IRISH INFLUENCE FELT

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22765, 18 July 1939, Page 10

IRISH INFLUENCE FELT

EFFECT ON ENGLISH LITERATURE ADDRESS BY PROFESSOR SINCLAIRE “An English critic has claimed that the most characteristic Irishmen are not Irish at all,” said Professor F. Sinclaire in his address to the English Association last night, on ‘ The Irish contribution to English. Literature. “Mr Bernard Shaw in his amusing and highly controversial preface to ‘John Bull’s Other Island,’ has taken as typical Irish and English figures, Wellington and Nelson respectively. According to Mr Shaw, Wellington with his cold-blooded, hard practicality, is typically Irish; and Nelson, with his strong flavour of romance and sentimentality, is typically English. This is naturally the very opposite to the usual opinion. The question seemed to be, said Prolessor Sinclaire, what is the Irish national temperament, or when is an Irishman an Irishman? Some of the great Irishmen in literature had disclaimed all their ancestry and upbringing. “For instance, Swift was born m Dublin but resented the imputation that he was an Irishman, and claimed that his parents were English. “Bishop Berkeley, another great Irishman, was at least half English, and on the other hand William Hazhtt was the son of an Irish father. Then there is Goldsmith, who came of English stock. But if we take away these great names, we are still left with Edmund Burke. Richard Sheridan, and a group of the minor novelists of the nineteenth century, of whom Lever and Lover are the most, easily remembered. “In more recent times, there are such names as Oscar Wilde, George Moore, and the so-called Irish literary group —Synge, Yeats, besides Standish C’Grady and George Russell And then there is the most famous of all and perhaps the most Irish of all, that veteran figure, George Bernard S1 professor Sinclaire concluded that the contribution of the Irish to the literature of England, although difficult to trace, was nevertheless too importer.’: to be ignored.