We have no record to show that Brian ever travelled very far, nor is it necessary to believe that he was ever outside of Thomond. None the less it is curious to find him so closely in contact with the most advanced ideas of the latter half of the eighteenth century. It was in the same year that Brian wrote the "Cúirt" and young Schiller voiced in "Die Räuber" the revolt of youth against human laws and institutions.
One feels that Merriman's entrance into the houses of the gentry must have brought him into contact with men who had read Voltaire and Rousseau and either affected in their talk the mocking scepticism of the one or quoted and discussed the lyric revolt of the other. The only English author whose influence can be with certainty traced in Merriman's lines is the mediocre poet Richard Savage; but this fact in itself shows us that Merriman read English poetry. As Professor Stern puts it: "Glücklicherweise hat Brian diesen mittelmässigen Poeten nur an ein paar Stellen nachgeahmt namentlich zu Anfang." One of the two instances where he has taken ideas from Savage is rather a blemish on the splendid opening of the "Cúirt." The "leaping up of the trout" and the occult reference to "Cancer" are taken from the English poet.[1]
Savage was the friend of Johnson, who praised him highly after his death, but he belongs to the most unpoetic period of the eighteenth century, and his verse is as pompous, wearisome and artificial as Merriman's is straightforward and vigorous. In the single instance of direct translation, Merriman says in one line what Savage takes two longer lines to say. But the general idea of "The Wanderer: A Vision," which is a long descriptive poem, seems to have given Brian hints of which he availed in the form of the "Cúirt." A true
- ↑ See Appendix on Richard Savage.
