judgment be on the other hand, it will conduce the more to her honour. I will ask it, then, to be remembered, going no further back than the time of Elizabeth, that England, in the fulness of prosperity, had her Shakspeare, Spenser, Sidney, Bacon, and many others, great in letters; while in Ireland, at the same time, the English language was a stranger-tongue outside the pale, the country yet unconquered, and undergoing the horrors of war. At this very period, Spenser, an eye-witness of those horrors, deprecating the charge of inefficiency made against the English clergy in Ireland, uses these memorable words— "It is ill time to preach among swords." If it was an ill time to preach, it was also an ill time for literary culture, and a sufficient reason why Ireland cannot be expected to compete with England in literary honours. So far from expecting this, we may rather wonder that Ireland, in an interim far from peaceful, should have done so much, more particularly in a language which she had yet to learn.

With respect to Scotland, her literature, in general, has done her the highest honour; as for her songs, a large amount are of the first mark; but Scotland has been more favourably circumstanced for literary pursuits than Ireland. She has not suffered the penalties of political strife so heavily, nor so recently; she has not been shaken by internal convulsion for the last century; while in Ireland, within about half the period, raged a rebellion that drenched her in blood, since which she has had many a political throe: in fact, it is not quite thirty years since that large question, Catholic Emancipation, which kept her so long disturbed, was settled. Such a state of things made fiery orators, and produced the fierce outpouring of political invective in prose and verse, mingled with the wild wail of national grief, or the sudden burst of pent-up gall that sense of wrong and hope deferred engender; but, for the sweeter flowers of poesy, there was small chance of their spring

ing in so uncongenial a soil; and even in the vindicative verse of that time of strife there was not much merit; the shafts that flew fast and thick, from both sides, were unpolished:but that mattered not;-they were meant less to dazzle than to wound.

It was not until 1807 that the lyric muse of Ireland might spread her wing in a somewhat calmer atmosphere; and sing of gentler themes; and then appeared that work, not only the crowning wreath of its author, but among the glories of the land that gave him birth—I need scarcely say I mean "Moore's Irish Melodies." To the finest national music in the world he wrote the finest lyrics; and if Ireland never produced, nor should ever produce, another lyric poet, sufficient for her glory is the name of Thomas Moore.

Why, then, fear to meet any poetic rivals in the field? Why the deprecatory tone in which I commence my preface? Because the songs of Moore are not at my command. If they were, such a book of the collected lyrics of Ireland might be made as could scarcely be matched,--certainly not excelled,but the strictness with which the proprietors of Moore's works guard the copyright-a strictness that cannot in the least be blamed however much it may be lamented in the present caseforbids me the use of those exquisite lyrics; and yet, even without these, I hope this volume will be considered honourable to the lyric genius of Ireland. How much would not a collection of Scottish Songs suffer, wanting the lays of Burns: what, then, must not an Irish collection lose in wanting Moore's? Ireland thus competes with England and Scotland at the greatest disadvantage:-her battle is like that of the Greeks without Achilles.

As to the arrangement of the following collection, I felt bound to follow that of the two preceding volumes in the series, which classes the songs under different heads, and this created

a difficulty in my editorial task, though no such difficulty existed in compiling the former volumes, with ample stores to select from; but even this difficulty in my " labour of love"(for such the editing of this book became, after my being some time engaged in it)—had its reward; for, in distributing the contents into sections, I found a remarkable and rather interesting coincidence between the Scottish Songs and the Irish, in three particulars,—namely: that while in the Book of English Songs there are distinct sections for pastoral and rural, sea, and sporting songs, there are no such sections in the Book of Scottish Songs; nor in this did such a section become necessary. So remarkable a coincidence suggested some mental inquiry as to the cause; for, Scotland and Ireland being both pastoral countries, why this absence of pastoral songs? I then found that many of the pastoral songs of England arose out of a fashion that sprung up, at one period in that country, in Literature and in the Fine Arts, to affect the rural;-when city gallants made love under the name of Corydon and Amintor to their Sylvias and Daphnes; kings and queens were represented on canvass as Endymions and Dianas; while dukes and duchesses took the humbler forms of shepherds and shepherdesses. This was unreal ruralism, whereas the pastoral feeling of both Scotland and Ireland was genuine, and is manifested not ostentatiously, but accidentally and naturally, as may befit or illustrate the subject of the lyric; and, as regards the Songs of Ireland, it may be observed that mere allusion is often made to pastoral pursuits; and that images derived from nature are more frequent in the songs translated from the native tongue.

Why Sporting Songs do not so much abound in Scottish and Irish composition was not so easily accounted for, as the Celts of old passionately loved the chase-a love as passionately inherited by their descendants; and yet we do not find the

chase specially treated as a theme by the Celtic lyrist. Like the pastoral lays before alluded to, songs of the chase have been cultivated, in England, as a peculiar style of composition, while in the lyrics of Scotland and Ireland the love of the chase only appears incidentally. Again, I asked myself, "why is this?" And memory gave me the answer, by calling up before me that charming scene in the Lady of the Lake, where Douglas, on meeting his daughter, who had been anxiously awaiting his return, accounts for his absence by saying

And this, I think, is the answer to the question. The Celt looked upon the chase as but the mimicry of war-and as he had the real article but too often on his hands, he did not care much about the bardic celebration of the mimicry.

With respect to Sea-Songs, the solution is sufficiently easy. That England, the Mistress of the Seas, should be great in maritime ode and song-that she should revel, as it were, in such a subject, and leave little to be done by any other portion of the united kingdom, is quite natural. But though the bulk of English maritime lyrics has proceeded from English pens, the few that have been produced by Scotch and Irish are of the highest class. It will scarcely be questioned that Scotland may claim the first place, in right of Campbell's "Battle of the Baltic," and "Ye Mariners of England," and though "Rule Britannia" is not a sea-song, it is worthy of remark that this finest and most exultant national ode of Britain is by a Scotchman. Ireland contributes to the lyric celebration of England's naval glory in the music of "The Arethusa;" that noble air, by Carolan, being very shabbily purloined by W. Shield. "The Mid Watch," by Sheridan, is of the first mark; Cherry's "Bay of Biscay, O!" achieved great popularity; "The Boatman's Hymn" (a translation from the Irish) is full of spirit and

originality; and last, and greatest, is "The Forging of the Anchor," by Mr. Samuel Ferguson; an ode of surpassing power and beauty.

Under the head of Patriotic and Military Songs, the three books are pretty equal in quantity; in quality I think Ireland has rather the advantage. The class entitled Jacobite Songs, in the Scottish collection, has its counterpart in this, under the head of Historical and Political Songs; and this section might have been much larger, but that the nature of the subject rendered the most condensed form the best. Some would, perhaps, say, "Why introduce such songs at all?" But I think, in a book purporting to be a comprehensive national collection of lyrics, exemplifying national character and incident, such a section could not be omitted. Such songs, odes, and ballads are historically interesting; the specimens are not confined to the lyric effusions of one party; those of both are given, arranged in succession, according to their date-or, at least, according to the succession of the times they illustrate. The editorial notice given to some of these may appear long, at first sight, but the notes are no longer than is necessary for the perfect understanding of the text.

I considered it a duty to insert in this volume many songs that have appeared in English collections from the pens of Irish writers. After having stated the unfavourable nature of our start in the race of literature, we cannot afford to have some favourites "scratched" out of our list. The works of Goldsmith, Sheridan, O'Keefe, Cherry (and not unfrequently Moore), have been placed to the credit side of the account of England's lyric literature. This is a mistake which should be rectified. The lyric works of all who are Irish should appear in a book of Irish Songs; and I am supported in this opinion by the precedent afforded me in the Book of Scottish Songs, where numerous lyrics are given without any distinctive Scotticism to