11 APRIL 1868, Page 24

The whole period with which this book deals is of

a distinctly mythical nature, though it is divided into portions of more or less probability, and they are honoured with names implying more or less certainty. But all is a mass of legend, fiction, poetry; nor do these characteristics die out, though they are softened as we come down to later times. Mr. Ferguson has done wisely to lay modern Irish poets under contribution, but the

legends, as he gives them, are ruder and more in keeping with the life which they describe than the graceful readings of the contemporaries of Tennyson.