Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/150

 of early literature, which among the Irish Celts, for example, seems to have left its traces in "Literary Fosterage," breaks up with the decomposition of clans into their component families, and the farther development of personal freedom from such family restraints as those of the Roman patria potestas. But, before we turn to this individualising process or to the evolution of literary forms, we shall illustrate another side of clan literature, viz. that on which the clansman's personality, so far as communal sentiments permit, is most distinctly visible.