The rich have spurned me from their door,

Because I'd make thee free;

Yet still I love thee more and more,

A cuisle geal mo chroidhe!

I've run the outlaw's wild career,
And borne his load of ill;

His rocky couch-his dreamy fear-
With fixed, sustaining will;

And should his last dark chance befall,
Even that shall welcome be;
In death I'd love thee best of all,
A cuisle geal mo chroidhe!

"T was told of thee the world around,
"T was hoped for thee by all,
That with one gallant sunward bound
Thou'dst burst long ages' thrall;
Thy faith was tied, alas! and those
Who periled all for thee

Were cursed and branded as thy foes,
A cuisle geal mo chroidhe!

What fate is thine, unhappy Isle,

When even the trusted few

Would pay thee back with hate and guile,
When most they should be true!
"T was not my strength or spirit quailed,
Or those who'd die for thee-

Who loved thee truly have not failed,
A cuisle geal mo chroidhe!

EDWARD DOWDEN.

(1843)

EDWARD DOWDEN was born in Cork, May 3, 1843, where he received his early education. He entered Trinity College in 1859. In 1867 he became professor of English literature. The scholarship of his literary work has won him many honors. In 1888 he was chosen President of the English Goethe Society, to succeed Professor Müller. The following year he was appointed first Taylorian lecturer in the Taylor Institute, Oxford. The Royal Irish Academy has bestowed the Cunningham gold medal upon him, and he has also received the honorary degree LL.D. of the Universities of Edinburgh and Princeton.

Professor Dowden has been a frequent contributor of critical essays to all the high-class magazines-the Contemporary, Fortnightly, Westminster, Fraser's, and Cornhill. His first book was published in 1875-'Shakespeare, his Mind and Art, a Critical Study.' This is a very remarkable contribution to the literature on the great English dramatist, and has already taken rank among the standard works on the subject. It is now in its fourth edition, and has been translated into German and Russian. A volume of 'Poems' appeared in 1876, and has passed into a second edition. Of his poetry, Mr. W. MacNeile Dixon says in A Treasury of Irish Poetry: "He recalls to us Marvell's fine simplicity, his unfailing sense for the beautiful, his pervading spirituality, his touch of resolute aloofness from the haste and fever of life, his glad and serious temper, his unaffected charm of phrase and movement."

'Studies in Literature' (1875) contained a number of suggestive criticisms on the chief literary masters of our time-the most remarkable perhaps being that on George Eliot. Mr. Dowden has, besides, contributed a Shakespeare Primer to the 'Literature Primers' edited by the well-known historian, Mr. J. R. Green, and he was chosen to contribute Southey' to the series of English Men of Letters,' under the guidance of Mr. John Morley. In addition to the books above mentioned he has written The Life of Shelley,' 'Transscripts and Studies,'' New Studies in Literature,' 'The French Revolution and English Literature,' A History of French Literature.' He has edited Shakespeare's Sonnets,' Southey's 'Correspondence with Caroline Bowles,' The Passionate Pilgrim,' 'The Correspondence of Henry Taylor,' and a collection of lyrical ballads.

6

THE INTERPRETATION OF LITERATURE.

From 'Transcripts and Studies.'

The happiest moment in a critic's hours of study is when, seemingly by some divination, but really as the re