Appreciations and Depreciations

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AN IRISH ESSAYIST: JOHN EGLINTON. 3OHN Eglinton is probably the least known of the group of writers associated with the Irish Literary Revival. Younger men, in reality his successors, have achieved a certain degree of fame or popularity, while he remains a figure apart, known only to the few who appreciate...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AN IRISH ESSAYIST: JOHN EGLINTON. 3OHN Eglinton is probably the least known of the group of writers associated with the Irish Literary Revival. Younger men, in reality his successors, have achieved a certain degree of fame or popularity, while he remains a figure apart, known only to the few who appreciate the charm of his beautiful prose. He is a sort of lonely thorn-tree, as George Moore described him in Ave, but the thorn breaks into flower and then we get, sometimes the luxuriance of Two Essays on the Remnant, sometimes the less riotous bloom of Pebbles from a Broo. These two volumes, together with Bards and Saints, constituted for many years John Eglinton's slender contribution to permanent literature. For the rest, his work is scattered throughout the pages of various reviews and esoteric magazines, whence it is only now being rescued, although vain attempts had heretofore been made to persuade the author to do this. In the last two volumes, as also in Literary Ideals in Ireland, some of these essays have been saved from the dusty oblivion of the files of periodical literature, those mines of hidden wealth, the joy of the literary explorer and the despair of librarians. It is not surprising, therefore, that he has escaped the attention of the majority of critics, who have identified Anglo- Irish literature with the work of its poets and dramatists. Although he has written some verse, he has never come forward as a dramatist, and his claim to (Consideration must be based solely upon his distinction as an essayist. His new volume, Anglo-Irish Essays, should do much to reinforce this claim. It is not only in his failure to attain popularity that John Eglinton is an isolated figure in contemporary literature. A certain ironical detachment and sceptici...