1790-1868; b. Willsgrove, Co. Roscommon, 1 Jan. 1790, ed. TCD; joint inheritance squandered by brother; holy orders, 1822; Suirville sinecure curacy, 1835, and vicar, 1846; he held additional livings at Kilmacow, Co. Waterford, and Attanagh; compiled Lives of Illustrious and Distinguished Irishmen (6 vols. 1839-47), from Ollamh Fodhla (600 bc.) to death of Whitley Stokes (1845), with extensive historical introduction summarising antiquarian insights into the Phoenician origins of the Gaelic people of Ireland (‘our nation’) in its linguistic, cultural and political make-up [see note]; later reiss. as The Irish Nation: Its History and Its Biography (1871) and afterwards revised and enlarged by his son as The Irish Nation (1875); Wills was the actual author of The Universe (1821) - a poem which secured £500 for C. R. Maturin when published with his [Wills’] permission; he also issued letters on The Philosophy of Unbelief (q.d.); d. Nov., Attenagh; MRIA; see also Irish Booklover, Vols. 2, 6. CAB ODNB PI DIW DIB DIH RAF OCIL

In his introduction to the first volume of Illustrious and Distinguished Irishmen [...] (1840-47 & edns.) - also known from its extended title as his History of Ireland - James Wills argues strenuously for the Phoenician origins the the Irish lanuage and people - broadly following Charles Vallancey [q.v.]- and contests the scepticism of those who dismiss Geoffrey Keating’s History of Ireland as a compilation of mythic pseudo-facts based on the Leabhar Gabhala [Book of Invasions]. Will’s work is a chronological and topical compilation of Irish biographical articles, i.e., a listing of all notable Irish and Anglo-Irish personages by historical period and by their occupation - ecclesiastical, military, statesmanship, &c. It occupies an intermediate position between Richard Ryan’s Biographica Hibernica (2 vols., 1822) and Alfred Webb’s Compendium of Irish Biography (1878) - in which it is handsomely acknowledged. It also bears a formative relation to Charles Read’s Cabinet of Irish Literature (1876-79) and all succeeding large-scale anthologies of Irish writing.

Besides the scale and thoroughness of its records by the lights of the day, the most interesting feature of Wills’s History (for short) is the fact that he embraces the Orientalist view of Irish ethnic and linguistic origins arising from a supposed invasion of Ireland by Phoenicians - the people of Carthage and Tyre - before their destruction by the Roman empire. Ireland is thus supplied with a civilised pedigree which, though admittedly declining into barbarism through isolation (according to this view) long retained the culture and institutions of a civilised people. The effect of this was two-fold: both to lend support to the idea of Ireland as a nation worthy of independent government on the lines of the pre-Union Protestant Parliament and, secondly, to feed into the sense of Irish national pride in orginal nationhood - hence Thomas Davis’s ballad "A Nation Once Again". The latter idea ultimately took a sectarian turn when it began to feed into the Catholic-Republican ideology of the Ireland Republican Brotherhood and Sinn Fein, considered jointly as the major forces behind the 1916 Rising and the subsequent War of Independence.

In the Introduction to the first volume of his History, Wills positions himself in the line of antiquarian thinkers descended from Charles Vallancey - whom he quotes at some length in evidence of the theory that the Irish language is descended from that of the Phoenicians as indicated by a scene in Plautus’s comed Poenula in which a Carthaginian speaks in his own language. In pursuing his argument, Wills takes issue with Thomas Moore [q.v.] whose reservations about the anti-Phoenician theory in his revision to the first volume of his own History of Ireland (1st edn. 1832; revised and uniform edn. 1840-41). Like Moore in 1834, he wrote in ignorance of George Petrie’s elaborate analysis and dismissal of all such orientalist ideas in an RIA prize-winning lecture which, however, remained unpublished until 1845 - viz., Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland (1845).

In his Introduction to the first volume of his own six-volume History of Ireland (Vol. 1, 1840; Vol. 6, 1847), he propounds the “moderate” view that, if not taken as historical fact, Geoffrey Keating’s History of Ireland and the ancient MS source Lebor Gabala upon which it is largely founded are trustworthy in so far as they bear the imprint of a conherent racial memory rather than a strict historical chronology and should be accepted as indicative of some real connection with the sea-faring Phoenicians of Tyre. In one place he writes: ‘We only here desire to enforce the general probability in favour of those writers, who, abandoning partial views, and taking the general ground of historic principle, have adopted the more ancient view of the origin of our native Irish race.’ (p.24.)

All of this is encased in the immediate context of the wider debate around the representation of the Irish at the date of the Norman Invasion as a civilised or a barbaric pople which had been the burning issue under discussion at the Royal Irish Academy since the 1770s. This relatedfd, chiefly, to the claims of the then-emerging Protestant Irish Nation of Grattan’s Parliament to legislative independence from Britain - a political project easier to support if Ireland were considered as a true nation rather than a rabble of uncivilised tribes in its historical origins. (Otherwise, the Protestant Nation could be no more more than a colonists’ club.)

Finally, that debate and the question of national representation entailed in it form the subject of several books by Joep Leerssen (Mere Ghael, 1986; and Remembrance and Imagination, 1996) as well as others such as Luke Gibbons’s Transformations in Ireland Culture (1996) or recent date. In two of these, a short yet signal passage from Wills’s Introduction is sited as evidence of the ‘oneiric’ aspect of Irish historiography in the absence of a strictly chronological narrative of national advent, revoution, and progress which distinguishes so many continental countries by comparison - but chiefly England and Britain for whom be became part of the equipage of the imperial conqueror under whose yoke so many generations of Irishmen and women lived their lives.

In view of its value as a summary account of the ‘antiquarian’ position associated with the idea of oriental origins for the Irish nation, that Wills’s Introduction is reproduced here in full - as attached - besides the short quotation employed by Gibbons and Leerssen in their respective works. It is worth adding that, in quoting it, Leerssen - who is the more compendious historian of ‘imago-typical’ representations of national consciousness - acknowledges Luke Gibbons, not Wills himself, as his source. [See infra.]

• The Disembodied with Other Poems (Longman, Rees, and Co. ; Dublin : Hodges and Smith, 1831), iv, [2], 255pp.
• Dramatic Sketches and Other Poems (Dublin: William Curry, Jun. and Company 1845), xii, 345pp. [NLI copy formerly in library of Joseph Holloway].
• Moral and Descriptive Epistles (Dublin 1846).
• The Idolatress and Other Poems (London: . C. Hotten for the author 1868), [6], 197pp.

Also wrote The Universe (London: H. Colburn & Co, 1821), 108pp. ded. to S. T. Coleridge by ‘his sincere admirer’ [in 3 parts of which Pt. I: pp.1-34; Pt. II: pp.37-71; Pt. III: pp.73-97; Notes, 98ff. - but actually by Wills and published under Maturin’s name with Wills’s permission [available via HathiTrust - online.]

• Letters on the Philosophy of Unbelief (London: B. Fellowes 1835), xiv, 232pp. [printed in Dublin].
• pref. & annot., A Summary View of the Evidences of Christianity: in a letter from the Right Hon. C.K.B. [Charles Kendal Bushe], with a preface and notes by the Rev. James Wills (Dublin: W. Curry, 1845), 12, 178pp., 8°.
• Moral and Religious Epistles (Dublin: W. Curry, Jun. & Co. 1846), 1, l., iii, l, 109pp., 8b
• Vestiges of God in Scripture. In Two Act Sermons, preached in the Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin ... May 20th, 1855 .. June 22nd., 1856 ([n.p.; n.d. [1856]), 52pp., 8°.
• An Estimate of the Antecedent Probability of the Christian Religion, and of Its Main Doctrines: in six sermons preached in the Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin, being the Donnellan lectures for 1858, by James Wills. [Donnellan Lectures, 1858] (Dublin: Hodges, Smith, and Co. 1860), viii, 220pp.; 24cm.

• Lives of Illustrious and Distinguished Irishmen: from the earliest times to the present in chronological order and embodying a history of Ireland, 6 vols. [in 132 sep. parts] (Dublin: McGregor, Polson and Co.; Belfast: Sutherland: 1839-47), ed., see details]

—Quoted in Joep Leerssen, Remembrance and Imagination: Patterns in the Historical and Literary Representations of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century, Cork UP/Field Day 1996, p.155 - citing as his source Luke Gibbons, Transformations in Irish Culture, pp.165-69. For full copy of the Introduction here quoted in brief, see attached.

Note: In his reference note to this passage, Leerssen adds the following remark by way of acknowledging its his indebtedness for it to Gibbons in Transformations in Irish Culture (Cork UP 1996), pp.165-69: ‘Luke Gibbons comment on this passage that its disjointed, oneiric sense of history corresponds to Eisenstein’s theory of filmic montage (the cross-cutting on diverse images), and so foreshadows the fragmented construction of [James Joyce’s] Ulysses.’ Leerssen goes on, in his reference end-note. to refer to his own comments on “Wandering Rocks” chapter in Joyce’s famous novel which he relates to Stephen’s thoughts about Lessing’s Nebeneinander and Nacheinander in the antecedent “Proteus” epsiode of that work. (See further under Joyce - supra.)

[...]

In fine. There is nothing more satisfactorily confirming the general truth of the accounts contained in the ancient tradition of Irish antiquity, than its strict conformity with the general analogy of human history. And this is so clear, as to admit of being stated as an extensive system of social institutions, manners, opinions, incidents, and events, which no human ingenuity could have framed together in all its parts, and so combined with existing remains, as to challenge not a single authoritative contradiction. If this vast and well devised combination be attributed to the invention of the bards, it assumes for these so much moral, civil, and political knowledge, as would do much honour to the discipline and experience of the 19th century. If it be attributed to the imagination of antiquarian theorists, we must say, that the most fanciful, credulous, and superstitious legendaries, have, after all, displayed more skill, method, and consummate wisdom, in devising a political and moral system, than their sober opponents have shown in detecting their error and credulity. And we should strongly advise our modern constitution menders, and constructors of history, to take a lesson at their school.

That the language of the bards is largely combined with fiction, is no more than to say that they were poets; and the poetry of the age and country, as well as the state of the profession, led to a vast increase of this tendency; that the legends of the monks were overflowing with romance and superstition; and that the sober paced annalists, to a great extent, falsified their records, by omission; and partial statement. All this may be admitted. The manifest fictions [29] and extravagancies, and anachronisms, may be allowed to prove so much. But the admission does not unsettle a single support, or shake down the slightest ornament, which belongs to the main structure of the ancient history of Ireland. The sceptic has to account rationally, not only for the history itself, but for the language, and the very letters, in which it is written; and must adopt a chain of denials, affirmations, and reasonings, of the most abstruse, inventive, and paradoxical kind, to establish the falsehood of traditions, which, had they no proof, are yet the most likely to be the truth, and are quite unobjectionable on the general ground of historic probability.

On the fictions of the ancient legends, it is, however, well remarked by Sir Lawrence Parsons,* that they generally affect the opinions of the writers, and not their veracity, as they most commonly consist of extravagant explanations of common and probable incidents. Such are the varied narrations, in which the various calamities of sickness, famine, fire, flood, or storm, are ascribed to the magicians. If indeed the portion of common probability in the most fictitious legends be acceded to, as the necessary foundations of popular invention, there will be nothing worth contending for.

To sum briefly the general inferences to be drawn from the statements of our antiquaries, as to the origin of the Irish nation: As their letters and ancient language and traditions, are standing monuments of immemorial antiquity; as these are confirmed by a great variety of lesser, but still decided, indications to the same effect; we must conclude, that the people to which they belong, are a race derived from very ancient stock. Secondly, as there is no distinct tradition, assigning the origin of this race to any probable period, within those limits of time which commence the records of modern nations, it is to be inferred, as most likely, that this ancient people have sprung up from some earlier origin within the prior limits of ancient history.

If so, they must have derived those immemorial traditions, letters, language, and barbaric civilization, from that remote and primitive antiquity, and that ancient Eastern stock, of which they bear the decided characters. And the assumption may be taken, by antiquaries, as the solid basis of research, and probable conjecture. If these introductory remarks were indeed written to meet the eye of learned antiquaries, it must be observed, that these reasons would now be needless. Among the learned, there can scarcely be said to be a second opinion, so far as regards the main line of our argument. But with the vast and enlightened body of the reading public, it is, as we have already stated, otherwise. The claim of Irish history is regarded with a supercilious suspicion, very justifiable among those who know nothing of Irish antiquities. (pp.28-29.)