Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined

Excerpt

At a time like the present, when in the opinion of many the great
literatures of Greece and Rome are ceasing to hold the influence that
they have so long exerted upon human thought, and when the study of the
greatest works of the ancient world is derided as “useless,” it may be
too sanguine to hope that any attention can be paid to a literature
that is quite as useless as the Greek; which deals with a time, which,
if not actually as far removed from ours as are classical times, is yet
further removed in ideas; a literature which is known to few and has
yet to win its way to favour, while the far superior literature of
Greece finds it hard to defend the position that it long ago won.  It
may be that reasons like these have weighed with those scholars who
have opened up for us the long-hidden treasures of Celtic literature;
despairing of the effort to obtain for that literature its rightful
crown, and the homage due to it from those who can appreciate literary
work for itself, they have been contented to ask for the support of
that smaller body who from philological, antiquarian, or, strange as it
may appear, from political reasons, are prepared to take a modified
interest in what should be universally regarded as in its way one of
the most interesting literatures of the world.