An Ascendancy of the Heart: Ferguson and the Beginnings of Modern Irish Literature in English by Robert O’Driscoll (review)

426 LETTERS IN CANADA 1976 techniques really are discoverable in Tennyson's verse; many of them he no doubt absorbed from Milton - the poet, Shaw tells us, whom Tennyson alludes to more often that any other, ancient or modern. This volume is valuable for its scholarship. Shaw has profitably turned over whole libraries to refer pointedly to Augustine and Aquinas, Hobbes and Hume, Blair and BagellOt, Bradley and Bloom, Ferrier and Frost, Hegel and Heidegger, Kant and Keble, Newton and Newman, Spencer and Stevens, Whitehead and Wheelwright. Rarely is this learning ostentatious . He has also examined to our profit volumes in Tennyson's library and manuscripts on two continents. But there is much else here to attract the professional student: the fresh early pages on Tennyson's critical context and stylistic models, the excellent analysis of the 'confession : the exposition of motion-picture techniques in 'Maud: the informative remarks on Tennyson and Idealism, for instance. Tennyson and Pope, states Shaw, are the two absolute masters of English style. He himself demonstrates here a complete mastery in analysing the style of Tennyson's endlessly fascinating art. (ROBERT H. TENER) Robert Q'Driscoll. All Ascendancy of the Heart: Ferguson and the Beginnings of Modem Irish Literature in English. Macmillan of Canada. 84· $9.95 Robert O'Driscoll's Ascendancy of the Heart concerns the emotional conversion of the Ulster Protestant poet and translator Samuel Ferguson to the study and later championing of Caelic Irish culture. Although the period dealt with is mainly the 18305, the subject is timely since it is related to the seeming incompatibility of Orange and Creen, still a problem of tragic dimensions in contemporary Ireland. O'Driscoll handles this subject with tact and compassion. He divides his book between a discussion and exposition of Ferguson's political and cultural ideas and a critical examination of the poetic result of Ferguson's cultural conversion . Here O'Driscoll uses his admirable literary and linguistic skill to demonstrate the excellence of Ferguson's translations. O'Driscoll's account begins with Ferguson's original dislike for Irish Catholics (hardly an unusual attitude for his time and place). His antipathy combined both racial and religiOUS attitudes and the crucial factor was a suspicion and dislike of the Catholic clergy and a loathing for Catholic religious practices. In 1833-4 he began to learn Gaelic and read Irish literature in the original. The result of this was a conversion of the heart, if not the head, to native Irish culture (he had expressed this conflict of thought and emotion in 'A Dialogue between the Head and Heart of an Irish Protestant: published in November 1833). O'Driscoll shows how Ferguson quickly discovered behind the veils of fear and HUMANITIES 427 suspicion admirable qualities which were unique and different from the English, qualities which deserved to be retained and fostered. Ferguson hoped that Ireland, through mutual understanding of Protestant and Catholic, would some day emerge as a great nation. O'Driscoll relies for much of this theoretical background on Ferguson's articles on Irish poetry in the Dublin University Magazine. These seminal writings have never been reprinted, and one wonders why, because they seem to be of great historical importance. Among the more curious aspects of these articles is that they are anonymous, and although their title is 'Hardiman's Irish Minstrelsy' (a then recently published collection of Gaelic poems with English translations), they are filled with anonymous translations which are Ferguson's and not from Hardiman. Ferguson must have been an astonishing student of languages. We are told that in May 1833 he was only a 'grammar scholar in Irish: but by September of that year he had advanced sufficiently to embark on a critique of Irish poetry. A remarkable feat, and the sceptic in me wonders whether Ferguson was perhaps too modest in May of that year. The major portion of this book is devoted to a study of Ferguson's translations from the Irish. O'Driscoll's command of Gaelic gives one a convincing critical estimation of the superiority of Ferguson's translations over those of his predecessors. O'Driscoll offers us a capsule history of translations from the Irish during the...