If we may take it as certain that modern investigation is correct in asserting that Thomas Campion was a native of Dublin, a notable addition will have been made to the ranks of Irish-born writers of English at this period.  Thomas Campion (1567-1620), wherever born, spent most of his life in London.  He was a versatile genius, for, after studying law, he took up medicine, and, although practising as a physician, he yet found time to write four masques and many lyrics and to compose a goodly quantity of music.  Some of his songs appeared as early as 1591.  Among his works is a treatise entitled Observations in the Art of English Poesie (1602), in which, strange to say, he, a born lyrist, advocated unrhymed verse and quantitative measures, but fortunately his practice did not usually square with his theory.  His masques were written for occasions, such as the marriage of Lord Hayes (1607), the nuptials of the Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine (1613), and the ill-starred wedding of Somerset and the quondam Countess of Essex in the same year.  In these masques are embedded some of his best songs; others of his lyrics appeared in several Bookes of Ayres between 1601 and 1617.  Many of them were written to music, sometimes music of his composing.  Such dainty things as “Now hath Flora robb’d her bowers” and “Harke, all you ladies that do sleep” possess the charms of freshness and spontaneity, and his devotional poetry, especially “Awake, awake, thou heavy Spright” and “Never weather-beaten Saile more willing bent to shore”, makes almost as wide an appeal.

II.  SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

Passing by with regret the illustrious seventeenth century names of Philip O’Sullivan Beare, Sir James Ware, Luke Wadding, Hugh Ward, John Colgan, and John Lynch, because their bearers wrote in Latin, and those of “The Four Masters” and Geoffrey Keating, because they wrote in Irish, we are first brought to a pause in the seventeenth century by the imposing figure of him, whom, in a later day, Johnson justly called the “great luminary of the Irish [Protestant] church”, none other than the archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland, James Ussher himself.  James Ussher (1581-1656), born in Dublin and among the earliest students of the newly-founded Trinity College, was in intellect and scholarship one of the greatest men that Ireland has ever produced.  Selden describes him as “learned to a miracle” (ad miraculum doctus), and Canon D’Alton in his History of Ireland says of him that “he was not unworthy to rank even with Duns Scotus, and when he died he left in his own Church neither an equal nor a second.”  Declining the high office of provost of Trinity, Ussher was made bishop of Meath and was afterwards promoted to the primatial see.  His fine intellect was unfortunately marred by narrow religious views, and in many ways he displayed his animus against those of his countrymen who did not see eye to eye with him in matters of faith and