Minutes of Proceedings 209 



Professor William M. Hennessy delivered his third Todd Lecture 

 on the ''MescaUladh." 



The President announced that the Earl of Charlemont had pre- 

 sented to the Academy a valuable collection of the MSS. of the great 

 Earl of Charlemont, the first President of the Academy. These were 

 sent with the following letter addressed to the President, Sir Samuel 

 Ferguson. 



" EOXBOROUGH, MOY, Co. TYRONE, 



" 21th May 1882. 

 '' Sir, 



"I have the honour to present to the Eoyal Irish Academy 

 twenty-three manuscript volumes — seven in folio size and sixteen in 

 quarto — the seven folios containing original unpublished literary 

 works of my grandfather all in his own handwriting. 



" These, I am sure, will be prized by the Academy as proofs of 

 the literary taste and learning of their first President, and I am 

 gratified to think that in their Library they are placed where they 

 will serve to perpetuate and enhance my grandfather's memory 

 amongst his fellow-countrymen. 



" The first of these folio volumes contains his autobiography, or 

 account of his political life from 1760 to 1783. The only request 

 I have to make is, that this work should not be at any time published 

 in its present form, for it will be seen by referring to his Preface that 

 he forbade its publication, as he deemed that its imperfect execution 

 and faults of style rendered the work unfit for the public eye : not 

 that there was any secret he would conceal, for his Biographer had the 

 use of it, and has given most of the contents of the volume to the 

 public in his Memoirs of his political and private life. 



" Besides this folio volume, there are three volumes entitled ' An 

 Essay towards the History of Italian Poetry, attempted in translated 

 Specimens of the more noted Classical Poets from Dante to Metastasio 

 inclusively.' 



" There are also two volumes of his Travels. The first on the 

 Manners of the Turks ; the second containing his visit to the Islands 

 of the ^gean Sea, the Levant, Attica, and the Peloponnesus. This 

 latter volume is entitled 'A Traveller's Essays, containing an Account 

 of Manners rather than of Things, written for my own amusement and 



