Through this involved procedure, wherein his reputation as an agitator loomed quite as large as his powers of oratory, for sixty-seven long years he laboured at the business of state-craft; but, after all, he is best known to us for his labours in letters.
Some one has said that “Rulers govern, but it is literature that enlightens,” and, concerning Burke, who shall not say that his writings and his speeches, which latter have come to be accepted as but another form of literary expression, were not even more productive of good than were his political agitations. To Americans Burke should be doubly endeared. He favoured American independence, though he was against the revolution in France.
Richard Steele, though schooled at the Charterhouse in London, where he first met that other master of delicately phrased English, Addison, was born in Dublin in 1672 (d. 1729).
Steele has been reviled as a “fashionable tippler, an awful spendthrift, and a creature of broken promises;” but it has remained for an American, Donald G. Mitchell, to glorify him as “An Irish dragoon, not a grand man or one of great influence, but so kindly by nature, and so gracious in speech and writing, that the world has not yet done pardoning and pitying.” It is in the latter aspect that Dublin is wont to think of Sir Richard Steele,—as the “Irish dragoon” of as many virtues as faults.
It would be impossible to mention, even, the many celebrities whose names are identified with Dublin. Statecraft and letters alone number them in hundreds, and that great institution of learning, Trinity College, stands high among its kind.
The site of Trinity College was previously occupied by an important monastery, suppressed by Henry VIII. The university was founded by Queen Elizabeth, and endowed with the monastic property and many very valuable private bequests. The college is Alma Mater to a long line of famous men,—Ussher, Congreve, Swift, Goldsmith, Burke, to mention but a very few.
In the centre of the imposing front is the main gateway, flanked by the statues of Edmund Burke and Oliver Goldsmith.
In days gone by, Donogh O’Brien, when driven from his titular sovereignty by his nephew Tarlagh, journeyed to Rome, taking with him his illustrious father’s crown and harp as gifts to the Pope.
By some means or other, the harp—the once famous harp which had sounded through Tara’s halls—found its way back to Ireland, and is now, with the “Book of Kells,” the chief treasure of the library of Trinity College.
The architectural splendour of Dublin is not very great, although certain of the chief buildings, other than the churches, are in many ways remarkable.