Produced by Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: Thomas Davis] THOMAS DAVIS Selections from his Prose and Poetry WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY T. W. ROLLESTON, M.A. NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS Library of Irish Literature _General Editors_: ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES, M.A. WILLIAM MAGENNIS, M.A. DOUGLAS HYDE, LL.D. (Dublin). 1. Thomas Davis. Selections from his Prose and Poetry. Edited by T. W. ROLLESTON, M.A. (Dublin). 2. Wild Sports of the West. W. H. MAXWELL. Edited by THE EARL OF DUNRAVEN. 3. Legends of Saints and Sinners from the Irish. Edited by DOUGLAS HYDE, LL.D. (Dublin). 4. Humours of Irish Life. Edited by CHARLES L. GRAVES, M.A. (Oxon). 5. Irish Orators and Oratory. Edited by T. M. KETTLE, National University of Ireland. 6. The Book of Irish Poetry. Edited by ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES, M.A. (Dublin). Other Volumes in Preparation. Each Crown 8vo. Cloth, with Frontispiece net $1.00 INTRODUCTION. In the present edition of Thomas Davis it is designed to offer a selection of his writings more fully representative than has hitherto appeared in one volume. The book opens with the best of his historical studies--his masterly vindication of the much-maligned Irish Parliament of James II.[1] Next follows a selection of his literary, historical and political articles from _The Nation_ and other sources, and, finally, we present a selection from his poems, containing, it is hoped, everything of high and permanent value which he wrote in that medium. The "Address to the Historical Society" and the essay on "Udalism and Feudalism," which were reprinted in the edition of Davis's Prose Writings published by Walter Scott in 1890, are here omitted--the former because it seemed possible to fill with more valuable and mature work the space it would have taken, and the latter because the cause which it was written to support has in our day been practically won; Udalism will inevitably be the universal type of land-tenure in Ireland, and the real problem which we have before us is not how to win but how to make use of the institution, a matter with which Davis, in this essay, does not concern himself.