An Address to the Irish People (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

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Excerpt from An Address to the Irish People

But a much more important Irishman than Mr. Finnerty also aroused Shelley's enthusiasm, as indeed that of many a young heart since. This was Robert Emmet, the hero of the insurrection of 1803 - an insurrection trivial and even despicable for what it actually effected at the time, but memorable as the first protest of Irish nationality against the Act of Union. That it accomplished little, beyond exhibiting (and this principally to those who were behind the scenes) the elements with which something might be accomplished later on, is hardly to be wondered at. Emmet was no organizer, and Ireland at the time was gagged, bound, and sazgnee d olane. But it had one important result, in making Emmet's aims and his pure heroic character known to his countrymen 3 and the defeated rebel's speech from the dock has had no small in uence on Irish history. When Shelley first began to take an interest in Emmet is uncertain: certain it is, however, that he wrote, probably in Dublin, a poem on Emmet's Grave;2 and that Hogg found in Shelley's lodgings, in October, 1812, a broadsheet containing Emmet's speech, with a portrait of the speaker.