“On Lough Neagh’s bank, as the fisherman strays / In the calm, cold eve’s declining, / He sees the Round Towers of other days / In the wave beneath him shining. / Thus shall memory often, in dreams sublime, / Catch a glimpse of the days that are over; / Thus, sighing, look through the waves of time / For the long-faded glories they cover.”

Biography is of all narratives the most valuable. The revolution of empires would be but a fairy tale to us, if they were not capable of supplying additional principles for our knowledge of human nature. Biography, like all things else, becomes more impoarant as the influence of its subjects has been more extensive; for the future fares of a nation are made by its character, and its character is made by its celebrated me. But the deepest and holiest interest is thrown round Biography, when it is appealed to as the vindicator of an unhappy people; when the fallen are forced to bring in the dead to plead their cause, and find their only trophies in the tomb.

The History of Ireland is the most calamitous moral document since the beginning of society. A goverment of barbarism was less succeeded than interrupted by a government of conquest; and the evil of this partial subjugation was reinforced by the subordinate mischiefs of a divided law, a divided language, and divided religions. The heroic savage of Ireland lost a share of his native virtues and filled up their place by the arts of a perverted civilisation. The laws of English had made a sudden burst into the country ... but their progress was as suddenly checked, and they only increased the tumult and dangers of that untamed element into which they had plunged. Ireland was left only a place of desperate rivalry or of desolation, a field of battle or a grave.

The cause of these deplorable calamities was not in the English legislature; for the only crime of that legislature was in the slowness and unskillfulness of the cure. The original government of Ireland was, of all others, the most fatal to civilisation; it was the government of tribes, the devotedness of clanship without its compensating and patriarchal affections, the haughty violence of the feudal system without its superb munificence and generous achievement. Ireland was torn in pieces by four sovereignties; the people were kept in chains at home, that they might be loosed on their neighbours with the ferocity of hungry and thwarted strength. Her government was a graduated tyranny in which the sovereign stood at the highest point of licentiousness; and the people were sunk to the bottom of the scale in chill and deadly depression. But no man who knows the history of Ireland can compute the influence of England among the elements of her depression. She neglected, but she scarcely smote her. It was the physiciants disgusted by the waywardness of the patient, leaving the disease to take its course, and not the assassin inflicting a fresh wound. ... England was then fighting for her freedom [against] France ... Spain ... if she turned round to look upon the dissensions of Ireland, it was only with the quick and anxious irritation of a conqueror, who in the moment of deciding the battle, sees an insurrection of prisoners in the rear.

[...]

(Available at Google - online - accessed 02.07.2023; see See page-images of Preface in full - as infra; full-text copies available in RICORSO Library > Criticism - as .pdf & .docx.)

Abernethy, John

Burke, Richard

Archdekin, Richard

Cantwell, Andrew

Barber, Mary

Carolan, Turlough

Barry, David

Centlivre, Susannah

Barry, Spranger

Cherry, Andrew

Berkeley, George

Clancy, Michael

Borlase, Edmund

Clayton, Robert

Boyd, Hugh Macauley

Cleiri, or Cleirigh, Michael

Boyle, Henry [Earl of Shannon]

Colgan, John

Boyle, Richard [Ist Earl of Cork]

Columbanus

Boyle, Robert [Hon.]

Boyle, Roger [Earl of Orrery]

Boyse, Samuel

Brady, Nicholas

Brooke, Charlotte

Brooke, Henry

Browne, Peter [Bishop of Cork]

Burgh, Walter Hussey

Burke, Edmund

Concanen, Matthew [commencing Vol. II 1819 Edn.[

MacGeoghegan, Conall

Conry, Maurice [Flaithrí Ó Maolchonaire]

Macklin, Charles

Coote, Sir Charles

Malone, Edmund

Coote, Sir Charles

Millikin, Richard Alfred

Cox, Richard [Sir]

Molesworth, Robert

Curran, John Philpot

Molloy, Charles

Daniel, William

Molyneux, William

Delacour, James [Rev.]

Monk, Mrs.

Delany, Patrick

Mossop, Henry

Farquhar, George

Mossop, William

Fitzgerald, Edward

Murphy, Arthur

Fleming, Patrick

Nary, Cornelius

Flood, Henry

O’Brien, William

Francis, Philip [Sir]

O’Flaherty, Roderic[k]

Gentleman, Francis

O’Halloran, Sylvester

Goldsmith, Oliver

O’Hara, Kane

Grattan, Henry

O’Leary, Arthur [Fr.]

Grierson, Constantia

Ormond, Duke of,

Grimshaw, Nicholas

Parnell, Thomas

Haliday, William

Patrick, St.

Hamilton, Anthony

Pilon, Frederick

Hamilton, Elizabeth

Pockridge, Richard

Hamilton, William [Rev]

Roche, Boyle [Sir]

Hely-Hutchinson, John

Sarsfield, Patrick

Hiffernan, Paul

Sheridan, Frances

Hone, Nathaniel

Sheridan, R[ichard] B[rinsley]

Hutcheson, Francis

Thomas Sheridan

Jephson, Robert

Skelton, Philip

Johnstone, Charles

Sloane, Hans

Jones, Henry

Southerne, Thomas

Keating, Geoffrey

Sterne, Laurence

Kelly, Hugh

Swift, Jonathan

Keogh, John [d.1817]

Synge, Edward [Archbishop]

King, William [Archbishop]

Tate, Nahum

Kirwan, Richard

Touchet, James, Earl of Castlehaven

Langrishe, Hercules [Sir ]

Tyrrel, Richard

Le Fanu, Alicia

Ussher, James

Leland, Thomas

Wilk[e]s, Robert

Lombard, Peter

Woffington, Peg

Lucas, Charles

Harris, Walter [Addendum]

Macartney, George [Earl of]