All One
A Book of Ireland. Edited by Frank O'Connor. (Collins, 8s. 6d.)
SUCH is the wealth of appropriate material (Ire- land is surely richer in this respect than any com- parable country) that it would be possible to make half a dozen bedside books of this kind without any lowering of the standard. My only regret is that there should be no extract by or about Thomas Davis, who more than anybody was responsible for reviving the idea of an Irish literature comprising all the country's cultural streams, for this book—with its agreeable range from translations from the Gaelic to extracts from The Irish R.M.--is a product of the Davis tradition. Otherwise the text is delightful. But why the corny captions to the pictures? And the feeble 'link' pieces put in to explain or introduce the text? Sarah Curran's grief for Robert Emmet (one of these asserts) was `so great she died of a broken heart.' On the contrary, within a couple of years she was contentedly married to a Major Spurgeon, grateful, what's more, for his assist- ance in having helped her to recover from past
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