imagination. Every young generation has similar
wants, and will seek to satisfy them, if not here, then elsewhere, in a
literature that debases the germing ideals, dwarfs the mind, and soils the
imagination.

With roots deep struck in the soil, the literature of the Irish Gael and
commingled races grew vigorously from its own stock and threw out
luxuriant branches and fair blooms. From the first, it exhibited
characters peculiarly its own. But these were not what are considered
Irish, in latter days: and here let me say that I am taken with dismay
when I find some of my patriotic young friends deciding what is and what
is not the Irish style in prose and the Irish note in poetry. We all know
what is meant. But it is scarcely too much to say that you may search
through all the Gaelic literature of the nation, and find many styles, but
not this. If it ever existed, it existed outside of our classic
literature, in a rustic or plebeian dialect. It must be counted, but to
make it exclusive would be to impose fatal fetters on literary expression.
As in other countries, there were not one but many styles, differing with
the subject, the writer, and the age. At one period, we shall find works
characterised by curt, clear and ringing sentences; at another the phrase
moves embarrassed by its own luxuriance.

Still more remote from the popular notion, and far more emphatic, are the
characteristics of Irish Gaelic versification of which there were many
kinds. I shall give a summary of the rules which govern the formation of
one species only, the _Dan direach_, or Direct Metre, of which, however,
there are several varieties:

1. The lines must have a certain number of syllables.

2. There must be four lines in each quatrain of two couplets. The sense
may be complete in the couplet, but must be complete in the quatrain.

3. Concord must be observed; _i.e._, two words (not being prepositions or
particles) in each line must begin with a vowel or with the same
consonant. If these alliterated words be the last two, the concord is
perfect, if not, it is an improper concord. The third and last lines must
have perfect concord.

4. Correspondence must be observed. The bards grouped the consonants into
five classes, according to the characters of the sound. Perfect
correspondence demanded that the end words in two lines should agree in
possessing letters of the same class. [This may sometimes result in what
we call rhyme.] If only the v