a pre-eminently military type. They have still got to learn that selfish and material aims must be controlled by a wider morality based upon the general welfare of the social organism. This suggests some very wide problems. I confess that I do not see that the principle clears up the problem as to the proper relations between the State and the individual, nor do I blame Mr. Kidd for not succeeding in so enormously difficult a task. But I cannot see that it will ever be advanced by phrases about the irresistible will' and 'projection of economic processes on the world-stage.' I cannot satisfy myself that I understand what they mean. I only ask, once more, how they are connoted with the principles adapted from Professor Weismann. It seems to me that we are still in presence of the good old struggle for existence. We have still to trust to experience and to muddle on by letting institutions and creeds fight it out by keen competition. I entirely agree that one condition of success is that a race must conform itself to permanent conditions, and therefore not allow an ascendency of the present in a sense which implies unfitness for the future. If it does, it will, of course, die out in the future. And I agree cordially that a further condition is that the social arrangement should not outrage a sense of justice; or, in other words, that a man's happiness should depend as far as possible upon his intrinsic merit, and not upon accident. The struggle for existence nevertheless improved morality, and improved morality means a more stable order and more vigorous social order. But so far as Mr. Kidd endeavours to show that the process involves a 'sacrifice' of present to the future, or of the actual to the transcendental, it appears to me that he is not applying, but reversing, the true logical development of his first principle. Therefore, though he says a great deal to which I can subscribe, and puts some aspects of the modern struggle in a striking form, I cannot see that his special formulæ, derived from Weismann, take us any further, or, in fact, do anything except put some sound doctrines into a distorted and not very intelligible form.

LESLIE STEPHEN.

THE GREAT IRISH EPIC

IRISH national life in the last ten years has had a wonderful new literary birth. I remember, less than two decades ago, lamenting with the authoress of the great work of translation now before me that the political campaigns of her people, their wars in Parliament, and battles in the Press during the later half of the nineteenth century had evoked no corresponding movement of romance. The poets of the rebellion had died out, and the notable little volume of verse, The Spirit of the Nation, published in 1845 and run to a fiftieth edition, seemed their expiring effort. We grieved together that no Scott, no Burns, showed any sign of being in the field to explain to the outer unbelieving world what treasures of passionate emotion lay buried in Celtic history, the true basis of Ireland's claim to be a nation.

To-day the scene is changed into one of hope, almost of fruition. The nakedness of the bitter political strife has clothed itself anew in poetry, as the winter fields just now in their sudden burst of April green. The language of the people has been rescued from its decay. The Celtic literature, so long despised by schools or universities too ignorant to understand it, has been rehabilitated; and at the present moment the Irish sagas are being accepted by modern criticism as the most interesting as well as the most ancient of Western Europe, the richest in primæval tradition, and the least obscured by Latin uniformity. A band of enthusiastic workers has ransacked the libraries of the world for manuscripts dispersed from Ireland at various tragic dates-the invasions of Elizabeth, the invasions of Cromwell, the invasions of William of Orange. Within the last halfdozen years new poets have sprung up and found more than a local audience, and new Irish plays have been acted on a national stage. Last year Dr. Douglas Hyde's Literary History of Ireland claimed the first place in learned attention; and to-day we have Lady Gregory's monumental translation into noble and rhythmic AngloIrish prose of the great Erse Epic, The Life and Death of Cuchulin. It is of the last that I propose here to say an introductory word.

The Epic cycle of Cuchulin, or Cuchulain, is a series of heroic tales recording the wars of Ulster and Connaught fought towards the

close of pagan times. As Christianity was first preached in Ireland in A.D. 434, the events narrated cannot be less old than the fourth century of our era, and are believed by the German critic Zimmer to have received their literary shape at least as long ago as the seventh or eighth. As is the case with most ancient sagas in whatever language, they are made up of prose and verse, the latter the more ancient, the prose portions being later in date and less fixed in form than the canticles, songs of triumph, and laments, some of which may be contemporaneous with the events themselves. The prose varies much in the various manuscripts, being at first little more than connecting links for the verse, memoranda for the use of reciters, explanations developed from age to age, and becoming longer and more detailed as facilities for writing were acquired by the transcribers. The full text, as we find it now, seems to have been acquired in the twelfth century, and it is from manuscripts of about that date that Lady Gregory has taken most of her translations.

With regard to the historic character of the events there has been hitherto much difference of opinion, but Dr. Hyde has, I think, fairly established it now as authentic-authentic, that is, in the main lines, as the siege of Troy is authentic. As to the details, they have doubtless been filled in, amplified, and changed in the course of the long telling of the story. There is a strong element of the supernatural throughout, just as there is in Homer's narrative; but this is kept well subordinate to the simpler human interest, and the prodigies performed by the heroes are not greater than those of the Shah-nameh or the romance of Antar. Of witchcraft and Druidry and second-sight there is abundance. Spells are cast upon whole armies, and at a pinch the champions have resort to magic feats or are themselves assailed by magic. There are transformations into birds and fish and beasts of prey. The gift of prophecy, dimly extant in the Morte D'Arthur in the character of Merlyn, is here almost a common thing, and there are twenty ladies at least who, like Morgan le Fay, are of the race of the fairies. Nevertheless it is all strangely real, real in the essential characteristics of Celtic human nature as one can conceive it untinctured with Christianity. Nothing is more convincing about the cycle than the absence of all trace in it of Latin influences in the ways of thought or morals. Though the women pride themselves upon their chastity, virginity is no virtue with them. The men have but one wife, but are subject to many lapses, and the estate of marriage seems to both rather a preference than a bond. The women enjoy rights both of property and independence unknown to the Anglo-Saxons. They take part in the councils of war, and occasionally lead armies and fight on the field of battle. Another most convincing characteristic of extreme antiquity is that the fighting is done, not on horseback, but in chariots, and with javelins rather than lances. Each hero has with him, as at

Troy, his charioteer, and carries spear and shield. This is the true aspect of Celtic antiquity, from which Malory with his mounted chivalry has very widely strayed. There are wonderful horses, but they are harnessed in pairs, never singly, and the chariots of wickerwork are clearly the true Celtic chariots.

The outline of the story is as follows: We are introduced in the opening scene to the Court of Conor MacNessa, or Conchubar, King of Ulster, in his capital of Emain Macha. Conchubar, though popularly acknowledged, is not the rightful lord, having dispossessed his step-father, Fergus, who later joins his enemies. The first episode is the birth of Setanta, afterwards nicknamed 'Cuchulin,' or the 'Little Hound of Culain,' from a fierce hound he slew while yet a child. He is shown 'hurling' with the other boys of the Court, and already, though the youngest, masterful through his strength. Presently, grown older, he takes up arms, having heard it predicted that the day would be fateful for whoever should make it the first of his fighting career, that such a one would achieve a great name and die young. This glorious fate he covets. He mounts Conchubar's chariot with his charioteer Laeg, crosses the frontier challenging all comers, slays his man, runs down two stags, and captures a flight of swans with his sling. These are his first victorious deeds. We find him next with all the women in Ulster in love with him for his skill in arms, the lightness of his leap, his chess-playing, his wisdom, and his beauty, so that the men of Ulster are alarmed for their domestic peace and seek him out a wife. At last they find one endowed with the 'six gifts'—the gift of beauty, the gift of song, the gift of sweet speech, the gift of needlework, the gift of magic, and the gift of chastity. I was brought up,' Emer says of herself in answer to his questions, in ancient virtues, in lawful behaviour, in the keeping of chastity, in the stateliness of form, in the rank of a queen, in all noble ways among the women of Ireland.' After some new love episodes with other women, he marries her, Emer, daughter of Forgall, and is soon after acknowledged champion of Ulster.

The next episode is amusing. It is of a quarrel got up by the mischief-maker Bricriu, at a great feast he gives to Conchubar, between the three chief ladies of the court. There is much that is humanly modern in this ancient story. Bricriu persuades each lady in turn that she is the noblest and most beautiful, and so entitled to go in first to dinner, and by doing so become the recognised social Queen of Ulster. When dinner, therefore, is announced, they race for the door. Emer is the quickest afoot and outruns the other two, and puts her back to the door calling on the doorkeepers to open. But there is a delay, the others come up, and the men' rose up each to open the door before his own wife, so that they might be the first to come within.' 'It is a bad night this will be,' remarks Conchubar, as the ladies enter on a war of words. Each boasts of her husband's merits.

'My

husband is Cuchulin,' cries Emer; he is not a hound that is weak; there is blood on his spear; his white body is black with sword-cuts; there are many wounds on his thigh; his chariot is red; its cushions are red; he fights from over the ears of his horses; he leaps in the air like a salmon when he makes his hero-leap. Your fine heroes of Ulster are not worth a stalk of grass compared with him. Your fine women of Ulster are shaped like cows beside the wife of Cuchulin.' The dispute is suddenly solved by Cuchulin, who lifts up the wall of the house in front of Emer, and she walks in first to the banquetroom and is proclaimed the noblest.

Tragedy, however, soon begins, and the narrative gains dignity and power. The fate of the children of Usnach is a story worthy of all Irish tears. It might have been told by Malory himself. Like all great tragedies since the world began, its chief actor is a woman— Deirdre, on whose account many shall weep, for whose sake deeds of anger shall be done and wounds and ill-doings and the shedding of blood, a tale of wonder for ever-Deirdre!' Predestined by Cathbad the Druid to sorrow, she is kept secluded from her childhood under the charge of a wise woman; but the fame of her beauty reaches Conchubar, for she is straight and clean like a rush on a bog,' and the king resolves to marry her. She has already seen another, however, prefigured in a dream, with raven hair and a skin like the swan on the wave, and cheeks like the blood of a redspeckled calf, Naoise, son of Usnach, who with his two brothers in due time arrives and carries her away to Alban, which is Albion or Western Scotland. Then Conchubar is angry, but conceals his rage and sends, as messenger to the runaways, Fergus, the dispossessed, and, in spite of Deirdre's warnings, relying on his promise, they go back with him to Ulster. Fergus's pledge is nevertheless broken by Conchubar, thus alienating Fergus for ever. Fergus's two sons are slain in defending them, and then the three sons of Usnach, all treacherously betrayed. And Deirdre pathetically sings her threnody at which half a hundred generations of Irishmen have wept :

Dear to me the land of the East, Alban with its wonders. I would not have come from it hither, but that I came with Naoise.

Glen Laoi! where I was wont to sleep under soft coverings. Fish and venison and badger's meat were my portion in Laoi.

Glen Masan! my grief! Glen Masan! High its hartstongue, bright its stems. We were rocked to pleasant sleep above the harbour of Masan!

Glen Archan! my grief! Never went young man with a lighter heart than Naoise in Archan.

Glen Eitche! my grief! it was there I builded my first house.

Glen da Rua! my grief! sweet was the cuckoo's voice on the bending bough above Glen da Rua. Never would I have come from it at all, but that I came with my beloved.

Once, when the nobles of Scotland were drinking with the sons of Usnach, Naoise gave a kiss secretly to the daughter of the Lord of Duntreon. My head was full of jealousy; I put my boat on the waves: it was the same to me to live