d our moral sight. Proceeding on a different
principle, I should show enemies, not in their conflicts, but in their
concessions, and the picture would give a truer idea of mankind, for it is
surprising how many kind offices were mutually interchanged between
foemen--even in this very country--who are always represented as savage,
ruthless, and exterminating.

Ireland has been able to act upon the literature of the Continent and of
Britain in three ways: first, directly, next by means of its pupils on
the Continent, and finally by means of the Norse literature. The latter
affected both Britain and Germany, so that the Irish spirit has had a
double influence, be it much or little, upon both. Professor Morley,
indeed, admits that "the story of our literature begins with the Gael";
and pointing out the intermixture of blood, he adds: "But for early
frequent and various contact with the race which in its half barbarous
days invented Oisin's dialogues with St. Patrick, and that quickened
afterwards the Northmen's blood in France and Germany, England would not
have produced a Shakespeare."

Certain it is, I think, that but for the influence of Irish literature,
Shakespeare would not have produced a "Midsummer Night's Dream," "The
Tempest," and "Macbeth." The aerial beings which characterise the first
two plays are like those delightful melodies which Boieldieu in "La Dame
Blanche," and Flotow in "Marthe" made popular over the Continent, and
which the Irish ear, suddenly attentive, recognises as Irish in spite of
their foreign surroundings.[16]

Teutonic poetry, in certain particulars, appears to have germinated from
the seed which fell from the ripe Irish harvest. The alliteration found in
"Beowulf," the first Anglo-Saxon epic, A.D. 750 (three centuries after
Sedulius), seems a rather crude imitation. Rhyme was introduced into High
German a century later, and this was achieved by Otfried, who had acquired
the gift in that great monastry of St. Gall to which the illustrious
Irishman bequeathed his name, his spirit, and his scholarship, which long
guided his many disciples.

The Nibelungen Lied and the Lay of Gudrun have been called the Iliad and
the Odyssey of Germany. Both, however, have Norse originals. Now, with
respect to the latter it is a remarkable but surely not a surprising
thing, after all we know, that the opening scenes of the lay should be
placed in Ireland. The fierce King of Ireland, Hagen (? Hacon), had a fai