CHAPTER IV. ROMANCE AND SENTIMENT THE HE ingredients which most writers on Ireland, the historians, the antiquarians, the political agitators, the publicists, the poets, and, last but not least, the fictionists from the days of Samuel Lover to George Moore and Bernard Shaw - have used as a basis for their written word have been many and varied. Some have pictured it as a land of desolation and poverty, rich in nothing, while others have descanted elaborately upon its treasures and wealth of historical, architectural, and ecclesiological remains; the beauty of the literature of its native legends; its poetry and music; and erstwhile its native tongue, which may have a latent charm to those versed therein, but which will never become a popular speech, as an Irish member must have hoped |