FEercuson— Address delivered before the Academy. 195 
But, the Rabelaic style, was it a creation of the witty Breton, or de- 
rived from elder humourists? That it had some Celtic connexion was 
a current opinion; and that the Arthurian Cycle and an infusion of 
the Celtic taste had been carried into Italy before the date of its sup- 
posed likeliest prototype, the Morgante Maggiore of Pulci, appears 
sufficiently clear. But there the history of the Italian literary renais- 
sance leaves the inquiry; and so the subject rested up to the time of 
Mr. Hennessy’s publication. The Vision of Mae Conglindé purports 
to deal with an amusing adventure which befell a personage named 
in Irish annals of the eighth century. Its language and internal 
evidence refer it, not improbably, to the ninth or tenth; and it is, in 
spirit and in form—in everything, indeed, but indecency, from which 
it is free—a most absolute Rabelaic performance, by many centuries 
older than any other composition of the same school known to literary 
investigation. 
But, unless the diffusion of these new materials result in some- 
thing more solid and socially influential than pure criticism, the object 
which has animated so many minds in accumulating and preserving 
them will be but imperfectly attaimed. For, if there ever was a legi- 
timate patriotic hope at the bottom of scholastic effort, it animated the 
I 
men who brought these things together and put them in their present 
posture and capacity for use. That this country should be without 
an adequate History and without a characteristic Literature rising 
above the conventional Irish buffooneries, has been a source of pain 
and humiliation to educated Irishmen for generations ; and it is to the 
stimulus of that reflection, not less than to the love of letters for their 
own sake, that we owe what we have accomplished, and the prospect 
of all that we yet may achieve. So far as concerns a general History 
of the country, we must, probably, be content to let the work for the 
present rest in preparation and’ material. If the time had arrived 
when Ireland could be said to have taken one or other definite posi- 
tion, from which her past could be contemplated in distinct, unshifting 
perspective, we might be more impatient of delay. Butit seems to me 
that no great History of any country has ever been written from any 
but a fixed point of contemplation, not attaimable in transitional times, 
such as ours for so great a length of time unhappily have been. 
Essays, having much of the solidity and dignity of history, may be 
framed in this view and in that, according to the point the writer 
would desire to see become the fixed one ; but till some pause in the 
ever-oscillating course of our destiny shall take place, a philosophic 
retrospect, on a large scale, of Irish affairs is hardly to be looked for. 
It is true, the history of even the most fortunate countries must be a 
record of flux and reflux, but the season in which the Historian achieves 
his work is, I fancy, at high tide. 
Our historic material prior to the Conquest, if we except a few 
tracts of positive and solid character, is of two kinds, each widely dif- 
' fering from the other. There is a great mass of bardic matter, vague, 
diffuse, and rhetorical, which, though it indicates the tone and colour 
