pretty prating parrot." Of his verse, the following specimen may suffice:

"With tentive listening each wight was settled in hearkening,
Their father Aneas chronicled from loftie bed hautie;
You bid me, O princess, to sacrifice a festered old sore,
How that the Trojans were prest by the Grecian armie."

The reader will have noticed, that the verse is a wretched imitation of the Latin hexameter. This was the fashion of his day, it was introduced by Gabriel Harvey, and adopted by Sidney, Spenser, and all the poets of the day, but soon rejected. Harvey enumerates Stanihurst, with Spenser, Sidney, and other celebrated writers, as commendably employed, and enriching their native tongue, and sounds his own glory as the inventor of the English hexameter.

Stanihurst's works are the following:-Harmonica, seu Catena Dialectica in Porphyrium; De rebus in Hibernia Gestis; Descriptio Hiberniæ, inserted in Holinshed's Chronicle; De Vatæ et Patricii Hiberniæ Apostoli; Hebdomada Mariana; Hebdomada Eucharistica; Brevis præmonitis pro futura concertatione cum Jacobo Userio; The principles of the Roman Catholic Religion; The four first books of Virgil's Eneid, in English hexameter, published with versions of the four first Psalms in Iambic metre.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

TO FOURTH PERIOD,

EXTENDING

FROM QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DEATH TO THE ACCESSION OF GEORGE III.

WITH

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES

OF

Distinguished Erishmen

WHO FLOURISHED DURING THAT PERIOD.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

ΤΟ

FOURTH PERIOD.

Prefatory remarks-Retrospect-Old State of Property-Character of James I.— State of the Country on his Accession-Plantation of Ulster-Parliaments in Ireland - Causes of the Rebellion of 1641--Final Conquest in 1689-—Religion — Commerce-Arts-Letters, &c.

As we advance in our task, each successive period, offers a more expanded field of character and circumstance; the events attain greater detail, and the actors become more numerous. As civil rule assumes a more distinct organization, and begins more and more to assert itself over the vast and destructive anarchy of so many centuries of continued revolution, the influence of individual character and position diminishes, and we are less necessitated to occupy our page with memoirs of persons, only distinguished by the accidents of position. We may cease to be guided by the herald's book, and to record with little variation the successions and fortunes of men, only illustrious by the privilege of descent. Yet, during the next long division of our work, we are but little released from the disadvantageous condition, of having little biographical detail: the species of literature, which collects and preserves the details of individual life, had not yet been developed; and as the times are better known, still the agents are more obscure. We must still, therefore, continue to present biography in a form little to be distinguished from history.

Such a condition, imposes the necessity of being less circumstantial, than we should otherwise think desirable in this introductory essay. We shall therefore be content, to offer a broad outline of the course of events, so as in some measure, to enable our reader to preserve a distinct conception of the order which must seem lost in the detail and divided method of our general plan. But more especially, to anticipate and guard against those popular misconceptions, which are the main impediment to an impartial history of Ireland.

Though we may observe the undoubted signs of civil progress still advancing, with occasional retardations through the whole period, yet, it must be admitted, that this progress is slow beyond all historical precedent, and that our history presents rather a fertile field, for the illustration of the causes which retard national advance, than an instance within the common analogy of social progress. Of this peculiar fact, it must be a portion of our duty to explain the causes