ABSTRACT
Ireland’s weakness, like that of the Scottish lowlands, was the lure of London. The absentee Irish landlord, as we have seen, was a phenomenon going back to the fourteenth century. The Anglo-Irish writers of the eighteenth century form a group of the exceptional distinction. The most prolific, and perhaps the best, of the Irish novelists was Charles Lever, whose Charles O'Malley gives a picture of his own student days at Trinity College. Anglo-Irish society was eccentric, broadminded, tolerant, inclusive rather than exclusive, above all hospitable. The Church of Ireland was never anything but middle or upper class, with the clergy hovering uneasily between. The Irish literary renaissance, of which William Butler Yeats, the most formidable poet of modern times, was the moving force, was so powerful and coherent, albeit multifaceted, that it has understandably been compared to the Elizabethan drama.
