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M odern Europe I5! People working in Irish history emphasize the rela­ shorter book would have been better and less ex­ tionships between agrarian discontent and agita­ pensive. Repetitive details and arguments dull tion and the growth of Irish nationalism, but until rather than illuminate issues and often make for the recent contributions of scholars like Joseph tedious reading. Lee, James Donnelly, Jr., and Barbara Solow, the LAWRENCE J. MCCAFFREY actual economic and social conditions of nine­ Loyola University, teenth-century agrarian Ireland were shrouded in Chicago the fogs of nationalist mythology and propaganda. In The LandQuestion andthe Irish Economy, 187°-19°3 DOMINIC DALY. The Young Douglas Hyde: TheDawnof (1971), Solow presented evidence indicating that in the Irish Revolution and Renaissance, 1874-1893. Fore­ Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article/81/1/151/199745 by guest on 25 September 2021 the 1850s, 1860s, and early 1870s, the standard of word by ERSKINE CHILDERS. Totowa, N.].: Row­ living in rural Ireland improved considerably as man and Littlefield. 1974. Pp. xix, 232. $13-50. prices increased more than rents. She argued that "When the Gaelic League was founded in 1893," Irish agrarian radicalism was more political and wrote Patrick Pearse, "the Irish Revolution be­ social than economic and that Irish land acts gan." Its founder, Douglas Hyde, was then thirty­ passed by the British Parliament responded to po­ three. Apart from a short biography by Diarmid litical and social demands rather than economic Coffey in 1938, little has been known about his needs. personal life. Dominic Daly has had access to thir­ In his analysis of the Irish agitation, British pub­ teen volumes of a diary kept regularly by Hyde lic opinion, and British political dimensions of the between 1874 and 1912, and on this basis he has Land Act of 1870, E. D. Steele supports Solow's reconstructed Hyde's life down to the founding of theses. Gladstone understood that Irish nation­ the league. We learn in fascinating detail how as a alism fed on peasant resentment against landlords boy of fourteen Hyde learned Irish from a game­ as representatives of alien conquest and occupa­ keeper and a poor countrywoman. We also learn tion. He tried to give tenant farmers a stake in the how his passion for Irish led him to acquire what land they occupied by legislating and extending Daly calls "an extraordinary library for a young Ulster custom throughout the country. The fears man of twenty who never had a formal lesson in of the British establishment, however, expressed Irish history or literature." More surprising is the by journalists, pamphleteers, and politicians from revelation of the bitter hostility that existed be­ both major parties, that tenant right in Ireland tween Hyde and his father, a parson, and of the might undermine property rights all over the open quarrels that took place. Hyde once wrote United Kingdom, forced the prime minister to re­ that his father was "the most opposed and obnox­ treat from fixity to security of tenure. The Land ious to my way of thinking that could ever exist on Act hoped to achieve the latter by legislating cus­ the face of the earth." tom where it existed and by preventing evictions in In view of the fact that Hyde strenuously resisted other places through compensation for improve­ all attempts to involve the Gaelic League actively ment and disturbance. The Bright clause encour­ in politics, it is surprising to learn how ardent was aged land purchase and peasant proprietorship on his Fenianism and how strong was his hatred of a modest scale. England as a young man. "My hundred thousand Irish agrarian and nationalist agitators rejected curses on England and on her rule," he wrote in the Land Act of 1870 as an inadequate response to 1881. No less strange is the almost total absence their demands for fixity of tenure, and the vicious from the diary of any mention of Parnell, though cycle of violence and coercion continued. But Tim Healy is referred to once as "a scoundrel." Gladstone's efforts pioneered the way that finally Though Hyde was elected president of the led to peasant proprietorship, and his attempt at Gaelic League and remained so for twenty-two agrarian reform in Ireland established a precedent years (1893-1915), Daly makes it clear that Eoin limiting property rights in the United Kingdom, MacNeill was chiefly responsible for establishing opening the gates of legislation that eventually pro­ the new organization. Nevertheless Hyde gave up duced the welfare state. his own creative work to become the apostle of the Although in his background discussion of the league, leading Yeats to speak of him regretfully as Land Act of 1870 Steele tends to exaggerate the "the great poet who died in his youth." Daly's agrarian radicalism content of Irish nationalism, book is indispensable to students of the Irish Liter­ particularly in its Fenian manifestation, and to­ ary Revival. ward the end of his work he obscures the Irish GIOVANNI COSTlGAN dimension in the intricacies of British political and University of Washington journalist debate, he has contributed a valuable book. His thorough research and intelligent analy­ I. D. MCFARLANE. A Literary History of France: Renais­ sis have clarified the complicated interactions be­ sance France, 147°-1589. New York: Barnes and tween Irish agitations and British politics. But a Noble. 1974. Pp. xxiv, 557- $18.00..

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