>Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 05:24:41 -0700
>To: raudra9@hotmail.com
>From: elisa vandernoot <elisav@wiesenthal.com> (by way of Jack Kolb 
<KOLB@ucla.edu>) (by way of Jack Kolb <KOLB@ucla.edu>)
>Subject: Wit and wisdom from another time
>
>The Irish Times
>Monday, June 22, 1998
>
>Wit and wisdom from another time  
>
>Hugh Maxton on a recuperation of 18th-century poetry in Ireland
>
>Verse in English from Eighteenth-Century Ireland
>edited by Andrew Carpenter
>Cork University Press
>
>When the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing appeared in 1991, we were
>quickly promised a fourth volume (rather like a fourth green field) to 
make
>up for the lamentable absence of women's work. Andrew Carpenter, 
co-editor
>of the original project, has kept a different promise by bringing out 
an
>extensive collection of poetry from the Irish 18th century. He makes no
>claims to have found an unknown genius, male or female, but he has 
certainly
>extended our access to a body of writing which provides much wit, a 
great
>deal of advice, and some wisdom.
>
>The anthology is divided rather awkwardly into five sections, each 
devoted
>to a portion of the century. The exception to this is found in the 
second
>part, entitled "Jonathan Swift and His Irish Contemporaries, 
1713-1745".
>Within this, Swift's work is further divided into five sub-sections 
(with
>other authors intervening), not to mention a sixth in which Swift 
features
>along with Patrick Delany, Thomas Sheridan and others as the composer 
of
>riddles and street cries. This does not make for easy browsing, and the
>arrangement of the book looks more like a record of Dr Carpenter's 
methods
>of research than an aid to the reader's enjoyment.
>
>With such complaints out of the way, however, we can get down to 
business.
>About twenty women are included, of whom the most notable are Esther 
Johnson
>and Charlotte Brooke. On the other hand, the inclusion of James Eyre
>Weekes's "Two Poems" will raise the ire of all good feminists - they 
are not
>to be overlooked. Brooke features as the translator of Turlough O 
Carolan's
>"Song for Gracey Nugent", a piece which played a powerful but coded 
part in
>Maria Edgeworth's novel, The Absentee (1812). Her father, Henry Brooke, 
is
>represented by an excerpt from the very long "Universal Beauty" (1735).
>
>The existence of the Gaelic language is fully acknowledged, thanks to 
Dr
>Carpenter's happy collaboration with Diarmid O Muirithe and Alan 
Harrison,
>both colleagues in UCD. For example, Eoghan Rua O
>Suilleabhain is represented, not by his eulogy in English of Admiral 
Rodney,
>but by another piece in English describing the merits of hedge schools. 
Art
>Mac Cumhaigh from the Fews in Armagh supplies a macaronic piece in 
which the
>Church of Rome (speaking in Gaelic) and the Protestant Church (in 
English,
>perhaps because it is termed An Teampall Gallda, or the foreigners' 
church)
>exchange views.  Popular verse, including political songs and anonymous
>ballads, is also here a-plenty, the orange as well as the green.
>
>By looking at macaronic and translated work, together with political 
and
>topical pieces, the reader has no difficulty in seeing the Irishness of 
all
>this. As with the Field Day project generally, Irish writing is 
implicitly
>accepted as writing about Ireland. For this reason, perhaps, hymn 
writing -
>indeed, all religious poetry - is poorly represented. Tate and Brady's
>extraordinary metrical versions of the Psalms are noted but not 
included.
>Further difficulties arise, of course, when one looks at Brooke's 
"Universal
>Beauty" (which Dr Carpenter somewhat rashly describes as "the most
>significant philosophical poem written by an Irish writer in the 
eighteenth
>century". Surely Goldsmith's "The Deserted Village" or Swift's "Verses 
on
>the Death of Dr Swift" - oddly omitted - have as good a claim to be
>philosophical and a better claim to be poetry). However, as Dr 
Carpenter has
>met the difficulties positively, by including rather than excluding the
>likes of Brooke, and one hymn by Nahum Tate, no further complaints are 
in order.
>
>Consideration of Brooke raises another, more technical issue. 
"Universal
>Beauty", like John Toland's "Clio" - and Lady Ann Clare's "Motto 
Inscribed
>on the Bottom of Chamber Pots Beside a Portrait of Richard Twiss" - is
>written in rhyming couplets. To judge from this anthology, blank verse
>hardly got a look-in during the Irish 18th century, neither in its 
Miltonic
>form nor in the early romantic mode of Wordsworth. Nicholas Browne's 
"The
>North Country Wedding" is one of the very few instances represented by 
Dr
>Carpenter of Irish blank verse writing in this period.  Why should this 
be?
>The acknowledged exclusion of dramatic verse (but for incidental songs
>occurring in plays) indicates that the practice of Irish poets may not 
be
>fully reflected here. Nor is the issue directly confronted in the
>substantial Introduction to Verse in  English. However, the pages 
therein
>devoted to Gaelic metrics and their influence may imply an answer, 
however
>partial. It is depressing to think that no sufficiently large audience
>exists for an anthology in which both languages (not to mention Latin 
or
>French) could be directly represented.
>
>Hugh Maxton's new collection of poems, Gubu Roi, will be published 
later
>this year
>
>Copyright The Irish Times
>
>
>


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