THE
REVIVAL OF IRISH LITERATURE
AND
OTHER ADDRESSES

THE REVIVAL OF
IRISH LITERATURE

ADDRESSES BY SIR CHARLES
GAVAN DUFFY, K.C.M.G.,
DR. GEORGE SIGERSON,
AND DR. DOUGLAS HYDE

LONDON: T. FISHER
UNWIN, PATERNOSTER
SQUARE. MDCCCXCIV

CONTENTS.

			PAGE
1.	The Revival of Irish Literature. By Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, K.C.M.G.		9
	i.	What Irishmen may do for Irish Literature.
	ii.	Books for the Irish People.

2.	Irish Literature: Its Origin, Environment. By George Sigerson, M.D., Fellow of the Royal University		61

3.	The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland. By Douglas Hyde, LL.D.		115

The Revival of Irish literature.

TWO ADDRESSES

DELIVERED BEFORE

THE IRISH LITERARY SOCIETY,
LONDON,
IN JULY, 1892, AND JUNE, 1893,

BY THE PRESIDENT,

The Hon. Sir CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY,
K.C.M.G.

[Pg 9]

WHAT IRISHMEN MAY DO FOR IRISH LITERATURE.

Speaking to a Society of young Irishmen who love their country and burn toserve her, I am tempted to broach a subject which has long lain in mymind, waiting for the fit audience.

The famine of 1846 paralysed many forces in Ireland, and none moredisastrously than our growing literature. How little has been done in theregion of mind since that calamity, and by what isolated and spasmodicefforts? The era on which the famine fell was intellectually a singularlyfruitful one. A group of young men, among the most generous anddisinterested in our annals, were busy digging up the buried relics of ourhistory, to enlighten the present by a knowledge of the past, setting upon their pedestals anew the overthrown statues of[Pg 10] Irish worthies,assailing wrongs which under long impunity had become unquestioned andeven venerable, and warming as with strong wine the heart of the people,by songs of valour and hope; and happily not standing isolated in theirpious work, but encouraged and sustained by just such an army of studentsand sympathisers as I see here to-day. The famine swept away theirlabours; and their passionate attempts to arrest and redress thedestruction which the famin

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