Sir Charles Gavan Duffy

“ I wish I could say of modern Ireland. But our people, generally, drink no more at the high head-fountains of their island-thought. This is one of the greatest losses which can befall a nation, for it loses thus its birthright, that central core of ideas round which new ideas would develop naturally, grow and flourish, as they never can on alien soil. There is a tone of sincerity in the ancient narratives which cannot exist in imported thought, and we are apt to lose inspiring examples of manful striving, loyal comradeship, truthful lives, chivalric courtesy, and great-minded heroism. ”

“ Let me ask, Where, in 1840, were the writers who were exciting universal enthusiasm in 1843? Like them, the men of the future are consciously or unconsciously preparing for their task; they are waiting the occasion—occasion which is the stage where alone great achievements are performed. I could name, if it were needful, a few writers not unworthy to succeed the men of ’43, but their work will speak for them. I prefer to say that if there were not one man of genius left of the Irish race, there are already materials sufficient to furnish useful and delightful books for half-a-dozen years. ”

“ If we take a bird’s-eye view of our island to-day, and compare it with what it used to be, we must be struck by the extraordinary fact that the nation which was once, as every one admits, one of the most classically learned and cultured nations in Europe, is now one of the least so; how one of the most reading and literary peoples has become one of the least studious and most un-literary, and how the present art products of one of the quickest, most sensitive, and most artistic races on earth are now only distinguished for their hideousness. ”

“ Of all studies that one which a nation can least safely dispense with is a study of its own history. Some one has invented the audacious axiom that history never repeats itself, but it would be truer to affirm that history is always repeating itself; assuredly in our own history identical weaknesses and identical virtues recur from generation to generation, and to know them may teach us where weak places in national and individual character need to be fortified and strong ones developed. ”

“ England holds the sympathies of all the communities which share her blood, less by obeying the same laws than by loving the same books. And if we do not fail in our task the volumes of the Irish Library will be read by the Irish settler in Canada, the Irish digger in California and Australia, our missionaries and soldiers in India, the adventurous pioneer in Africa, the exile far away in Florida, in Michigan, in Egypt, or in Siam, with more love and enthusiasm than even in the homesteads of Leinster and Munster. ”

“ It is the outcome of a desire and a want which have been long felt that the Irish people should know accurately and intimately everything connected with the past history of their country, with its literature, its music, its antiquities, and its art. The same idea which is now taking visible shape, presented itself to the minds of the leaders of the Young Ireland movement fifty years ago, when a series of little books was published which have since been the companions, the inspiration, and the delight of two generations of Irishmen at home and abroad. ”

“ But good books will do more than this—they will awaken all that is best in our nature, and teach us to live worthier lives. They will do for us what we rarely permit the closest friend to do—they will teach us our faults and how to amend them. What they might do, not for the individual, but for the nation, I dare not predict—the possibilities are so prodigious. One of the keenest intellects of the eighteenth century declared that the world was ruled by books. ”

“ There is a blindness which is worse than colour-blindness in the eyes which see physical, but which cannot perceive intellectual forces and effects: they will record that Roman power conquered Greece, but fail to recognise that Greek intellect conquered the conqueror. Our nation has had its changes of fortune. It has invaded others, and been itself invaded often—part of the penalty it paid for occupying the fairest isle of the old world, a penalty we might still pay had not a new world opened wide its golden gates in the West. ”

“ Every people has at first its ideals, simple, sincere, and great, mingled with myths that stimulate the [Pg 71] imagination. Every young generation has similar wants, and will seek to satisfy them, if not here, then elsewhere, in a literature that debases the germing ideals, dwarfs the mind, and soils the imagination.
With roots deep struck in the soil, the literature of the Irish Gael and commingled races grew vigorously from its own stock and threw out luxuriant branches and fair blooms. ”

“ Hence the Epic which has thrilled the world, and which, long [Pg 69] ages later, broke the chains of the Turk, and made Greece a nation. That Epic stands alone, nor should we desire to have ideas cast in the same mould. Such desire is the defect of stereotyped thought, which does not understand that to have something diverse and original is to possess a treasure. Our ancient literature must be judged by itself, on its intrinsic merits as the articulate expression of independent humanity. ”

“ The highest teaching of a people is to accustom them to have a strict regard for the rights of others, to be prudent and temperate in action, and to regard the whole nation as members of a common household. To make our people politically free, yet leave them bond-slaves of some debasing social system like that which crowds the mines and factories of England with squalid victims, or make the artisans of France so often godless scoffers, would be a poor result of all Ireland’s labours and sacrifices. ”

“ It is the curious certainty that come what may Irishmen will continue to resist English rule, even though it should be for their good, which prevents many of our nation from becoming Unionists upon the spot. It is a fact, and we must face it as a fact, that although they adopt English habits and copy England in every way, the great bulk of Irishmen and Irishwomen over the whole world are known to be filled with a dull, ever-abiding animosity against her, and—right or wrong—to grieve when she prospers, and joy when she is hurt. ”

“ With a memory running back over six decades of reading, I confidently affirm that there are scattered in magazines and annuals, in luckless books neglected in the hurry of our political march, in publications the very names of which are forgotten by the present generation, Irish stories of surpassing interest, fit to win and fascinate young Irish readers, which would not degrade or debase them, but make them better men and better Irishmen. ”

“ It will be our duty to see that the literary labourers also shall be fairly paid, for they are commonly neither a sordid nor even a provident race. It will be a labour of love to them to feed the mind of their country, as it has been a labour of love to the men of their class everywhere. Who can read without a glow of sympathy how the struggling Scotch farmer and exciseman who gave immortal songs to Scotland, refused pecuniary reward for a work which he desired to be one of pure patriotism ”

“ Columba is the first Irish poet of exile—of which our nation has such sad experience since. His poetry, like his life, is instinct with the deepest affection for his native land, whilst his work has been the most fruitful in influence over the intellectual development of Scotland and England. From the island of Iona, chiefly, went forth that persuasive power which carried education over Britain. The majority of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, all the North of England, where English learning and literature took its rise, were bathed in an Irish intellectual atmosphere. ”

“ Let me say, though I have said it more than once before, that the Celts are among the most teachable of races. The drill, the jacket, the discipline, transform an Irish peasant into a sub-constable with almost as military a carriage, and as expert an eye and hand as a veteran of the Peninsula. A few years in a National School, and the boy who emerged from a smoky and squalid cabin, shared with a pig, is turned into a clean and [Pg 22] shapely youth, fit to wrestle with the world, and perhaps to win the match. ”

“ In every great colony it has been spoken from the dais of authority in the accents we love. Nay, more, I met officers in the service of France and Belgium, and some who had served in Austria, indistinguishable from Frenchmen and Germans in their ordinary conversation, who, when they strayed into English, became unmistakably Leinster-men or Munster-men, but none of these Irishmen show the least disposition to merge themselves in any other race. And the millions of our people in America, are they not more Irish than the Irish at home? ”

“ It is nearly a year since I opened to this Society the design of inducing young Irishmen of the present generation to take up anew a task which famine and political disaster interrupted among their predecessors—the task of teaching the Irish people to understand their own country. The Irish people have never ceased to love their country, they have never shrunk from any labour or sacrifice to serve her, but they do not understand Ireland as the Swiss understand Switzerland ”

“ The humanising of English law long steeped in blood and tears, is less attributable to bench and bar than to the books of Jeremy Bentham. If the Court of Chancery is no longer the patron and factor of dilapidated edifices and ruined fortunes, if the Dotheboys halls of Yorkshire are shut up, is it not chiefly to a couple of novels by Charles Dickens we owe these salutary changes? One little volume written by a woman, critics assure us, routed filth and laziness out of the farmhouses of Scotland. ”

“ It is not alone that we are deficient in knowledge essential to equip us for the battle of life by an acquaintance with the character, capacities, and history of our own country; but, far worse than that, the mind of the generation destined some day to fill our place, the youthful mind which used to be kindled and purified by the poetry and legends of Ireland, runs serious risks of becoming debased, perhaps depraved, by battening on literary garbage. ”

“ In the excitement of change, in the presence of novel phenomena and new experience, the eye is made keen, the senses are quickened, and the brain is stimulated to the utmost. The rapid climatic variations of their insular abode must have affected those accustomed to more constant continental atmospheres. The earliest remnants of our literature reveal a people who were—or as, I think, who had become in these conditions—very sensitive to the things of nature, to whom fair objects of heaven and earth gave joy, and whose exalted imagination saw mystery in new phenomena. ”

“ Without a sympathetic audience the orator is only a lay figure, without a sympathetic circle of readers the writer is a wasted force. We labour for the young men and young women of Ireland, on whom the future of our race depends; and our hope is that they may respond as cordially as their predecessors did fifty years ago; that they may aim to gain a complete knowledge of their own country, and come forth from the study steeped in Irish memories, proud of Irish traditions, panting with Irish hopes. Every Irishman, anywhere in the world, who wishes well to our design, can help it a little ”

“ One secluded scholar has spent his manhood collecting our national records with a care and zeal which in any other country would compel the recognition and reward of the State; a group of scholars not connected, I think, except by the camaraderie of a kindred pursuit, have created a great revival in Gaelic literature; and the Irish press has not for a generation devoted so much thought to native literature and art, national customs and manners, as it does just now. ”

“ I answer because the Irish race is at present in a most anomalous position, imitating England and yet apparently hating it. How can it produce anything good in literature, art, or institutions as long as it is actuated by motives so contradictory? Besides, I believe it is our Gaelic past which, though the Irish race does not recognise it just at present, is really at the bottom of the Irish heart, and prevents us becoming citizens of the Empire, as, I think, can be easily proved.
To say that Ireland has not prospered under English rule is simply a truism ”

“ If we had a past of shame—were we members of a nation that had never risen or had deeply fallen—these should be incentives to brave hearts to achieve work for the credit of their race. It is otherwise with us, and we dare not stand still. The past would be [Pg 114] our reproach, the future our disgrace. Not foreign force, but native sloth can do us dishonour. If our nation is to live, it must live by the energy of intellect, and be prepared to take its place in competition with all other peoples. ”

“ What do we hope to make of Ireland?—this is the fundamental question on which the character of education ought to depend. In Switzerland the bulk of the people live on their own farms, not needing or desiring great wealth, but enjoying free, simple lives, ennobled by the perfect liberty which the poet declares is a child of the mountains. ”

“ The adventure was under the direction of Cabot, the Genoese, who discovered the northern shore of America a year before Columbus reached its more inviting isles. Thus, either St. Brendan’s voyage is a fact, and then he was the true First Discoverer; or it is a fiction, and then it was the direct cause of that discovery. This were a remarkable result of the power of the imaginative literature of the ancient Irish. No other people on earth can claim the discovery of a Continent as the result of a romance. ”