WITH ESSEX IN IRELAND.* WE are glad to recognise in

this remarkable literary experi- ment by the author of Hurrish, that distinct and original genius which in her well-known story of West Irish life she so brilliantly revealed. Her picture of Ireland as it was in 1599, after a century of Tudor government, may not perhaps be as popular as the episode of local life in modern Clare, yet we unhesitatingly place her later work at a higher level of imaginative art and literary skill than the author has yet attained. We at once assure the reader that it is free from pedantry, nor is its language more obsolete than that of the Bible or of Shakespeare. The shallowest novel-devourer will find in it excitement enough ; but to appreciate its full charm, some trained knowledge of the style and thought of the period is requisite. It is no slight achievement to have caught the fine quality of the language used by Essex and Sir Philip Sydney; but it is a greater triumph to have, with profound and flexible sympathy, linked the nobler Elizabethan temper with our present nineteenth-century renaissance, and reconstructed a period in human evolution that is so full of lessons for us to- day. And in this study are no coloured or partisan inventions ; it is not distorted by political or sectarian purpose. The breadth of humanism and lofty ideals of the time are set forth in such gallant personages as Essex and Southampton, though we hear little of Shakespeare's friend beyond the casual mention of him as the Viceroy's Master of the Horse. The contrast of the Irish reality and its mean and inhuman cruelties, suffi- ciently supplies their narrator, Essex's secretary, least jocund of Euphuists, with the very essence of humour ; but the note of the book is sweetness and compassion as the darkness gathers round its hero, a note that is heard throughout the Dance of Death, and that has that true Hellenic echo which haunted the Renaissance, and gives such poignancy to the passion of its drama. With Essex in Ireland hardly needs further description than is supplied by its title. It purports to be the narrative of the Viceroy's private secretary, Henry Harvey, from the glittering departure of Essex on his Irish quest, until his hasty and disobedient return three months later, to meet disgrace and death in London. The short period of the action adds singular unity of effect to the tragic failure of the hero in his ambitious design. The Nemesis of past evil, in which he had no personal part, dogs him as in a Greek play, while the Irish kernes and peasants are its chorus. Though strictly historical, the imaginative quality of the book lifts it altogether above the ingenious but lifeless mosaic-work of ordinary historical romance or memoirs, and places it beside John lnglesant and Marius the Epicurean in its power of reconstructing an era.

Essex the humanist had, despite his instability, visions of a rule to be secured by insight and tolerance, rather than by the cruelties of his forerunners in Irish government. He represents the newer attitude of Englishmen, and is the champion of that wider policy which now as then is eyed askance as treasonable

:- "I," writes his secretary, "who know his inmost thoughts, being so near to him—not merely in service, but also in the nearer and tenderer relations of the heart—know that in accepting this governance, he was moved less by pride and worldly ambition, which they who know him not are ever ready to impute (judging his nobler heart by their own covetous ones), but by the thought of bringing back this land, which has strayed so far from civility, and leading her as a meek and docile handmaiden unto our Queen and Mistress (which thing, little like as it appears now to come to pass, might, it appears to me, have in very deed and truth been accomplished, but for those envious malignings, whose foul and evil mission seems ever to be on the watch to bring to naught all noble enterprise)."

The interest of the author's hero in the outlaws of Ireland, his pity and perception of Irish beauty so shamefully defaced, of Irish harmonies jangled to fierce dissonance, rouses in the reader a like regret. Beyond the " vermin" of the Pale, beyond even the figures of Ormonde and Tyrone, types of the Norman and the Celtic chiefs, Miss Lawless fixes our attention on the "poor carrion" who are slaughtered in their desperate game of treachery and ambition. The" wild woman" of the Ossory • With Suer tin Ireland. By the Hon. Emily Lawless. London Sm:th, Elder, and Co. 1890. forest, the harper of O'More, the multitudinous ghosts of- Askeaton, hold our hearts by their pathos. The spell of the witching land and its people grows on us as on Essex. We. start with him and his army of nineteen thousand men on the

march that was to conquer Ireland by strength and splendour,, and the author shows us in half-a-dozen episodes or illus- trations why, within four months, Essex, with but four thousand discouraged soldiers, returned without heart for- further struggle, and eager for that sudden truce with the- leader of the Irish rebels which cost him his life.

It is, however, the race, and not its head, which conquers Essex ; and Miss Lawless, with rare art and in idylls of extra- ordinary force and beauty, not only seconds the facts of history, but shows somewhat of the warp and woof of human emotion by which alone facts can often be understood. She

leads us to the deeper springs of Irish trouble, and truer corn, prehension of the antagonism of seven hundred years, which it now seems almost hopeless to appease. Indeed, even after-

the Desmond war there was not perhaps as great a gulf as now. The confusions of English law and its later oppres- sions had not yet destroyed the sense of justice. The bratt, the saffron shirt, the wolfskin " pampooties," and matted glybbe hindered that squalid copy of English fashions which has since earned so much ridicule. The Ireland of this picture. is dignified in her woe as one of Ossian's figures, or as Rizpah in barley harvest. We are interested in her with an interest- of pathetic admiration rather than of curiosity; and this is new

in English literature, where we have had too much of grotesque- caricature and partisan denunciation. The Ireland of this

book is no doubt Spenser's Ireland, but Sir Arthegal is judged with Irish eyes, and Essex personifies a truer victory in his defeat than Lord Grey's at Smervrick.

It is notable by what subtle art Miss Lawless, with but little comment, but by sheer strength of painting, constrains our historical faith, and rouses emotion that is sustained and ever wrought higher even by subsidiary circumstances, from the thunderstorm at Islington, the angry Channel, the sullen greeting by the Dublin populace to the splendid figure of their new Lord, to that last night-ride from Drogheda when, "like. some company flying for their lives," Essex and his staff sped back to take ship at Ring's End for England, by no means "from Ireland coming," as Shakespeare had foretold,—

" Bringing rebellion broachM on his sword."

The squalid Castle, with its grisly furniture of rebel heads, was a fitting gate bywhich to enter on Irish government; the very love- affair of Harvey, which barely concerns the reader, is sad and inefficient, except as it suggests some Euphuistic verses, in

which, again, the author has caught the true Elizabethan ring. Almost immediately, Essex set forth on his rash and profitless

progress through the South-West and East of Ireland, of which the stages can be traced in the quaint old map prefixed to the volume. The first brush with the hostile clans is vividly told ; but it is in the death of Frank Gardner, a young Sussex gentleman committed by his mother to Harvey's care, that, for the first time in the stately narrative, the author gives free rein to her gift of pathos, and we grieve with the boy's friend as we listen to Frank's delirious talk, and look upon his "noble and steadfast countenance, seeming to prefigure that man he might have been, had he in God's grace lived to be a man, and grown beyond his nonage ;"—

" While I still stood there," writes Harvey, "leaning over him, it happened that there came a rushing noise of wind without, so that the leaves in the forest were ruffled, and brushed one against another, making a soft noise like the sound of a woman's dress creeping cautiously along the ground and coming nearer. At that sound Frank Gardner suddenly opened his eyes, and a smile broke over his face, such a smile as one sees upon the face of a little child which has cried itself to sleep, when it wakes suddenly in the night and sees one whom it loves bending over it. And half lifting his head, he turned his cheek round, as though expecting some one would lay a kiss upon it (which indeed was fair and smooth still as a maiden's), and with a great sigh full of comfort and satisfaction, 'Mother!' said he very tenderly, and with that word still upon his lips, his spirit departed to God who made it."

As we read the passage, not cut from its context, but in its place, so skilfully interwoven with circumstance is the mere fact of a gallant lad's death, that we must share the kindly Euphuist's grief beside the grave, as he listened to the "foolish blubbering" of a little stream,— " Which kept leaping, and running, and babbling over its stones, now and then stopping altogether it seemed for a while, then suddenly breaking out anew with a sound like a sob, and. hurrying through the reeds and rank herbage which covered that place till it fell over the small declivity, and vanished into the little birchen thicket, springing so green and lush at the bottom."

After this, there are but few notes of pity for the English forces as they floundered through quagmire and forest; Essex, a new Hotspur but a reckless Viceroy, spending his passion of pity and regret in personal daring, affected as a poet by the wild and weird but generally soft beauty of the landscape, so truly felt and noted by the author, and sickening at the sight of the "poor carrion," when the heads of slaughtered women and children are poured out before him from a great leathern sack, as trophies of some village caught asleep. We know no more exquisite descriptions than those of the Irish hiding-place in the Kilkenny wood, no finer treatment of phantasmic retri- bution than the apparition of the Desmond and his murdered people, in its hold on conscience and suggestion of unseen Fates and Furies. It is impossible to detach fragments from the tale without marring the perfect and continuous harmony of their setting. The discourse of Essex and Harvey as they lie in the ruined monastery, near what had been the Desmond's castle of Askeaton, strikes the note of what follows. The great woods, the large and white-shining pools of shallow water, over which, with a strange, steely glitter, the wan moon shone, prepare us for the hollow and worn face, the haughty smile "such as a dead man might wear when his murderer drew nigh, and the blood gushed out before all men for a token," of the last Geraldine of Desmond. Then, as the vision passed, Essex and Harvey rushed in vain search to the tower, which was of no great height, and came out on the flattish space above:—

" And at first we saw nought, save the level country, looking all grey in the moonlight, and the forest, stretching darkly away as it seemed to the confines of the earth, and that great river, the Shannon, spreading westward like a broad lake or inland sea. Below us the ground was deep with fog, which lay in an uneven manner over the land, gathered as it were into packs, here a space bare, and there another covered to the depth of many feet ; and so thick and solid that it seemed as if one might walk thereon. Then as we stood looking out over it, lo ! that fog seemed to cleave into two parts, as we read in Holy Writ that the Red Sea was cleft ; and a passage appeared down the midst thereof, which passage seemed to be about two going paces wide, and at first to be utterly void of all life or move- ment. Nevertheless, after my Lord and I had stood awhile looking at it, behold a stranger and a more terrible sight was seen. For all along those pathways which, when first we saw them, were, I say, devoid of life, it presently seemed to our eyes that a great multi- tude of people were beginning to pass, and to approach that castle whereon we stood. Though whence they came God alone knoweth, for there was no place for them to come out of, neither village nor

habitation of any sort And as they came nearer, I could plainly distinguish one from another, so that it seemed to me that only a small portion of them were full-grown men, the rest being women or children, gathered into companies, each company by itself, some in sixes and sevens, and some in tens, as it served And in each group the children went first in a little band, and after them a man and woman side by side, or sometimes two or three women, and in the rear followed the aged people Then glancing at his Excellency, I saw that he too was much moved at that strange sight; nevertheless, his cheek kept its usual colour, and he gazed steadfastly at what lay below. Other gentlemen had joined meantime, among them a certain Sethcock, who suddenly cried with an exceedingly loud voice as he recognised the Desmond standing immediately before

them. And if that be he,' said Essex sharply, who in God's name are these ? ' pointing to the crowd which still moved below. Then at last, after a ghastly pause, Colonel Sethcock spoke. Who are they, your Excellency ?' said he, with a sort of break in his voice, and upon his face, for all its terror, an evil smile. Your Excellency asks me who are they, when there were an hundred and thirty thousand—men, women, and children of all degrees—slain or died of famine during that time ; and if their spirits wander to this day, is that my fault, or shall their deaths be accounted to me as a sin more than to others, who did even as I did, or is their blood more upon my head than upon the heads of other men ? Is it my fault, I ask ? Is it mine ? Is it mine ? Is it mine ?' "

He fled away shrieking, never again of sound mind or bodily strength ; and the vision faded, and all the desolate plain was void of life once more. This was but an em- bodiment of the spiritual force begotten by Irish suffering which weighed on Essex ; and the shadows darken about him till, returning east, he narrowly escaped disaster at the hands of the Wicklow rebels, and found himself thwarted by the Queen's councils, whether of London or Dublin ; beset by suitors, "yelping and hoiting like a pack of hounds" for grants of land and titles ; rated by Elizabeth for making " more knights than in all the realm beside," of "tag-rag cut and long tail," so bringing the order into contempt. Post

followed post demanding Tyrone's capture or death, and Essex was driven with the four thousand men who remained of his

army, to attempt the conquest of Ulster and its real Sovereign, Tyrone. Then followed the fatal private interview with the subtle Celt, and the chapter which follows that dramatic incident gains strange power as a prologue to the last scene of Essex's life. We wish we had space to quote the description of the clear morning in which he rode as a man who was "fey," in highest spirits, since he had resolved on his return to the Queen's presence. By mid-day the clouds had gathered, and thick rain was bewildering the little troop, when in the "fog and filthy air," the "Grey Washer by the Ford," a woman of great age, was seen to beckon with one hand, while with the other she held something half-hidden under a cloth which she lifted towards him. Her figure is fitting for the heath near Forres, but it were unfair to separate so weird a Celtic legend from its framework ; nor must our readers imagine that the unreal plays too large a part in the book. The grace and humanism of the Renaissance, the stateliness of its life, are emphasised in Essex and his secretary; but the cultured poise of their lives is brought to trial before the many insanities of disordered Ireland, and fails to maintain its fine balance.

His office became to Essex "an office to make a good man bad, and an indifferent man a monster." The stately figures, in their splendour of costume, are enwrapped in Irish wraiths. The high dreams of the statesman and the poet, the pride of intellectual power and political empire, are " sicklied o'er" in presence of the Irish woe, and Essex grows sad as Holman Hunt's scapegoat among the bones and salted marches bitter with tears. The powerful contrast between the Elizabethan and the Celtic humanity, the deeper chords of life in its tragic extremity, with life in its pride of culture, is sustained with ever-consistent art to the end. Harvey is forbidden by his Lord to follow him in his last appeal to the Queen. He sees Essex set sail, and then, in one of those weird seizures in which Lord Tennyson has taught us to believe,—

" Being already so weak, foolish, and devoid of comfort, when that last dreadful recollection took possession of my mind, suddenly it seemed to me that I no longer cared what befell. For everything which men most strive, pant, and struggle to obtain ; everything, whether of fair repute, or of foul repute, of good or evil hap, all had in that one instant become to me as it were alike and indifferent; sorrow itself remaining but an idle word, some- thing that is understood of in a dream, but fades and has become mere nothingness by the morning. And in this mood of mine the ship and all that were upon it passed away from my sight, dissolving as a dream dissolves, or some pageant, which though it may seem to be firm for a moment, yet having once passed on, never returns again."

We hardly care to break the charm of this concluding phrase, which is as a faint distant echo of the minor-keyed, wild strains of that Irish music by which in truth the author has enthralled us in this revival of the dry bones of historical romance ; not by interweaving modern ideas and modern love- passages, but by giving life to real men and reconstructing their true surroundings.