The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two.
§ 5. Geoffrey Keating
Works by Anglo-Irish writers of the seventeenth century are largely in Latin and, therefore, are not dealt with here. A reference to the bibliography of this chapter will, however, show that a few of these have been rendered into English and should be consulted, in this or in their original form by students interested in Irish history, archaeology and hagiology, secular and religious, and in the treatment of these subjects by such distinguished contemporary writers as John Colgan, Sir James Ware—whom archbishop Ussher had educated into an interest in Irish history and antiquities—Luke Wadding and Philip O’sullivan Beare. These, too, were the times of Geoffrey Keating, the first writer of modern Irish who can claim to possess literary style, and of the O’Clery family. Keating was a poet as well as a historian, and his lyric Geoffrey Keating to his Letter on its way to Ireland is one of the most charming of Irish patriotic poems. Keating’s History of Ireland has been recently issued by the Irish Text society, with an excellent English translation facing the original Irish, and Annals of the Four Masters may also be consulted in a satisfactory English version.