Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry by Thomas Osborne Davis 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. 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. The life of Thomas Davis has been written by his friend and colleague, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, and an excellent abridgment of it appears as a volume in the "New Irish Library." In the latter easily available form it may be hoped that there are few Irishmen who have not made themselves acquainted with it. It is not, therefore, necessary to deal with it here in much detail. Davis was born in Mallow on October 14th, 1814. His father, who came of a family originally Welsh, but long settled in Buckinghamshire, had been a surgeon in the Royal Artillery. His mother, Mary Atkins, came of a Cromwellian family settled in the County Cork. It does not seem an altogether hopeful kind of ancestry for an Irish Nationalist, and his family were, as a matter of fact, altogether of the other way of thinking. But the fact that his great-grandmother, on the maternal side, was a daughter of The O'Sullivan Beare may have had a counteracting influence, if not through the physical channel of heredity, at least through the poet's imagination. As a child, Davis was delicate in health, sensitive, dreamy, awkward, and passed for a dunce. It was not until he had entered Trinity College that the passion for study possessed him. This passion had manifestly been kindled, in the first instance, by the flame of patriotism, but how and when he first came to break loose from the traditional politics of his family we have no means of knowing, unless a gleam of light is thrown on the matter by a saying of his from a speech at Conciliation Hall: -"I was brought up in a mixed seminary, where I learned to know, and knowing to love, my countrymen." We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience.

The following book is a collection of written works by Thomas Davis. He was an Irish writer; with Charles Gavan Duffy and John Blake Dillon, a founding editor of The Nation, the weekly organ of what came to be known as the Young Ireland movement. While embracing the common cause of a representative, national government for Ireland, Davis took issue with the nationalist leader Daniel O'Connell by arguing for the common ("mixed") education of Catholics and Protestants and by advocating for Irish as the national language. In this book, one can find the following poem titles written by Davis: 'The Boatman of Kinsale', 'Love and War', and 'The Right Road'.

Excerpt from Thomas Davis: Selections From His Prose and Poetry This enquiry is designed to rescue eminent men and worthy acts from calumnies which were founded on the ignorance and falsehoods of the Old Whigs, who never felt secure until they had destroyed the character as well as the liberty of Ireland. Irish oppression never could rely on mere physical force for any length of time. Our enormous military resources, and the large proportion of fighting men, or men who love fighting, among our people, prohibit it. It was ever necessary to divide us by circulating extra vagant stories of our crimes and our disasters, in order to poison the wells of brotherly love and patriotism in our hearts, that so many Of us might range ourselves under the banner of our oppressor. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Reproduction of the original: Selections from his Prose and Poetry by Thomas Davis