the priest, “you do not speak as you feel, but as you hear.” I blushed at this mild reproof, and said, “what I now feel for this country, it would not be easy to express, but l have always been taught to look upon the inferior Irish as beings forming an humbler link than humanity in the chain of nature.”
“Yes,” said the priest, “in your country it is usual to attach to that class of society in ours a ferocious disposition amounting to barbarity; but this, with other calumnies, of national indolence, and obstinate ignorance, of want of principle, and want of faith, is unfounded and illiberal; * ‘cruelty,’ says Lord Sheffield, ‘is not in the nature of these people more than of other men, for they have many customs among them which disprove of unnatural indolence, that they are constitutionally of an active nature, and capable of the greatest exertions; and of as good dispositions as any nation in the same state of improvement; their generosity, hospitality, and bravery are proverbial; intelligence and zeal in whatever they undertake will never be wanting:—? It has been the fashion to judge of them by their outcasts.’”
* When nature is wounded through all her dearest ties, she
must turn on the hand that stabs, and endeavour to wrest the
poignard from the grasp that aims at the life-pulse of her
heart. And this she will do in obedience to that immutable
law, which blends the instinct of self-preservation with
every atom of human existence. And for this, in less
felicitous times, when oppression and sedition succeeded
alternately to each other, was the name of Irishman, blended
with the horrible epithet of cruel But when the sword of the
oppressor was sheathed, the spirit of the oppressed reposed,
and the opprobrium it had drawn down on him was no longer
remembered, until the unhappy events of a late anarchial
period, 1798 revived the faded characters in which that
opprobrium had been traced. The events alluded to were the
atrocities which chiefly occurred in the county of Wexford,
and its adjoining and confederate district. Wexford is an
English colony, planted by Henry the Second, where scarcely
any feature of the original Irish character, or any trace of
the Irish language is to be found. While in the barony of
Forth, not only the customs, manners, habits, and costume,
of the ancient British settlers still prevail, but the
ancient Celtic language, has been preserved with infinitely
less corruption than in any part of Britain, where it has
been interwoven with the Saxon, Danish, and French
languages. In fact, here may be found a remnant of an
ancient. British colony, more pure and unmixed than in any
other part of the world. And here were committed those
barbarities, which have recently attached the epithet of
cruel to the name of Irishman!
“It is strange (said the Prince,) that the earliest British writers should be as diffuse in the praise, as the moderns are in calumniating our unhappy country. Once we were everywhere, and by all, justly famed for our patriotism, ardour of affection, love of letters, skill in arms and arts, and refinement of manners; but no sooner did there arise a connexion between us and a sister country, than the reputed virtues and well-earned glory of the Irish sunk at once into oblivion: as if (continued this enthusiastic Milesian, rising from his seat with all his native vehemence,)—as if the moral world was subject to those convulsions which shake the natural to its centre, burying by a single shock the monumental splendours of countless ages. Thus it should seem, that when the bosom of national freedom was rent asunder, the national virtues which derived their nutriment from its source sunk into the abyss; while on the barren surface which covers the wreck of Irish greatness, the hand of prejudice and illiberality has sown the seeds of calumny and defamation, to choke up those healthful plants, indigenous to the soil, which still raise their oft-crushed heads, struggling for existence, and which, like the palm-tree, rise, in proportion to those efforts made to suppress them.”
To repeat the words of the Prince is to deprive them of half their effect: his great eloquence lies in his air, his gestures, and the forcible expression of his dark-rolling eye. He sat down exhausted with the impetuous vehemence with which he had spoken.
“If we were to believe Dr. Warner, however,” (said the priest) “the modern Irish are a degenerated race, comparatively speaking, for he asserts, that even in the days of Elizabeth, ‘the old natives had degenerated, and that the wars of several centuries had reduced them to a state far inferior to that in which they were found in the days of Henry the Second.’ But still, like the modern Greeks, we perceive among them strong traces of a free, a great, a polished, and an enlightened people.”
Wearied by a conversation in which my heart now took little interest, I made the palinod of my prejudices, and concluded by saying, “I perceive that on this ground I am always destined to be vanquished, yet always to win by the loss, and gain by the defeat; and therefore I ought not in common policy to cease to oppose, until nothing further can be obtained by opposition.”
The Prince, who was getting a little testy at my “heresy and schism,” seemed quite appeased by this avowal; and the priest, who was gratified by a compliment I had previously paid to his talents, shook me heartily by the hand, and said, I was the most generous opponent he had ever met with. Then taking up his book, was suffered to proceed in its perusal uninterupted. During the whole of the evening, Glorvina maintained an uninterrupted silence; she appeared lost in thought, and unmindful of our conversation, while her eyes, sometimes turned on me, but oftener on her father, seemed humid with a tear, as she contemplated his lately much altered appearance.
Yet when the debility of the man was for a moment lost in the energy of the patriot, I perceived the mind of the daughter kindling at the sacred fire which illumined the father’s; and through the tear of natural affection sparkled the bright beam of national enthusiasm.
I suspect that the embassy of the good priest is not of the most pleasant nature. To-night as he left me at the door of my room, he said that we had a long journey before us; for that the house of the nobleman to whom we are going lay in a remote part of the province of Ulster; that he was a Scotchman, and only occasionally visited this country (where he had an immense property) to receive his rents. “The Prince (said he) holds a large but unprofitable farm from this Highland chief, the lease of which he is anxious to throw up: that surly looking fellow who dined with us the other day, is a steward; and if the master is as inexorable as the servant, we shall undertake this journey to very little purpose.”
Adieu.—I endeavour to write and think on every subject but that nearest my heart, yet there Glorvina and her mysterious friend still awaken the throb of jealous doubt and anxious solicitude. I shall drop this for you in the postoffice of the first post-town I pass through; and probably endeavour to forget myself, and my anxiety to return hither, at your expense, by writing to you in the course of my journey.