19 NOVEMBER 1898, Page 29

Messrs. James Duffy and Co., Dublin, have issued a new

edition of Edward Hay's History of the Irish Insurrection of 1798, "giving an authentic account of the various battles fought between the insurgents and the King's army, and a genuine history of trans- actions preceding that event." It is interesting for the various details which it supplies of the insurrection of a century ago, and because it is written by a man who endeavoured to be an im- partial historian, and to make his history "a balm to heal the wounds of animosity." At the same time, Hay is an involved and essentially dreary writer, and his account of his own ill- treatment—unquestionable as that was—after the pacification of Wexford, which is given in a portentously long introduction, is tedious in the extreme.