Life
Author A Defence of Ireland, poem ‘in Answer to the Partial and Malicious Accounts given of it by Mr. [Richard] Twiss’, in A tour in Ireland in 1775 (1776).
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Works
[As Mr. Lewis,] A Defence of Ireland: A poem. In answer to the partial and malicious accounts given of it by Mr. Twiss, and other writers (Dublin: printed for the author, by W. Kidd 1776), 30pp., 8o.
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Works
The Battle of the Players, Exhibiting the Characters of All the Actors and Actresses of the Irish Stage (Dublin 1762); [or John Wilson] The Postchaise Companion Through Ireland (Dublin n.d., c.1787); also 3rd edn., listed [under Lewis[,] Richard].
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Commentary
Joseph Th. Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fior-Ghael: Studies in the Idea of Irish Nationality, Its Development and Literary Expression Prior To The Nineteenth Century (Amsterdam: John Benjamins 1986) : remarks on A Defence of Ireland, ‘written “in Answer to the Partial and Malicious Accounts given of it by Mr. Twiss”, which ‘contains, amid much invective in heroic couplets, an appeal to Charles O’Conor ... Ireland’s most able champion in the national fight against calumny [quotes:] “When cowardly Scribblers, with infernal Rage, / IRELAND traduce in each malignant Page, / When base Assassins grasp th’envenom’d Dart, / And try to stab HIBERNIA to the Heart, / Why sleeps O’CONNOR [sic]? / Why, with powerful arm, / Will he not straight such Murders disarm? / Rise, Rise! - thy Country calls! - In soft Repose / Indulge not, but chastise thy Foes: / Let not, Oh! let not those thou lov’st complain, / Nor hear thy Country as thy Aid in vain.’ (p.28; Leerrsen, p.415.) See also Leerssen, ‘Antiquarian Research: Patriotism to Nationalism’, in Cyril J. Byrne & Margaret Harry, eds., Talamh an Eisc: Canadian and Irish Essays (Halifax: Nimbus Publ. Co.), pp.71-83 [quoting the lines: ‘when cowardly Scribblers …’]
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