His First
Important Work, The 'Topography Of Ireland,' Is, With Due Allowance
For The Difference Between The Tastes Of
The twelfth century and
those of the nineteenth, just such a series of sketches as a special
correspondent in our
Own day might send from some newly-colonised
island in the Pacific to satisfy or whet the curiosity of his
readers at home." The description aptly applies to all that Gerald
wrote. If not a historian, he was at least a great journalist. His
descriptions of Ireland have been subjected to much hostile
criticism from the day they were written to our own times. They
were assailed at the time, as Gerald himself tells us, for their
unconventionality, for their departure from established custom, for
the freedom and colloquialism of their style, for the audacity of
their stories, and for the writer's daring in venturing to treat the
manners and customs of a barbarous country as worthy the attention
of the learned and the labours of the historian. Irish scholars,
from the days of Dr. John Lynch, who published his "Cambrensis
Eversus" in 1622, have unanimously denounced the work of the
sensational journalist, born out of due time. His Irish books are
confessedly partisan; the "Conquest of Ireland" was expressly
designed as an eulogy of "the men of St. David's," the writer's own
kinsmen. But in spite of partisanship and prejudice, they must be
regarded as a serious and valuable addition to our knowledge of the
state of Ireland at the latter end of the twelfth century.
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