IN THE "Book of the Day" slot on this page last Tuesday, reviewer Rudiger Imhof suggested that the publication of Images of Invention: Essays on Irish Writing, might have been "primarily intended as an opportunity for the author to put another feather in his cap."

Other than an opportunity for making money, there can hardly be a better reason for publication. We will leave aside the vexed fashion issue of how many feathers in the cap are appropriate today, but the editor of the book in question has at a rough estimate about 30 feathers in his particular literary cap already. He is the distinguished critic, Yeats specialist and biographer. Professor A. Norman Jeffares.

Oddly enough, the last time I saw Professor Jeffares in his old Dublin haunts, he was not wearing any headgear at all. Either he was being modest, or else the feathered cap is something like the rugby cap given as token of participation in an international game, i.e. not actually meant to be worn.

All right. Mr Imhof, who teaches Irish literature in English at the University of Wupperthal, further complains of outdated essays in the volume and says the publisher must have thought that anything with Professor Jeffares name on it will sell: "He is probably right."

So far we have Professor" Jeffares convicted for attempting to increase his fame, and his publisher (Colin Smythe) found guilty of trying to make money. Damnable crimes in today's genteel book business.

Mr Imhof also takes issue with Professor Jeffares over the "Irishness" of some inclusions in the book. The claim to Irishness of George Farquhar and Oliver Goldsmith, says Imhof, "puts one in mind of the duke of Wellington's sagacious saying that being born in a stable does not make one a horse."

I have never thought that observation particularly sagacious. Accurate it may be, but (the fact remains that) most creatures born in stables are likely to be horses. The Duke is a rare exception.

Mr Imhof seems to have a problem with Irish writers who emigrate and fail to return. Certainly, if to do so means losing one's Irishness, the Irish literary pantheon is greatly reduced. (Joyce drops out for starters, and presumably becomes French/Italian/ Swiss).

But let us consider George Farquhar. He was a Derryman who studied at Trinity College, and later became an actor in Dublin's Smock Alley Theatre. Just because he then moved to a stable does not mean he became a horse. (I mean that because he moved to London he did not necessarily become English). His plays are full of Irish characters, most of them rogues, which proves just how Irish he was. I ought to know, having once played on a foreign stage the part of Foigard, a drunken would-be seducer (in The Beaux Stratagem) attempting to pass himself off as a Belgian Jesuit. One reviewer was kind enough to describe this as an inspired piece of casting.

If more proof of Farquhar's Irishness is needed, he also held a grudge all his life against the Catholic Church, and particularly the Pope.

As for Oliver Goldsmith, Longford people, and in particular the Ballymahon crowd, will not be happy to hear his Irishness questioned. What with the ravages caused by Oliver's smallpox, his disciplinary problems at Trinity (including a beating by his tutor), his speech difficulties, the refusal of the authorities to formalise his ordination, his near-arrest for debt, and all kinds of other defeats and setbacks, the poor fellow had a rough early life. To suggest now that he was more English than Irish is one humiliation too many.

Anyway, all you have to do is take a gawk at the fine statue in front of Trinity College to recognise the true Gaelic cut of the Goldsmith jib.

The truth is that Goldsmith loved Ireland and his midland origins despite his difficulties in this country. Verses of The Deserted Village evoke many happy nostalgic memories of his childhood and youth around Ballymahon and Lissoy. His outlook on Britishness was also markedly different from that of his English writer contemporaries, as the most cursory study of his life and work will show.