MR. D'ARCY McGEE'S POEMS.* IT is much to be regretted

that the lady who has edited this remarkable volume did not exercise her discretion in omitting a very considerable proportion of its contents. This would be necessary to do ordinary justice to Mr. McGee's singular and original poetical powers. One of his friends who remembers his work, when he was on the staff of the Dublin Nation, just before 1848, tells us that hardly a week passed in which he did not pro- duce a song or ballad, and sometimes both a ballad and a song. In

much of this heated rush of rhyme, pearls and rubbish are, of course mingled together. The best of his verses by far seem to have been written after the Young Ireland hegira, on the other side of the Atlantic ; and we think it may be observed that where there was a long interval between his compositions, they gain in lucidity, in accuracy and melody of rhythm, in colour and pathos of expression. But much of what he wrote even in mature age seems to have been put together anywhere and anyhow, in metre sometimes rough enough to suggest that it may have been devised to keep time to the jolting of a backwoods' waggon on a corduroy road. Now and again, however, we come to some little ode clear and still and deep as a Highland tarn, and whose words breathe a melody subtle and quaint as Gaelic music. If, to speak plainly, Mrs. Sadlier had boldly omitted one-half of the three hundred and odd sets of verses of which this volume consists, and had then carefully weeded the other half of all that was crude, ragged, and jejune, she might have made an exquisite little book, which would long have kept the memory of Mr. McGee "green in the souls" of his rather reluctant countrymen ; and on which the poet's own soul might have glanced, without any purgatorial twinge, from that circle of paradise where Ossian sits serene among the Celtic bards.

If anyone can solve the mystery why Thomas D'Arcy McGee was so unpopular with the bulk of his countrymen as he was all through his public life, and even at the hour of his terrible death, he will have traced one of the strangest secrets of the Irish character to, we fear, an ugly source. That character has its great qualities, and it has, of course, the defects of its qualities. The Irish people (we speak in the esoteric sense) did not like Mr. McGee, and it could not, nor can anyone else, perhaps, tell the reason why. What may be called "patriotic devotions" are often a very close clue to the state of the public mind in Ireland. The Irish heart would seem never to be so happy as when it can con- trive to blend its patriotism and its religion together, in some such scene as a MacManus' funeral. The execution of Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien at Manchester, and the assassination of Mr. McGee at Ottawa took place about the same time. Everyone who read Irish news in those days, with any degree of care, must have remarked that while public prayers for the repose of the souls of the Fenians were common throughout Ireland, there was no such spontaneous demonstration of popular devotion when the horrible news of Mr. McGee's murder became known.

Yet Mr. McGee's love of Ireland was evidently a master- passion, if it might not be more truly described as a phase of idolatry. It is impossible to read any of his writings without see- ing that his whole heart and soul, faculty and inspiration, were given, according to the best of his lights and opportunities, to the service of his country. The most casual reader cannot mistake the avidity and zeal with which he employs his talent as a poet in chanting the memories of which Ireland is most proud. But neither priest nor poet chanted his requiem in any very audible way. It is the more strange, because his intellect was not only intensely Irish, it was also intensely Catholic. His poetry, where it is not patriotic, is in nine cases out of ten of a religious com- plexion, and his patriotism itself always has a sort of devotional halo about it. Had he simply dissociated himself from Irish cares and causes, and gone into American interests and affairs, like General Sheridan or Mr. O'Connor the lawyer, he would almost certainly have risen to high distinction, and would probably have been exceed- ingly respected and lauded in his native land. But he could not cease dreaming about Irish chiefs, Irish saints, Irish hills and streams, and such were the thanks he got for his pains. It is a mystery,

* The Poems of Thomas D'Arcy McGee, with an Introduction and Biographical Sketch.

y Kra J. Sadlier. New York: D. and J. Sadlier and Co. Dublin: Nation Office. New York.

for the Irish are by no means an ungrateful race, nor even unfor- giving. It is true, Mr. McGee attacked the Fenians ; but other Irishmen spoke of Fenianism as the ill-cemented rubbish it has proved itself to be, when we compare it with the political con- spiracies of other countries, and the offence in their case was readily condoned. Irish judges and juries convicted Fenians by the dozen without the least compunction, and no one seems to have thought of touching a hair of their leads. But Mr. McGee was suddenly and brutally slain, and there was neither caoine nor cairn, nor muffled bell, nor flag half-mast high, nor solemn office for the dead among the people whom he loved so well, and for whom he had laboured so faithfully. To such poets as still remain in Ireland worthy to mourn for its honoured dead, may well be addressed the words of Mr. McGee's own touching lines, " Infelix Felix" :—

"Why is his name unsung, 0 minstrel host ? Why do you pass his memory like a ghost ? Why is no rose, no laurel on his grave ? Was he not constant, vigilant, and brave ? Why when the hero-age you deify, Why do you pass Infelix Felix by ?

"0 clear-eyed poets ! ye who can descry Through vulgar heaps of dead where heroes lie, Ye to whose glance the primal mist is clear, Behold there lies a trampled noble here! Shall we not leave a mark ? Shall we not do Justice to one so hated and so true ?

...... • •

"I mourn for thee, 0 hero of the North!

God judge thee gentler than we do on earth. I mourn for thee and for our land, because She dare not own the martyrs in her cause ; But they our poets, they who justify, They will not let thy memory rot or die."

And whether the poets do or do not, at all events Mr. McGee's fame will have its revenge on his own age in other ages. He took precaution to that effect. Hardly any Irishman of his time has

left so many memorials of his genius, enduringly entwined with all that is noble and venerable in the sentiments of his nation. A

collection of his ballads is a history of Ireland in verse, very uneven in the execution, but of which many of the passages will probably prove to be as ineffaceable from the national memory as the music of Patrick's Day or Garryowen. He has written a popular history of Ireland in prose, which is not merely the best, but is indeed the only at once readable and reliable book of the kind that has yet been written. It is evident, indeed, that he possessed historical insight in an eminent degree, and a collection of his studies in the field of history is to be desired. Again, if the acts of the Irish abroad are to be re- garded as a section of the history of their country, Mr. McGee's part in the establishment of the Dominion of Canada may last as long in history as even Marshal MacMahon's military fame. Among the founders of that commonwealth, his name will hold in its annals a very high, if not the very highest place of honour. The Irish Celts have not, it must be admitted, produced very many statesmen, while among the Anglo-Irish as the names of Ormonde, Taaffe, Wellesley, Burke, Grattan, Canning, Castle- reagh, Plunket, Lord Palmerston, President Andrew Jackson, John C. Calhoun, and a host of others testify, the talent of states- manship has been a by no means uncommon gift. Mr. McGee rose to the rank under every conceivable disadvantage. He was of very humble origin, absolutely self-educated ; he emigrated at the age of seventeen from the small town in the south of Ireland where his family lived, was trained in a Boston newspaper office ; he re- turned to Ireland to see the disruption of the whole system of the country produced by the Famine, whereof the insurrection of 1848, in which he took a serious and daring part, was only an interlude. Of the twenty years which he had yet to live, ten were spent in the United States, incessantly writing and lecturing, almost always on Irish subjects ; and ten in Lower Canada, during the latter half of which he was President of the Executive Council of the Province, and Member of Parliament for its principal city. He had proved his title to the names of poet, historian, and states- man ; he was beyond dispute the most brilliant and convincing speaker in the Canadian Legislative Assembly ; and he had just delivered one of his most telling and touching speeches, when, on the threshold of his door, at midnight, an execrable miscreant, since happily hanged, slew him unaware. It is perhaps the most heinous and disgusting crime of its kind in the annals of mankind, and it will be so considered in Ireland, and even among the Irish in America, doubtless, some little time hence. As yet, it must be

admitted, we have not heard of a McGee monument or even a McGee Anniversary Memorial Requiem either at Dublin or at One of the inventions of the Young Ireland party, and possibly not the least durable, was a new dialect. Of this Celtic-English Mr. McGee's Poems contain numerous and some very exquisite examples. In these the local colour, sometimes the peculiar metre probably suggested by the native music, the wealth of

epithet and expletive, the rapid transitions of mood, the passion, the pathos of Celtic poetry, as we know it through the transla- tions of the Archteological Societies, or in such collections as the

Barzaz Breiz, are combined with a vocabulary, in general exceed- ingly simple, and indeed almost always strictly Saxon. Mr.

Ferguson's Ballads are the unapproached master-pieces of this style ; but some of Mr. McGee's are little inferior in excellence, and perhaps exact an ear less Irish, but not on that account less nice. This ode to the Celts has in it a certain touch of the sub- lime, not unworthy of the Celtic Homer himself; but it runs smoothly enough, nevertheless, in the "alien speech" of the Saxon :—

"THE Caws.

"Long, long ago, beyond the misty space

Of twice a thousand years, In Erin old, there dwelt a mighty race, Taller than Roman spears; Like oaks and towers, they had a giant grace, Were fleet as doers: With winds and waves they made their 'biding-place, These Western shepherd-seers.

"Great were their deeds, their passions, and their sports ; With clay and stone They piled on strath and shore those mystic forts Not yet o'erthrown ; On cairn-crown'd hills they held their council-courts : While youths alone, With giant-doge, explored the elk resorts, And brought them down.

"Of these was Finn, the father of the bard Whose ancient song Over the clamour of all change is heard, Sweet-voiced and strong.

Finn once o'ertook Granu, the golden-hair'd, The fleet and young ; From her the lovely, and from him the fear'd, The primal poet sprung.

"Ossian! two thousand years of mist and change

Surround thy name—

Thy Fenian heroes now no longer range The hills of fame.

The very names of Finn and Gaul sound strange,

Yet thine the same,— By miscall'd lake and desecrated grange—

Remains, and shall remain!

"The Druid's altar and the Druid's creed We scarce can trace, There is not left an undisputed deed Of all your race, Save your majestic song, which bath their speed, And strength and grace ;

In that sole song they live, and love, and bleed,—

It bears them on through space.

"Oh, inspired giant ! shall we e'er behold In our own time One St to speak your spirit on the weld Or seize your rhyme ?

One pupil of the past, as mighty-soul'd As in the prime,

Were the fond, fair, and beautiful, and bold,—

They, of your sung sublime!"

Of the series to which these fine verses belong, "Historical and Legendary Poems," there have been nearly 200 collected by Mrs. Sadlier. They are of the most curiously unequal quality, and even where the quality is high, the execution is often lament- ably uneven. Faults of rhyme, of rhythm, even of grammar disfigure many of the best ballads, while some are both poor in conception and rude in form. But now and again there come not lines alone —these often recur—but a long succession of stanzas, offering hardly the least restraint to the utterance of a rich and original genius, expressed in marvelously apt words admirably modulated.

The early Christian period of Irish history, the Danish wars, the local history of southern Leinster, and especially of his own county, Wexford, Mr. McGee had apparently studied with close and ardent care ; and the poems that relate to these

subjects seem to us to be peculiarly full of the poetic élan, and to be very happy also generally in the composition. There is a whole class of poems, too, reminiscences of Ireland from an American point of view, full of quaint picturesque images, and bathed in the yearning, longing home-sickness of the Celt in exile. This little poem, though not free of offence against syntax and prosody, is surely not without native merit :—

" To Mr Wisooro-CAp.

"Wishing-cap, Wishing-cap, I would be Far away, far away over the sea,

Where the red birch roots Down the ribbed rock shoots, In Donegal the brave, And white-sail'd skiffs Speckle the cliffs, And the gannet drinks the wave.

U.

"Wishing-cap, Wishing-cap, I would lie On a Wicklow hill, and stare the sky, Or count the human atoms that pass

The thread-like road through G10130211CDftfla, Where once the clans of °Byrne were ; Or talk to the breeze

Under sycamore trees, In Glenart's forests fair Hi.

"Wishing-cap, Wishing-cap, let us away To walk in the cloisters, at close of day, Once trod by friars of order gray, In Norman Selskar's renowned abbeys. And Carmen's ancient town ; For I would kneel at my mother's grave, Where the plumy churchyard elms wave, And the old war-walls look down."

Mr. McGee, however, could look back to Ireland not always with such soft tenderness, but in bitter agonies of shame and wrath. He left America in 1815 to take part in a national movement, which then seemed more formidable than the Catholic agitation had ever been, from the talents of its leaders, the greater education numbers and wealth of the people, the extent to which they had taken possession of the local administration and the parliamentary representation of the country, and the constantly growing prestige of O'Connell's leadership. In the course of three years he saw all that vast power fall asunder,—O'Connell dead, the people perishing by the hundred thousand of famine, the collapse—if that can be said to collapse which never really rose—of the Young Ireland insur- rection. Smith O'Brien, Meagher, Mitchel, and a score of others were on their way in convict ships to Tasmania ; the Irish gaols were full of political prisoners, foremost among whom Gavan Duffy, his chosen chief and teacher, awaited his trial for treason, when having made his escape through Scotland, Mr. McGee wrote these rough and bitter lines while recrossing the Atlantic :-

' How I loved this nation, ye know, gentle friends, who share my fate, And you too, heroic comrades, loaded with the fetter's weight, How I coveted all knowledge that might raise her name with men, How I sought her secret beauties with an all insatiate ken.

" God! it is a maddening prospect thus to see this storied land, Like some wretched culprit writhing in a strong avenger's hand, Kneeling, foaming, weeping, shrieking, woman-weak and woman-loud, Better, better, Mother Ireland I we had laid you in your shroud!

If an end were made, and nobly, of this old centennial feud, If in arms outnumbered, beaten, less, 0 Ireland ! had I rued; For the scatter'd sparks of valour might relight thy darkness yet, And thy long chain of resistance to the Future had been knit.

It would have been better, perhaps, for both countries if any one of the Irish insurrections had risen to really respectable mili- tary proportions, so as to give the pride of the weaker nation the satisfaction of having made at least one fair stand-up fight ; and to give the other the opportunity of doing what never can be done so well or as graciously as the day after victory over a respected enemy. But neither in '98, nor in '48, nor in '68, when it Callit to the point, would the Irish really and truly fight in the desperate and cohesive way essential for so tough a job as the destruction of the British dominion. By a curious freak of destiny, it has happened that the consolidation of the British Empire at its Australian and American extremities, was to be mainly ',observed by two of the exiled rebels of '48, who had first failed in an attempt to separate the three kingdoms. The news that will go to Melbourne next mail will probably bring to a head the movement of Australian Confederation, which Mr. Gavan Duffy originated long before Mr. D'Arcy McGee began to agitate the organization of the Canadian Dominion.

Mr. McGee was, however, or at least he so fancied, a politician in spite of himself. He had intended, it is said, at the time of his death, to retire from active public life, and to devote himself to deeper studies in that only partially-explored region of the past, the history of his country, which had always had such an intense fascination for him. He held above all other characters that of the ancient Irish Scholar, when Ireland was a land of learning, in respect :—

" The 011aralvf of the elect of old,

Whose chairs were placed beside the King, Whose hounds, whose herds, whose gifts of gold, The later bards regretful sing."

And perhaps the most beautiful and touching poems he ever wrote are those which the English would call elegies, and the Irish

t Query, is not 011amh (pronounced Warm identical with the Indian Wallah? Caoines, on the occasion of the deaths of the two great Irish antiquaries of late days, John O'Donovan and Eugene O'Curry. But we have outstrayed our space, and both poems are so closely and continuously wrought that a detached verse or two would give no adequate idea of their beauty, pathos, and power.

He, over whom no loud-resounding caoine was raised in his own country, had a singular piety towards and love for doing honour to the dead. These are the last lines of the last poem that he wrote a few days before he was murdered, on the occasion of the funeral of his friend, Richard Devaney :- Mother of Love, Mother of Fear!

And holy Hope and Wisdom dear, Behold we bring thy suppliant here- Iiiiserere Domine !

"His Faith was as the tested gold, His Hope assured, not over bold, His Charities past count untold- illiserere Domino !

"Friend of my soul, farewell to thee, Thy truth, thy trust, thy chivalry ; As thine, so may my last end be- Miserere Domine!

Alas ! that one with gifts so noble and love so loyal should happen on such an end, and be so little honoured in his own land !