By P.J. LENNOX, B.A., Litt.D.
The Gaelic literature of Ireland is not only of wonderful volume and
priceless worth, but is also of great antiquity, whereas the English
literature of Ireland, while also of considerable extent and high
value, is of comparatively modern origin. The explanation of this
fact is that for more than six centuries after the Anglo-Norman
invasion of 1169 the Irish language continued to be both the spoken
and, with Latin, the written organ of the great mass of the Irish
people, and that for nearly the whole of that period those English
settlers who did not become, as the well-known phrase has it, more
Irish than the Irish themselves by adopting the native language,
customs, and sentiments, were kept too busy in holding, defending,
and extending their territory to devote themselves to literary
pursuits. Hence we need not wonder if, leaving out of account merely
technical works like Lionel Power's treatise on music, written in
1395, we find that the English literature of Ireland takes its
comparatively humble origin late in the sixteenth century. For more
than two centuries thereafter, owing to the fact that the native
Irish, because they were Catholics, were debarred by law from an
education, the writing of English remained almost exclusively in the
hands of members or descendants of the Anglo-Irish colony, who, with
scarcely an exception, were Protestants and had as their principal
Irish seat of learning the then essentially Protestant institution,
Trinity College, Dublin. Alien in race and creed though these writers
mainly were, they have nevertheless spread a halo of glory around
their adopted country, and have won the admiration, and often the
affection, of Irishmen of every shade of religious and political
belief. For example, there is no Irishman who is not proud of
Molyneux and Swift, of Goldsmith and Burke, of Grattan and Sheridan.
From the nineteenth century onward Irish Catholics have taken their
full share in the production of English literature. Here, however, it
will be necessary to consider the writers of none but the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, as in other pages of this
volume considerable attention has been given to those of later date.