THE Irish Literary Revival was carefully organized
and its history is well documented. During the last dec-
ade of the nineteenth century there were founded, both
in London and in Dublin, Irish literary clubs and societies,
which published joint manifestoes under the title 'The
Revival of Irish Literature.' As early as 1894 W. P.
Ryan issued a volume called 'The Irish Literary Revival,
its History, Pioneers, and Possibilities.' About the same
time Stopford Brooke submitted to the London Society
a definite programme. Taking it for granted that the work
already done to preserve and edit old Irish manuscripts
would be continued, he urged: (1) that the pieces of
finest quality should be accurately translated "with as
much of a poetic movement as is compatible with fine
prose, and done by men who have the love of noble form
and the power of shaping it"; (2) that Irishmen of
formative genius should take, one by one, the various
cycles of Irish tales, and grouping each of them round
one central figure, supply to each a dominant human in-
terest to which every event in the whole should converge,
after the manner of Malory "Morte d'Arthur"; (3) that
suitable episodes in these imaginative tales should be
treated in verse, retaining the colour and spirit of the
original; (4) that the folk-stories of Ireland should be
collected. Douglas Hyde "Beside the Fire", which had
appeared in 1890, was mentioned as exactly the thing

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