THOMAS

See also:

• OSBORNE

OSBORNE

See also:

• DAVIS (or DAVYS), JOHN (1550 ?-16o5)
• DAVIS, ANDREW JACKSON (1826—1910)
• DAVIS, CHARLES HOWARD (1857- )
• DAVIS, CUSHMAN KELLOGG (1838-1900)
• DAVIS, HENRY WILLIAM BANKS (1833- )
• DAVIS, HENRY WINTER (1817-1865)
• DAVIS, JEFFERSON (1808–1889)
• THOMAS OSBORNE DAVIS (1814–1845)

DAVIS (1814–1845)  , Irish poet and journalist, was born at Mallow, Co . Cork, on the 14th of October 1814 . His father, James Thomas Davis, a surgeon in the royal artillery, who died in the month of his son's birth, belonged to an English family of Welsh extraction, and his mother, Mary Atkins, belonged to a Protestant Anglo-Irish family . Davis graduated B.A. at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1836, and was called to the bar two years later . Brought up in an English and Tory circle, he was led to adopt nationalist views by the study of Irish history, a complicated subject in which text-books and the ordinary guides to knowledge were then lacking . In 184o he made a speech appealing to Irish sentiment before the college historical society, which had been reorganized in 1839 . With a view to indoctrinating the Irish people with the idea of nationality he joined John Blake Dillon in editing the Dublin Morning Register . The proprietor very soon dismissed him, and Davis saw that his propaganda would be ineffective if he continued to stand outside the national organization . He therefore announced himself a follower of Daniel O'Connell, and became an energetic worker (1841) on the committee of the repeal association . He helped Dillon and Charles Gavan Duffy to found the weekly newspaper, The Nation, the first number of which appeared on the 15th of October 1842 . The paper was chiefly written by these three promoters, and its concentrated purpose and vigorous writing soon attracted attention . Davis, who had never written verse, was induced to attempt it for the new undertaking .

The "Lament of]

Owen Roe O'Neill" was printed in the sixth number, and was followed by a series of lyrics that take a high place in Irish national poetry—" The Battle of Fontenoy," " The Geraldines," " Wire Bhan a• Stoll." and many others . Davis contemplated a history of Ireland, an edition of the speeches of Irish orators, one volume of which appeared, anda life of Wolfe Tone . These projects remained incomplete, but Davis's determination and continuous zeal made their mark on his party . Differences arose between O'Connell and the young writers of The Nation, and as time went on became more pronounced . Davis was accused of being anti-Catholic, and was systematically attacked by O'Connell's followers . But he differed, said Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, from earlier and later Irish tribunes," by a perfectly genuine desire to remain unknown, and reap neither recognition nor reward for his work." His early death from scarlet fever (September 15th, 1845) deprived " Young Ireland " of its most striking personality . His Poems and his Literary and Historical Essays were collected in 1846 . There is an edition of his prose writings (1889) in the Camelot Classics . See the monograph on Thomas Davis by Sir Charles Gavan Duffy (189o, abridged ed . 1896), and the same writer's Young Ireland (revised edition, 1896) .