JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN, Engraved by I. T. Medgwood for Ryans Worthies of Preland: Published March 201879 by R Ryan 330 Oxford Street. A BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF THE WORTHIES OF IRELAND, FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO THE PRESENT TIME. WRITTEN AND COMPILED BY RICHARD RYAN. "On Lough Neagh's banks as the fisherman strays, "He sees the round towers of other days "In the wave beneath him shining: "Thus shall memory often, in dreams sublime, MOORE'S IRISH MELODIES. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON JOHN WARREN, OLD BOND STREET; M. N. MAHON; R. MILLIKEN; AND HODGES & M'ARTHUR, DUBLIN. MDCCCXXI. Preface Dedicatory TO THE IRISH NATION. BIOGRAPHY is of all narratives the most valuable. The revolutions of empires would be but a fairy tale to us, if they were not capable of supplying additional principles for our knowledge of human nature. Biography, like all things else, becomes more important as the influence of its subjects has been more extensive; for the future fates of a nation are made by its character, and its character is made by its celebrated men. But the deepest and holiest interest is thrown round Biography, when it is appealed to as the vindicator of an unhappy people; when the fallen are forced to bring in the dead to plead their cause, and find their only trophies in the tomb. The History of Ireland is the most calamitous moral document since the beginning of society. A government of barbarism was less succeeded than interrupted by a government of conquest; and the evil of this partial subjugation was reinforced by the subordinate mischiefs of a divided law, a divided language, and a divided religion. The heroic savage of Ireland lost a share of his native virtues, and filled up their place by the arts of a perverted civilization. The arms and laws of England had made a sudden burst into the country, as irresistible as the invasion of the lava into the ocean; but their progress was as |