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Article ACCOUNT OF A TOUR TO KILLARNEY, &c. Page 1 of 5 →
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Account Of A Tour To Killarney, &C.
ACCOUNT OF A TOUR TO KILLARNEY , & c .
IN A LETTER TO J . AND E . FRY . BY . CAPPER LLOYD , ESQ ^
[ Concludedfrom Page 340 . ] ALTHOUGH we did not leave Killarney without feeling the regret natural on quitting scenes of pleasure , yet our anxiety ivas not such as to repress that hilarity which , during our whole journey , had been promoted amongst us with great earnestness . We lodged that ni g ht in Mill-street , which , though an inconsiderable
place , afforded us good accommodation . We had a plentiful supper , accompanied with rural elegance , and some excellent claret at two shillings a bottle . Next morning we pursued our journey through a country more lonesome and dreary than I had ever seen before , as we sometimes travelled for several miles successively without seeing a single hut to convince us that we had not wandered into regions uninhabited by the children of men . But , perhaps , 1 speak too lightly of a country that was once the seat of the muses : our . great Spenser
wrote several books of his Fairy Queen during his residence in this lonesome part of the county of Cork . The person who gave us this literary anecdote humorously observed , that it was a very suitable situation for a poet , as the appearance of the country would continually remind him of Parnassus , which many a modern bard has found unfertile . The latter part of his observation I believe to be true enough , but I differ with him in respect to the former ; for though
loneliness may be favourable to study , yet such a country as this could furnish but few images for Spencer ' s pastoral muse ; it must , however , be granted that , in such a verbose work as the Fairy Queen , even this situation might have been of service ; it was necessary to draw a picture of dreariness in order to introduce several of his characters—his hermit , for instance , must surely have resided here ; I mean the old reverend
father of whom he thus says , " At length they chaunct to meet upon tbe way " An aged sire in long blacke weedes yclad ; " His feete all bare , his beard all hoarie gray , " And by his belt his booke he hanging had . "
I quote from memory and probabl y not with correctness . ¦ Not far from Blarney we overtook a funeral procession , and learned that the person about to be interred had died the ' day before . —To see a fellow-creature thus hastened , to the grave a few'hours after his der cease shocked me much , and ! could not help expressing my abhorrence of a practice both indecent and dangerous .- This led to a conversation
on the subject of premature interment , and I found my companions in possession of several anecdotes of persons being consigned to their last habitation before they had ( in earnest ) paid the great debt of nature . VOL . II . 3 F
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Account Of A Tour To Killarney, &C.
ACCOUNT OF A TOUR TO KILLARNEY , & c .
IN A LETTER TO J . AND E . FRY . BY . CAPPER LLOYD , ESQ ^
[ Concludedfrom Page 340 . ] ALTHOUGH we did not leave Killarney without feeling the regret natural on quitting scenes of pleasure , yet our anxiety ivas not such as to repress that hilarity which , during our whole journey , had been promoted amongst us with great earnestness . We lodged that ni g ht in Mill-street , which , though an inconsiderable
place , afforded us good accommodation . We had a plentiful supper , accompanied with rural elegance , and some excellent claret at two shillings a bottle . Next morning we pursued our journey through a country more lonesome and dreary than I had ever seen before , as we sometimes travelled for several miles successively without seeing a single hut to convince us that we had not wandered into regions uninhabited by the children of men . But , perhaps , 1 speak too lightly of a country that was once the seat of the muses : our . great Spenser
wrote several books of his Fairy Queen during his residence in this lonesome part of the county of Cork . The person who gave us this literary anecdote humorously observed , that it was a very suitable situation for a poet , as the appearance of the country would continually remind him of Parnassus , which many a modern bard has found unfertile . The latter part of his observation I believe to be true enough , but I differ with him in respect to the former ; for though
loneliness may be favourable to study , yet such a country as this could furnish but few images for Spencer ' s pastoral muse ; it must , however , be granted that , in such a verbose work as the Fairy Queen , even this situation might have been of service ; it was necessary to draw a picture of dreariness in order to introduce several of his characters—his hermit , for instance , must surely have resided here ; I mean the old reverend
father of whom he thus says , " At length they chaunct to meet upon tbe way " An aged sire in long blacke weedes yclad ; " His feete all bare , his beard all hoarie gray , " And by his belt his booke he hanging had . "
I quote from memory and probabl y not with correctness . ¦ Not far from Blarney we overtook a funeral procession , and learned that the person about to be interred had died the ' day before . —To see a fellow-creature thus hastened , to the grave a few'hours after his der cease shocked me much , and ! could not help expressing my abhorrence of a practice both indecent and dangerous .- This led to a conversation
on the subject of premature interment , and I found my companions in possession of several anecdotes of persons being consigned to their last habitation before they had ( in earnest ) paid the great debt of nature . VOL . II . 3 F