26th Novetnber^ igog. 



Sir John Byers, M.D., President, in the Chair. 



SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON, POET AND PATRIOT." 

 By Mr. A. P. Graves. 



(Abstract). 



The Chairman, who was well received, said they were there 

 that evening to have what he was sure they would all regard as a 

 great intellectual treat — an address on a distinguished Irishman, 

 Sir Samuel Ferguson, who was born in High Street, Belfast, in 

 1810, and who, as a brilliant man of letters, had brought renown 

 to the city of his birth. He was a man of the most diverse 

 accomplishments. It was now universally admitted that his 

 " Ogham Inscriptions in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland " had 

 placed him in the front rank of antiquarians. These in- 

 scriptions, which Sir Samuel did so much to explain (just as 

 another great Irishman, Dr. Edward Hincks, who lived at Killy- 

 leagh. County Down, interpreted the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and 

 whose bust has been lately placed in the Cairo Museum) were 

 carved in v/ood or stone, or found in manuscripts. They 

 belonged to an alphabet used by the ancient Irish and other 

 Celtic races up to about the ninth or tenth century as secret 

 characters. They would hear from their able lecturer what he, as 

 a high authority on such a question, thought of Sir Samuel 

 Ferguson's position as a poet. There was no doubt that by 

 striving to create modern poetry from the ancient Irish tales of 

 saints, heroes, and histories of places, Sir Samuel Ferguson had — 

 perhaps unconsciously on his part — a great deal to do with 

 bringing about the modern revival in Irish literature, and, owing 

 to this, he probably was appreciated as a poet more highly to-day 



