Of a very different stripe from the work of the collaborating ladies just mentioned are the novels of the recently deceased Canon Sheehan—­notable among them Luke Delmege and My New Curate—­rambling, diffuse, and a trifle provincial from the artistic standpoint, but interesting as studies of manners, and for the pictures they afford of the priesthood of modern Ireland in the pleasantest light.  If the stories of Miss Somerville and “Martin Ross” are related to the comic stories of the old novelists of the gentry, those of Canon Sheehan must be associated with the work of the older novelists who wrote more or less in the spirit of the peasantry, that is, with Gerald Griffin, the Banim brothers, and William Carleton, less famous than he deserves to be by his Traits and Stories and a long line of novels and tales.

No survey of Irish novelists, however brief, can afford to forget the Rev. James Owen Hannay ("George A. Birmingham"), canon of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, whose work is as distinctively Protestant in its point of view as Father Sheehan’s is Catholic.  His more substantial novels are a careful transcript of the actualities of Irish life today, and in them one meets, incognito but easily recognizable, many Irishmen now prominent in literature or politics in Ireland.  Of his numerous books may be mentioned The Seething Pot, Hyacinth, and Northern Iron.

Finally there is George Moore, whose enlistment in the Revival was responsible for the novel The Lake and the short stories of The Unfilled Field, and for a largely autobiographic and entirely indiscreet trilogy entitled Hail and Farewell, the separate volumes appearing as Ave, Salve, Vale, and the last of them as late as 1914.  George Moore’s anti-Catholic bias is strong, but his is the pen of an accomplished artist.  He has the story-teller’s beguiling gift, and he bristles with ideas which his books cleverly embody and to which the dramatic moments of his novels give point and relief.

Not the least important work of the Irish Literary Revival has been done by translators, who have put into English the old Gaelic romances and the folklore still current among the little remnant of Irish-speaking country folk.  Dr. Douglas Hyde is in the forefront of this group.  He it was who organized the Gaelic League, a band of enthusiasts zealous for the revival of the Irish language both as a spoken tongue and as the medium for a national literature, and eager, also, to breed up a race of Celtic scholars.  The lyrics in his Love Songs of Connacht are full of grace, tenderness, and fire, and indicate the kind of gems which he and his fellow laborers have added to the treasury of poetry in English.  But it is Lady Gregory, especially in her Cuchulain of Muirthemne and Gods and Fighting Men, who more than any other has found a way to stir the blood of readers of to-day by the romantic hero tales of Ireland.