The autobiography of a blackguard and a cad, a compound of every vice—meanness, mendacity, licentiousness, heartless selfishness. Add to these swagger, vulgarity, and a fire-eating audacity, which, however, is always on the safe side, and you have the portrait of the hero as painted by himself. All the characters are vicious or contemptible or both, the English and other foreigners no better than the Irish. Lyndon (real name Redmond Barry) belongs to an ancient and decayed family, once aristocratic. The story tells how he fights a duel at home in Ballybarry, falls in with swindlers in Dublin, deserts from the army, serves under Frederick the Great in the Seven Years’ War, becomes a professional but aristocratic gamester, marries (after a desperate struggle) the rich Lady Lyndon, blazes through a brief season in Dublin (1771), worries his wife into her grave, and finally runs through all his wealth. There is some humour in places, but it is grim and sardonic, and does not relieve the picture. Moral (see footnote near the close)—“Do not as many rogues succeed in life as honest men? More fools than men of talent?” Founded in part on the strange marriage of Andrew Bowes and the Countess of Strathmore at end of eighteenth century.
THOMAS, Edward.
⸺ CELTIC STORIES. Pp. 128. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press). 1911.
“The Boyhood of Cuhoolin,” “Father and Son,” “The Battle of the Companions” (C. and Ferdia), “The Death of C.,” “Deirdre and Naisi,” “The Palace of the Quicken Trees,” “The Land of Youth.” The rest (pp. 82-end) are Welsh tales. Told very plainly and briefly, yet not dully. The diction is quite modern and prosaic. The grotesquer folk-lore elements are not excluded. The Author has also publ. Norse Stories and many other works on a variety of subjects.
THOMPSON, E. Skeffington. Was a granddaughter of John Foster, last Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. She was an ardent Nationalist. About 1889 she and her sister Mrs. Rae founded the Southwark Junior Irish Literary Society.
⸺ MOY O’BRIEN. Pp. 300. (Gill). 3s. 6d. [1887]. New ed., 1914.
Deals with the politics of the day, but not to the neglect of the story, which shows considerable literary power, though containing but little incident. Strongly patriotic in tone. There is no religious bias. Treats of social and political life in Ireland thirty or forty years ago. Ends with many happy marriages. First appeared in U.S.A. in Harper’s (Irish Monthly).
THOMSON, C. L.
⸺ THE CELTIC WONDER WORLD. Pp. 155. (Horace Marshall). 1902.
No. 2 of the Romance Readers. Irish, Welsh, and Breton stories edited for children. Very pretty and imaginative illustr. by E. Connor. The tales are taken from good sources—Whitley Stokes, Standish O’Grady, Crofton Croker, “Atlantis,” O’Curry, the Mabinogion, &c. Contains “Deirdre,” “Ossian in the Land of Youth,” Cuchulainn stories, &c., told in simple but not childish language.