CHAPTER XIIIW. B. YEATS

“Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water;Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose,While, murmuring mournfully, Lir’s lonely daughterTells to the night-star her tale of woes.When shall the swan, her death-note singing,Sleep, with wings in darkness furl’d?When will heaven, its sweet bells ringing,Call my spirit from this stormy world?Sadly, O Moyle, to thy winter-wave weeping,Fate bids me languish long ages away;Yet still in her darkness doth Erin lie sleeping,Still doth the pure light its dawning delay.When will that day-star, mildly springing,Warm our isle with peace and love?When will heaven, its sweet bells ringing,Call my spirit to the fields above?”

“Silent, O Moyle, be the roar of thy water;

Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose,

While, murmuring mournfully, Lir’s lonely daughter

Tells to the night-star her tale of woes.

When shall the swan, her death-note singing,

Sleep, with wings in darkness furl’d?

When will heaven, its sweet bells ringing,

Call my spirit from this stormy world?

Sadly, O Moyle, to thy winter-wave weeping,Fate bids me languish long ages away;Yet still in her darkness doth Erin lie sleeping,Still doth the pure light its dawning delay.When will that day-star, mildly springing,Warm our isle with peace and love?When will heaven, its sweet bells ringing,Call my spirit to the fields above?”

Sadly, O Moyle, to thy winter-wave weeping,

Fate bids me languish long ages away;

Yet still in her darkness doth Erin lie sleeping,

Still doth the pure light its dawning delay.

When will that day-star, mildly springing,

Warm our isle with peace and love?

When will heaven, its sweet bells ringing,

Call my spirit to the fields above?”

As the devil might inquire—Is this poetry? I believe that I shall have with me the sounder critics when I say that it is small sentiment very carelessly set down. In sixteen lines we have quite a number of different measures, and Moore would seem to have labored under the impression that he was writing in one. In other words, the verses halt. As to the sentiment, nobody can question its utter banality. What a critic of Mr. Stopford Brooke’s caliber can see in it, Heaven alone knows. He might have got better verses and better sentiment out of any average breach of promise case. Nor are the remaining pieces much above the standard required by those eminent judges of poetry, the gentlemen who writemorceauxfor the drawing-room. For myself I venture the opinion that Moore lives on the strength of “Rich and Rare were the Gems she Wore,” “The Meeting of the Waters,” “The Harp that once through Tara’s Halls,” “Believe Me if all Those Endearing Young Charms,”“The Minstrel Boy,” “The Last Rose of Summer,” and the “Canadian Boat Song,” most of which efforts have been set to music, and are thereby materially aided to survival. So that on the whole Thomas Moore may not be reckoned as in any sense a purveyor of the higher kinds of poetry. It is creditable, however, to the Irish people that they should have produced and put their emotional and moral trust in a Moore, rather than a Burns. But morals on one side, Burns is immeasurably the greater poet, even though at times he wrote drivel of the feeblest sort. All the same it must be confessed that the general consent which keeps Moore at the head of the Irish poets is sufficiently grounded. For weak vessel though he may be, we do not find another Irish poet in the English tongue who could properly be placed above him. Right down to and including William Allingham, the history of Irish poetry in the English tongue has been the history of happy-go-lucky mediocrity. EvenMangan, who has latterly been credited with a share of the authentic fire, exhibits a facility, a slipshodness and an aptness to the banal which savor of the librettist. From his most considerable production we take the following stanzas:

THE NAMELESS ONERoll forth, my song, like the rushing riverThat sweeps along to the mighty sea;God will inspire me while I deliverMy soul to thee!Tell thou the world, when bones lie whiteningAmid the last homes of youth and eld,That there once was one whose veins ran lightningNo eye beheld.Tell how his boyhood was one drear night-hour,How shone for him, through his griefs and gloom,No star of all heaven sends to light ourPath to the tomb.Roll on, my song, and to after-agesTell how, disdaining all earth can give,He would have taught men from wisdom’s pagesThe way to live.And tell how trampled, derided, hated,And worn by weakness, disease, and wrong,He fled for shelter to God, who matedHis soul with song—With song which alway, sublime or rapid,Flowed like a rill in the morning beam,Perchance not deep, but intense and rapid—A mountain stream.Tell how the Nameless, condemned for years longTo herd with demons from hell beneath,Saw things that made him, with groans and tears, longFor even death.Go on to tell how, with genius wasted,Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love,With spirit shipwrecked, and young hopes blasted,He still, still strove.

THE NAMELESS ONE

Roll forth, my song, like the rushing riverThat sweeps along to the mighty sea;God will inspire me while I deliverMy soul to thee!

Roll forth, my song, like the rushing river

That sweeps along to the mighty sea;

God will inspire me while I deliver

My soul to thee!

Tell thou the world, when bones lie whiteningAmid the last homes of youth and eld,That there once was one whose veins ran lightningNo eye beheld.

Tell thou the world, when bones lie whitening

Amid the last homes of youth and eld,

That there once was one whose veins ran lightning

No eye beheld.

Tell how his boyhood was one drear night-hour,How shone for him, through his griefs and gloom,No star of all heaven sends to light ourPath to the tomb.

Tell how his boyhood was one drear night-hour,

How shone for him, through his griefs and gloom,

No star of all heaven sends to light our

Path to the tomb.

Roll on, my song, and to after-agesTell how, disdaining all earth can give,He would have taught men from wisdom’s pagesThe way to live.

Roll on, my song, and to after-ages

Tell how, disdaining all earth can give,

He would have taught men from wisdom’s pages

The way to live.

And tell how trampled, derided, hated,And worn by weakness, disease, and wrong,He fled for shelter to God, who matedHis soul with song—

And tell how trampled, derided, hated,

And worn by weakness, disease, and wrong,

He fled for shelter to God, who mated

His soul with song—

With song which alway, sublime or rapid,Flowed like a rill in the morning beam,Perchance not deep, but intense and rapid—A mountain stream.

With song which alway, sublime or rapid,

Flowed like a rill in the morning beam,

Perchance not deep, but intense and rapid—

A mountain stream.

Tell how the Nameless, condemned for years longTo herd with demons from hell beneath,Saw things that made him, with groans and tears, longFor even death.

Tell how the Nameless, condemned for years long

To herd with demons from hell beneath,

Saw things that made him, with groans and tears, long

For even death.

Go on to tell how, with genius wasted,Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love,With spirit shipwrecked, and young hopes blasted,He still, still strove.

Go on to tell how, with genius wasted,

Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love,

With spirit shipwrecked, and young hopes blasted,

He still, still strove.

There may be lyrical impulse here, but it is of quite an ordinary quality. The much vaunted line about “veins that ran lightning,” could, I think, be paralleled out of previous poets, and the first half of it is clumsy and cacophonous. “Night-hour” and “light our” might have stepped straightout of the comic poets, and the same may be said of “years long” and “tears, long,” which J. K. Stephen would have chortled over for a “metrical effect.” And when we come to “still, still strove” we are among the librettists with a vengeance. I have seen James Clarence Mangan collocated with Poe. If comparisons with America must be made, we should range him alongside that bright spirit, Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

For Sir Samuel Fergusson, he has been highly praised by Mr. Swinburne, Aubrey de Vere, and, of course, by Mr. W. B. Yeats. Mr. Yeats pronounces him to be “the greatest poet Ireland has produced, one who, among the somewhat sybaritic singers of his day was like some aged sea-king sitting among the inland wheat and poppies—the savor of the sea about him and its strength.” Harken to the ancient sea-king:

“Then dire was their disorder, as the wavering line at firstSwayed to and fro irresolute; then all disrupted, burstLike waters from a broken dam effused upon the plain,The shelter of Kilultagh’s woods and winding glens to gain.…But keen-eyed Domnal, when he stood to view the rout, ere longSpying that white, unmoving head amid the scattering throng,Exclaimed: ‘Of all their broken host one only man I seeNot flying; and I therefore judge him impotent to beOf use of limb. Go; take alive,’ he cried, ‘and hither fetchThe hoary-haired unmoving man.…’… A swift battalion wentAnd, breaking through the hindmost line, where Kellach sat hard by,Took him alive; and, chair and man uphoisting shoulder high,They bore him back, his hoary locks and red eyes gleaming far,The grimmest standard yet displayed that day o’er all the war;And grimly, where they set him down, he eyed the encircling ringOf Bishops and of chafing Chiefs who stood about the King.Then with his crosier’s nether end turned towards him, Bishop ErcSaid: ‘Wretch abhorred, to thee it is we owe this bloody work;By whose malignant counsel moved, thy hapless nephew first,Sought impious aid of foreigners; for which be thou accursed.’”

“Then dire was their disorder, as the wavering line at first

Swayed to and fro irresolute; then all disrupted, burst

Like waters from a broken dam effused upon the plain,

The shelter of Kilultagh’s woods and winding glens to gain.

…

But keen-eyed Domnal, when he stood to view the rout, ere long

Spying that white, unmoving head amid the scattering throng,

Exclaimed: ‘Of all their broken host one only man I see

Not flying; and I therefore judge him impotent to be

Of use of limb. Go; take alive,’ he cried, ‘and hither fetch

The hoary-haired unmoving man.…’

… A swift battalion went

And, breaking through the hindmost line, where Kellach sat hard by,

Took him alive; and, chair and man uphoisting shoulder high,

They bore him back, his hoary locks and red eyes gleaming far,

The grimmest standard yet displayed that day o’er all the war;

And grimly, where they set him down, he eyed the encircling ring

Of Bishops and of chafing Chiefs who stood about the King.

Then with his crosier’s nether end turned towards him, Bishop Erc

Said: ‘Wretch abhorred, to thee it is we owe this bloody work;

By whose malignant counsel moved, thy hapless nephew first,

Sought impious aid of foreigners; for which be thou accursed.’”

Surely this is rank butterwoman’s jogtrot to market; the kind of thing perhaps that Mr. J. Hickory Wood and Mr. Arthur Collins might joyously and jointly produce for the delight of the babies of England. But for “the greatest poet Ireland has produced,” for “the aged sea-king sitting among the inland wheat and poppies” it is poor, poor stuff indeed. Of course, I do not suggest that Sir Samuel Fergusson—who really was a Scotchman, and not a sea-king at all—could not do better. The fact, however, that “the greatest poet Ireland has produced” managed to do so badly, and was capable even of worse, speaks at any rate a small volume for Irish poetry.

The sole remaining Irish poet worth troubling about is Aubrey de Vere, and an examinationof his work shows that, while he persistently exercised himself on Irish subjects, and laid himself open to the charge of Irish slackness and perfunctoriness, he could write poetry of the kind which is entirely classic in its derivation. But it is certain that he cannot be considered to have belonged to the far-famed Keltic movement, and that he was miles behind Landor, even in the severe classic vein.

I am afraid that, broadly speaking, Ireland has not produced any poet of convincing greatness at all. The “Treasury of Irish Poetry” compared, say, with such a collection of English poetry as Palgrave’s “Golden Treasury” is a ghastly exhibition. Some of the moderns set forward by the editors have, it is true, accomplished work which is not without a certain distinction; but the ancients, Thomas Moore included, are not for the reading of the discriminate. Indeed, Irish poetry in the English tongue is on the whole, like Ireland itself, a decidedly tumble-downaffair. In a sense the genius of the country may be said to resemble the genius of Japan. That is to say, while every Irishman may be reckoned something of a poet in himself, there are no Irish poets; just as while the Japanese are all poets, none of them has managed to evolve a respectable poem. This, I cannot help thinking, is a pity for Ireland, and more to be sorrowed over than her lack of commercial aptitude, than her poverty, and than her wrongs. There are those who tell us that the true poetry of the Irish is hidden away in the memories of the peasantry, taking the shape of Gaelic folk-songs, ballads, and so forth. No doubt much may be said for this theory, particularly as there is a Gaelic League which seems to be making a good deal of impression upon certain sections of the people. At the same time, it seems remarkable that, if the poetry of the Gael be so rich, and ornate, and satisfactory as those who are able to read it would have us believe, nobody takes the trouble to put itbefore us in a form calculated to preserve it. The Gaelic character is pretty enough, and I have seen odd translations of Gaelic poetry which promised rather well for the bulk. Yet it seems more than doubtful if the “Druid Singers,” as I suppose Mr. Yeats would call them, ever had among their ranks a Homer, or, for that matter, an Anacreon or a Theocritus.

And talking of the Gaelic League, I should like to note for the entertainment of persons of humor, that when I visited its establishment in Dublin some months back I found the upper portion of the window occupied by a placard, which announced in large Roman letters that a “well-known Leaguer” was about to open a shop in Dublin—“Object to push the sale of Irish provisions.” People are human even in Ireland.

It might reasonably be supposed that the last drop in Ireland’s cup of bitterness was Mr. William Butler Yeats. An emotional and misfortunate people with the tyrant’s heel on its neck, and poverty and disaster always in attendance upon it, may be excused if it does not altogether dance to the pipings of a pretty fellow like Mr. Yeats. In point of fact, however, Ireland fails to dance not because of her sadness, but because Mr. Yeats’s minstrelsy is to all intents and purposes utterly alien to her. In England, or more correctly speaking, in London, it is true, there has been and possibly is now, a small cult of what is commonly called the Keltic Muse. And the head and front of it, of course, is Mr. Yeats. He has found ardent,if undiscriminating, support among the Irish reporters and reviewers on the daily papers; he enjoys the patronage of Mr. Clement Shorter, and he is received respectfully at the Irish Literary Club. Further I am told that there is a musically-minded elocutionist in London who goes about chanting his numbers to the three-stringed psaltery. That Mr. Yeats is a poet of some parts nobody in his senses will attempt to deny. That he is a vast, or potent, or as he himself would no doubt phrase it, a Druid poet, I am not disposed to admit. The strength of him is slight indeed; the thought of him prattles forever round the trivial. He has a still small voice with a wistfulness about it; and it is on this wistfulness that he has builded up his business. His contemporaries, the men among whom, whether he likes it or no, he will always have to range, are every one of them stronger men than he. They are ruder and more forceful, more gusty and less attenuated, if only by fits and starts. Theydo their best to try to belong to the great British poetical tradition. They fail lamentably, but their work bears marks of aspiration. Mr. Yeats, on the other hand, has been particular to pose on a little hill of his own. He imagines that he has discovered a sort of private tradition, the which he calls Keltic. Out of Ireland he believes himself to have captured Druid music, and this he has put up for us in sundry lyrical pieces and sundry plays. His lyrical pieces are admired in all the drawing-rooms and all the sub-editors’ rooms, and his plays have been stamped with the heartfelt approval of the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Mr. Max Beerbohm. The general opinion of him may be summed up in three words—How charmingly Keltic! It is an old contention of mine that Mr. Yeats’s qualities are not Keltic at all. I go further and say that as a fact there are no Keltic qualities which are not common in good English poetry. The best Kelt we ever had was Mr. Yeats’s own master, one William Blake,who was sheer Cockney. Mr. Yeats is just Blake spun out, and overconscious.

“The moon, like a flowerIn heaven’s high bower,With silent delight,Sits and smiles on the night.”

“The moon, like a flower

In heaven’s high bower,

With silent delight,

Sits and smiles on the night.”

“I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.”

“I would that we were, my beloved, white birds on the foam of the sea!

We tire of the flame of the meteor, before it can fade and flee;

And the flame of the blue star of twilight, hung low on the rim of the sky,

Has awaked in our hearts, my beloved, a sadness that may not die.”

“Sweet babe, in thy faceSoft desires I can trace,Secret joys and secret smiles,Little pretty infant wiles.…As thy softest limbs I feelSmiles as of the morning stealO’er thy cheek, and o’er thy breastWhere thy little heart doth rest.”

“Sweet babe, in thy face

Soft desires I can trace,

Secret joys and secret smiles,

Little pretty infant wiles.

…

As thy softest limbs I feel

Smiles as of the morning steal

O’er thy cheek, and o’er thy breast

Where thy little heart doth rest.”

“I told my love, I told my love,I told her all my heart,Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.Ah, she did depart!…Soon after she was gone from me,A traveler came by,Silently, invisibly:He took her with a sigh.”

“I told my love, I told my love,

I told her all my heart,

Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.

Ah, she did depart!

…

Soon after she was gone from me,

A traveler came by,

Silently, invisibly:

He took her with a sigh.”

“Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,The holy tree is growing there;From joy the holy branches start,And all the trembling flowers they bear.The changing colors of its fruitHave dowered the stars with merry light;The surety of its hidden rootHas planted quiet in the night.”

“Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,

The holy tree is growing there;

From joy the holy branches start,

And all the trembling flowers they bear.

The changing colors of its fruit

Have dowered the stars with merry light;

The surety of its hidden root

Has planted quiet in the night.”

Which is Blake, and which is Yeats? You may put the name of either under any of these stanzas, without being guilty of an unpardonable critical lapse. Mr. Yeats took Blake and imitated him as frankly, and it may be, as unconsciously, as many less sophisticated versifiers have imitated Tennyson, or Mr. Swinburne, or Rossetti. It is creditable to him that he should have had discernment enough to perceive in Blake an exceptionaland individual content; but why having got hold of that content, having saturated himself with it, as it were, and having found the exploitation of it easy and provocative of praise, Mr. Yeats should turn round and call it Keltic is something of a puzzle. Of course, one has to remember that among a people whose interests are material, rather than spiritual, the poet who would get a hearing is compelled to have resort to a certain amount of adventitiousness and empyricism.

“We poets in our youth begin in gladness;But thereof come in the end despondency and madness,”

“We poets in our youth begin in gladness;

But thereof come in the end despondency and madness,”

saith Wordsworth. We poets in our youth also begin in sincerity and with a single eye to the glory of the Muses. But too frequently, even while our youth is still with us, we begin to think about the glory of ourselves, and take steps accordingly. It is good for us, if we have any gift at all, to organize and advertise a school, with ourselves carefully elected by ourselves to the position of archpriest.The critic who in an idle hour set down “Cockney School,” has a great deal to answer for. Somebody followed him hard with the “Lake School.” And in due course we had the “Fleshly School.” It is to be noted, however, that these epithets were bestowed by the critics upon the poets, and not by the poets upon the poets themselves. I venture to suggest that it has been slightly different in the case of Mr. Yeats and his following. In Mr. Yeats’s mind—perhaps without his being wholly alive to it—something like the following has taken place: “To be of any account in this world a poet must have a quality or cry of his own. There is a quality, or poignancy of individualism, about Blake which has not yet become obvious to the multitude. I admire it, and I can imitate it, and possibly improve upon it; therefore let me adopt it for my own. And as I am an Irishman I shall cause it to be known not as the spirit of Blake, but as the Keltic quality. Selah!” I do not suggest for a moment thatMr. Yeats’s conduct in this matter has been either wicked or unjustifiable. I do not even suggest that Mr. Yeats has been quite aware of what he was doing; but not to put too fine a point upon it, I do say that he has been “modern,” and that it is a thousand pities. There is nothing in Ireland, and there never has been anything in Ireland which will justify the appropriation of Blake as a sort of exclusive Irish product; and Mr. Yeats has written nothing which he could not have written just as well had he been a Cockney, or a Hebrew, capable of appreciating the spiritual and technical parts of Blake, and of perceiving the beauty of certain scraps of Irish history and folk-lore. As an Irish poet, Mr. Yeats, in my opinion, fails completely. It is as reasonable to call him an Irish poet as it would be to call Milton a Hebrew poet because he wrote “Paradise Lost,” or Mr. Swinburne a Greek poet because he wrote “Atalanta.” There is not an Irishman,quaIrishman, who wants Mr. Yeats; any morethan there is an Irishman,quaIrishman, who wants Mr. Yeats’s Irish Literary Theater. Mr. Yeats’s poetry and Mr. Yeats’s Irish Literary Theater are Blake’s poetry and Blake’s Literary Theater. They belong to the Euston Road, and not to Tara; they are cultivated, wary, wistful, minor English, and not Irish at all. You have to be English, and a trifle subtle at that, to get on with them. Blake’s laurels are very posthumous and recent because the Englishmen of his time were busy with Pope and Crabbe, and had a sort of suspicion that Wordsworth was a lunatic. Englishmen did not know even Shakespeare in those days; at any rate not in the way that we know him nowadays. To the Pope-suckled Englishman of culture, Shakespeare, if he was anything at all, was a sort of robustious and flowery dramatist. They played him in full-bottomed wigs and small clothes. To-day the tendencies are all the other way. Shakespeare we shall tell you was no playwright, but a poet, and the biggestof them. Our modern actors spoil him for us, not by their cuts and modifications, but by their raree-shows and mouthings. Who of them can say for you to your soul’s satisfaction:

… “O here,Will I set up my everlasting restAnd shake the yoke of inauspicious starsFrom this world-weary flesh?”

… “O here,

Will I set up my everlasting rest

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars

From this world-weary flesh?”

Shakespeare is for all time and more and more for the closet. Blake is a greater poet than the critical are disposed to admit, even in this age of tender enthusiasms. And Mr. Yeats is a poet, not because he is Irish or Keltic, but in so far and precisely as far as he has had the good sense to take Blake for his master. For Kelticism as it is understood by its professors, Shakespeare abounds in it.

1st Lady.Come, my gracious lord,Shall I be your playfellow?Mam.No, I’ll none of you.1st Lady.Why, my sweet lord?Mam.You’ll kiss me hard, and speak to me as ifI were a baby still.—I love you better.2nd Lady.And why so, my lord?Mam.Not for becauseYour brows are blacker; yet black brows, they say,Become some women best, so that there be notToo much hair there, but in a semi-circleOr half-moon made with a pen.2nd Lady.Who taught you this?Mam.I learnt it out of women’s faces.—Pray nowWhat color are your eyebrows?1st Lady.Blue, my lord.Mam.Nay, there’s a mock. I have seen a lady’s noseThat has been blue, but not her eyebrows.2nd Lady.Hark ye;The queen your mother rounds apace; we shallPresent our service to a fine new princeOne of these days; and then you’d wanton with us,If we would have you.1st Lady.She is spread of lateInto a goodly bulk. Good time encounter her!Her.What wisdom stirs amongst you?—Come, sir, nowI am for you again. Pray you, sit by us,And tell’s a tale.Mam.Merry or sad shall’t be?Her.As merry as you will.Mam.A sad tale’s best for winter:I have one of sprites and goblins.Her.Let’s have that, good sir,Come on, sit down. Come on, and do your best,To fright me with your sprites, you’re powerful at it.Mam.There was a man—Her.Nay, come sit down; then on.Mam.Dwelt by a churchyard—I will tell it softly;Yond crickets shall not hear it.Her.Come on then,And give’t in mine ear.

1st Lady.Come, my gracious lord,Shall I be your playfellow?

1st Lady.Come, my gracious lord,

Shall I be your playfellow?

Mam.No, I’ll none of you.

1st Lady.Why, my sweet lord?

Mam.You’ll kiss me hard, and speak to me as ifI were a baby still.—I love you better.

Mam.You’ll kiss me hard, and speak to me as if

I were a baby still.—I love you better.

2nd Lady.And why so, my lord?

Mam.Not for becauseYour brows are blacker; yet black brows, they say,Become some women best, so that there be notToo much hair there, but in a semi-circleOr half-moon made with a pen.

Mam.Not for because

Your brows are blacker; yet black brows, they say,

Become some women best, so that there be not

Too much hair there, but in a semi-circle

Or half-moon made with a pen.

2nd Lady.Who taught you this?

Mam.I learnt it out of women’s faces.—Pray nowWhat color are your eyebrows?

Mam.I learnt it out of women’s faces.—Pray now

What color are your eyebrows?

1st Lady.Blue, my lord.

Mam.Nay, there’s a mock. I have seen a lady’s noseThat has been blue, but not her eyebrows.

Mam.Nay, there’s a mock. I have seen a lady’s nose

That has been blue, but not her eyebrows.

2nd Lady.Hark ye;The queen your mother rounds apace; we shallPresent our service to a fine new princeOne of these days; and then you’d wanton with us,If we would have you.

2nd Lady.Hark ye;

The queen your mother rounds apace; we shall

Present our service to a fine new prince

One of these days; and then you’d wanton with us,

If we would have you.

1st Lady.She is spread of lateInto a goodly bulk. Good time encounter her!

1st Lady.She is spread of late

Into a goodly bulk. Good time encounter her!

Her.What wisdom stirs amongst you?—Come, sir, nowI am for you again. Pray you, sit by us,And tell’s a tale.

Her.What wisdom stirs amongst you?—Come, sir, now

I am for you again. Pray you, sit by us,

And tell’s a tale.

Mam.Merry or sad shall’t be?

Her.As merry as you will.

Mam.A sad tale’s best for winter:I have one of sprites and goblins.

Mam.A sad tale’s best for winter:

I have one of sprites and goblins.

Her.Let’s have that, good sir,Come on, sit down. Come on, and do your best,To fright me with your sprites, you’re powerful at it.

Her.Let’s have that, good sir,

Come on, sit down. Come on, and do your best,

To fright me with your sprites, you’re powerful at it.

Mam.There was a man—

Her.Nay, come sit down; then on.

Mam.Dwelt by a churchyard—I will tell it softly;Yond crickets shall not hear it.

Mam.Dwelt by a churchyard—I will tell it softly;

Yond crickets shall not hear it.

Her.Come on then,And give’t in mine ear.

Her.Come on then,

And give’t in mine ear.

There is enough Keltic quality here, surely, to satisfy both Mr. Yeats and Mr. Shorter. In fine, this tiny episode out ofA Winter’s Taleis quite as good, and quite as Keltic, as anything the Blake School, to give it its honest title, has managed hitherto to produce. What the average Irishman would think about it is another story. It is a pity to take from Ireland even a trifle over which she might, not improperly, plume herself. But Mr. Yeats in the figure of Irish poet remindsus of nothing so much as a peacock butterfly purchased in the chrysalis state out of France by the careful entomologist, hidden in a plant-pot at his parlor window, and slaughtered and labeled British so soon as it has had time to spread its wistful wings.

It has been remarked by a certain hawker of platitudes that humor is that which makes a man laugh. There have been several definitions of wit, one of them by Sydney Smith, and all of them more or less wanting in completeness. But in a general way nobody is particularly keen on definitions, provided they can get for their amusement and exhilaration either humor or wit. During the past few decades we have heard a vast deal of the advantages which accrue from the possession of what is called a sense of humor. This especial sense or faculty for appreciating a joke is nowadays cultivated, and consciously cultivated, by all sorts and conditions of people. The gravest and most reverend persons are wont to enliven their conversation or theirdiscourse with quips, cranks, gibes, and other sallies, ingeniously calculated to set the listener in a roar. The House of Commons has latterly appeared to be filled with gentlemen who live to amuse each other; there are judges who seem almost incapable of opening their mouths without attempting the hilarious, and even bishops and bankers must have their little joke. The press also strains after humorsomeness in every degree, and when critics wish to be particularly severe they write simply, “Mr. So-and-So has no sense of humor.” And here, in effect, we have what I conceive to be another distinct injustice to Ireland. For Irish wit and humor have passed into a tradition, and are believed by good judges to be the very wittiest and most humorous wit and humor the gods are likely to vouchsafe to us. In the course of years many fairly thick volumes have been compiled out of the abundance of humorous material Ireland has furnished forth. To turn to such a volume, however,is in my opinion to experience a certain disappointment. There are jokes, it is true, and jokes innumerable; but somehow for the modern laughter seeker there is a distinct flatness about them. Furthermore, they are nearly all “chestnuts,” a fact which renders it pretty plain that the people of Ireland have come to a full stop as it were, and ceased to produce them. I subjoin a few examples culled hap-hazard from a book published so recently as last year:

A prisoner was trying to explain to a judge and jury his innocence of a certain crime. “It’s not meself,” he cried, “as’ll be afther thrying to desave yer honors. I didn’t hit the poor dead gintleman at all, at all. It was him that sthruck the blow, and the exartion killed him, and, what’s more, I wasn’t there at the time.” “I perceive,” observed the judge, “you are trying to prove an alibi.” “An al-loi-boi!” exclaimed the prisoner, evidently pleased at the big word being suggestedto strengthen his defense. “Yes,” said the judge. “Can you tell me what is a good alibi?” “Faith, yer honor,” replied the prisoner, “and it’s a loi boi which the prisoner gets off.”

“What passed between yourself and the complainant?” inquired the magistrate in a county court. “I think, sor,” replied the worthy O’Brien, “a half-dozen bricks and a lump of paving-stone.”

“I say, Paddy,” said a tourist to his car-driver, “that is the worst-looking horse you drive I ever saw. Why don’t you fatten him up?” “Fat him up, is it?” queried the Jehu, “faix, the poor baste can hardly carry the little mate that’s on him now!”

“Have you had any experience with children?” inquired a lady of a prospective nurse. “Oh, yes, mum,” replied the woman, blandly. “Oi used to be a child mesilf wanst.”

A jarvey, who was driving through the streets of Dublin, met with an obstruction in the shape of a man riding a donkey. “Now then, you two!” he exclaimed.

An Irish member, named Dogherty, who subsequently became Chief-Justice of Ireland, asked Canning what he thought of his maiden speech. “The only fault I can find with it,” said Canning, “is that you called the Speaker sir, too often.” “My dear fellow,” replied Dogherty, “if you knew the mental state I was in while speaking, you would not wonder if I had called him ma’am.”

“Get on, man; get on!” said a traveler to his car-driver. “Wake up your nag!” “Shure, sor,” was the reply, “I haven’t the heart to bate him.” “What’s the matter with him?” inquired the traveler; “is he sick?” “No, sor,” answered the jarvey, “he’s not sick, but it’s unlucky he is, sor, unlucky! You see, sor, every morning, beforeI put him i’ the car, I tosses him whether he’ll have a feed of oats or I’ll have a dhrink of whisky, an’ the poor baste has lost five mornings running!”

“Did you notice no suspicious character about the neighborhood?” said a magistrate to an inexperienced policeman. “Shure, yer hanner,” replied the policeman, “I saw but one man, an’ I asked him what he was doing there at that time o’ night? Sez he, ‘I have no business here just now, but I expect to open a jewelry sthore in the vicinity later on.’ At that I sez, ‘I wish you success, sor.’” “Yes,” said the magistrate, “and he did open a jewelry store in the vicinity later on, and stole seventeen watches.” “Begorra, yer hanner,” answered the constable after a pause, “the man may have been a thafe, but he was no liar!”

“Bridget, I don’t think it is quite the thing for you to entertain company in thekitchen.” “Don’t ye worry, mum. Shure, an’ oi wouldn’t be afther deprivin’ ye o’ th’ parler.”

An old lady in Dublin, weighing about sixteen stone, engaged a car-driver to convey her to a North Wall steamer. Arrived there, she handed the driver his legal fare—sixpence. Gazing disconsolately at the coin in his hand, and then at the fat old lady, he exclaimed as he turned away—“I’ll lave ye to the Almoighty, ma’am!”

“Prisoner,” demanded a magistrate of a man charged with begging, “have you any visible means of support?” “Yes, yer honor,” replied the prisoner, and then turning to his wife who was in court, he said, “Bridget, stand up, so that the coort can see yez!”

Now it is plain that we have here a fairly representative selection of the kind of wit and humor that is supposed to come to usout of Ireland. Some of it no doubt is reasonably good, some of it is quite mild. Possibly it is amusing, and calculated to tickle old-fashioned people. Yet one has distinct qualms about it when one considers it as a means for provoking the laughter of the twentieth-century person. The fact is that humor has been made so much of a cult in the modern mind that it has to be very humorous indeed, not to say a trifle subtle, if it is to raise a smile. And in considering the examples quoted, we are faced with a further difficulty. Are these anecdotes of unquestionable Irish extraction? I am afraid not. Their authenticity is impeachable.Mutatis mutandis, they have been told of Cockneys and Yorkshire men, and Somersetshire men, and even of Scotchmen. Furthermore, there is nothing in them that can be considered peculiarly and exclusively Irish, or indicative of the Irish temperament and character as it exists to-day. Your modern Irishman, as I have pointed out, is a dreary and melancholywight. Laughter and sprightliness have died out of him, and whether in thought or word he is about as dull and plantigrade as even a sad man can well be. The eminent people who stand for Ireland in this country are all of them afflicted with a similar lack of cheerfulness. Rouse them, and they can be as bitter and vituperative and aboriginal as any Scotchman of them all; but their ordinary habit is sad, uncertain, and inept, and they do not know how to laugh. Here and there one of them at the Bar, or in the House of Commons, or at a greasy journalistic banquet, does his feeble best to keep up the Irish tradition for smartness and wittiness of remark. But the attempt is invariably a failure, because at the back of it there is no real brain and no real flow of spirits. One of the biggest bullies at the Bar is a beefy Irishman who esteems himself a great humorist. I have heard him fire off twenty or thirty idiotic jokes in the course of half an hour or so, and always does he snigger at the beginning ofhis precious gibe; always does he snigger in the middle; always does he make pretense of becoming apoplectic with chortle at the end. The circumstance that people laugh at him and not with him, does not appear to occur to his small, if legal, mind. His dearest friends call him “the sniggerer,” and it is said that he is in the habit of retiring to his chambers of afternoons for the purpose of having a protracted fit of giggling. Primed with four or five glasses of cheap port, his capacity for low comedy becomes so evident that one trembles lest some enterprising theatrical manager should offer him the Leno-Welch part in next year’s “Little Goody Two-shoes.” Another “witty” Irishman, who shall be nameless, came to these shores with a fair array of good gifts at his disposal. Knowing himself for an Irishman, and having faith in the Irish tradition, he forthwith set up in business as a posturing clown and professional grinner through horse-collars, with the result thathis genius is altogether obscured. Irishmen of all degrees will do better if they endeavor to remember that they have really no sense of humor left. The only one of them who has made anything like a satisfactory reputation in London, Mr. W. B. Yeats to wit, has helped himself to it by being as devoid of humor as a bone-yard. Mr. Yeats has never been known publicly to try his hand at the very smallest joke. The sobriety of the hearse is his, and much good sense also. For the eminent Irish, as we know them among us, are by nature neither witty nor humorous; and those who try to be so, succeed in being only fatuous and vulgar. Somebody has said cuttingly that a Frenchman consists of equal parts of tiger and monkey. Of certain of the eminent Irish in London it may be said that they are half jackal and half performing dog; for they are at once hungry and fantastic.

The real truth about Irish humor as a thing to itself and apart is that it is based either on ignorance or on a certain slowness of mind. The Dublin car driver who on being told by a constable that his name was obliterated from his car replied, “Arrah, me name’s not Oblitherated, it’s O’Grady,” no doubt achieved what will pass among the average for humor. All the same, he did not know that he was saying anything good, and hismot, ifmotone may call it, was the direct outcome of a profound ignorance of the English language. The books of Irish humor abound with instances of this form of humorsomeness: “You are not opaque, are you?” sarcastically asked one Irishman of another who was standing in front of himat the theater. “Indeed I’m not,” replied the other, “it’s O’Brien that I am.” Clearly one might manufacture this kind of humorad infinitum. The Chinese are said to consider it a great joke if a man should fall down and break his arm, and I have seen Englishmen laughing at a man who has been unfortunate enough to have his hat blown off in a high wind. But the Irish do not laugh at these things. Even the native bull, of which they are so proud, fails to tickle them. The Irishman says his bull solemnly and unconsciously, and the Englishman does the laughing. In essence the Irish bull is really a blunder. Nuttall, with his usual charming frankness, defines a bull as “a ludicrous inconsistency, or blunder in speech.” Children and Irishmen are always making them: “If it please the coort,” quoth an Irish attorney, “if I am wrong in this, I have another pint which is equally conclusive.” An Irish reporter, giving an account of a burglary, remarked: “After a fruitlesssearch, all the money was recovered, except one pair of boots!” A Dublin clerk on being asked why he was a quarter of an hour late at the office, made answer: “The tram-car I came by was full, so I had to walk.” “This is the seventh night you’ve come home in the morning,” observed an Irish lady to her spouse, “the next time you go out, you’ll stay at home and open the door for yourself.” The following advertisement is said to have appeared in a Dublin newspaper: “Whereas John Hall has fraudulently taken away several articles of wearing apparel, without my knowledge, this is to inform him that if he does not forthwith return the same his name shall be made public.” An Irishman who accidentally came across another Irishman who had failed to meet him after a challenge addressed him in these words: “Well, sir, I met you this morning and you did not turn up; however I am determined to meet you to-morrow morning, whether you come or not.”“Dhrunk!” said a man, speaking of his neighbor, “he was that dhrunk that he made ten halves of ivry word.” A man who was employed as a hod-carrier was told that he must always carry up fourteen bricks in his hod. One morning the supply of bricks ran short, and the man could find but thirteen to put in his hod. In answer to a loud yell from the street one of the masons on top of the scaffolding called out: “What do you want?” “T’row me down wan brick,” bawled Pat, pointing to his hod, “to make me number good.”

Of course, the great and abiding glory of Ireland in the way of bull-makers was the never-to-be-forgotten Sir Boyle Roche. This worthy knight once charged a political opponent with being “an enemy to both kingdoms who wishes to diminish the brotherly affection of the two sister countries.” He also said that “a man differs from a bird in not being able to be in two places at once,” and that “the Irish people were livingfrom hand to mouth, like the birds of the air.” A petition of the citizens of Belfast in favor of Catholic emancipation he stigmatized as “an airy fabric based upon a sandy foundation,” and he expressed his willingness “to give up, not only a part, but, if necessary, even the whole of our constitution to preserve the remainder.” In one of his most famous speeches there occurs the appended passage: “Mr. Speaker, if we once permitted the villainous French Masons to meddle with the buttresses and walls of our ancient constitution, they would never stop, nor stay, sir, until they brought the foundation stones tumbling down about the ears of the nation. If these Gallican villains should invade us, ’tis on that table maybe those honorable members might see their own destinies lying in heaps atop of one another. Here, perhaps, sir, the murderous crew would break in and cut us to pieces, and throw our bleeding heads upon that table to stare us in the face.”

“Is your father alive yet?” inquired one O’Brien of one M’Gorry. “No,” replied M’Gorry solemnly, “not yet!” A beggar called at a house and said: “For the love of hiven, ma’am, give me a crust of bread, for I’m so thirsty I don’t know where I’ll sleep to-night.” All of which is very funny and as who should say, very quaint. But is it humor? It provokes a smile certainly, yet it points to simplicity, rather than subtilty, in the Irish character. Indeed, the absolute truth about the bull is that it is the child of a plentiful lack of wit. A nice derangement of epitaphs, an opening of one’s mouth and a putting of one’s foot in it, may provoke mirth in other people, but it does not prove one to be either witty or merry. It is satisfactory to know that, according to the latest observations, the fine art of bull-making is going out of fashion among Irishmen. The Irish were the inventors of the bull, they brought it to its greatest perfection, they made it redound to their creditas a witty nation; and one cannot deny their right to cease from its manufacture if they see fit. In the House of Commons a bull is nowadays seldom perpetrated, whether consciously or unconsciously, at any rate by the Irish Party. Irish Members of Parliament have grown too wary to be caught bulling. They walk delicately in English-cut frock-coats; they rather pride themselves on their ability to keep down the brogue, and at the bare mention of the word “bull,” they are prone to shiver.

There is one feature of Irish wit and humor which is worthy of admiration and imitation. It is a negative feature truly, but an excellent one. Irishmen do not seem capable of that last infirmary of the doting mind—the pun. To play effectively upon words is, of course, an art in itself, and kept within bounds it is an amusing art; but the man who drops out of art into sheer mechanism, which is what has happened to the average punster, cannot be considered worthy of the respectof his fellows. The Irish, as I have said, do not appear to have descended to these depths. They may be a worn-out, a weary, a dull-witted, an exhausted, and a brooding and melancholy people, but they are not punsters. Herein they have a distinct advantage over the English, among whom the pun appears to obtain wider and wider currency. It is a lamentable fact that there are judges on the English Bench who never let slip an opportunity for punning. It makes juries and the gallery guffaw, and it gets a judge the reputation of being a wit and the possessor of those minor literary graces which are supposed to be included in the judicial prerogative. Judges are commonly understood to be irremovable, but I think that after their third pun retirement should be the only course for them. The man who makes a pun insults the intellect of his auditors and commits a gross outrage upon the language. Let all punsters, whether in high or low places, take heed that they are vulgar andvicious persons, and neither witty nor wise. A thousand honest bulls are less to be deprecated than the weeniest pun that was ever let loose.

Before leaving this part of our subject it is perhaps desirable that we should remember that two of the very wittiest men of our own time have come to us from Ireland. One of them was the late Mr. Oscar Wilde and the other is Mr. George Bernard Shaw. Of Oscar Wilde, excepting that in his prime he was a wit of the first water, I shall say nothing. Mr. George Bernard Shaw, however, is another story. As a reformer and a serious writer I make small account of him. On the other hand, as a wit, he is a portent. He has been an unconscionable time coming into his own, but in America, at any rate, people are beginning, by childlike, dim degrees, to perceive that he has brilliance. If he had published the substance of his printed work in any other form but that of plays, he might have been a recognized and prosperoushumorist long ago. The people who supply the wit and humor of the day may be set down, without injustice, for a sorry and indifferent company. Burnand, Payne, Emanuel, Jerome, Lucas, Sims, Hickory Wood, and Barrie—these are some of the names of them. And what do they stand for? Parts ofPunch,Eliza,Three Men in a Boat,The Inside Completuar Britanniaware(O blood and knives!),Mustard and Cress, or, The Fat Man’s Sabbath Morning,The White Cat, or, Cooper’s Entire,Peter Pan, or, The Old Man’s Crèche. Heaven save us and keep us from wishing that this squad of awkward witlings had never been born! Mr. George Bernard Shaw in his sole person, and Irishman though he be, is worth a wilderness of them. Some day we shall find it out, and in that good hour Ireland will be able to boast that one of her sons was nearly as great, nearly as humorous, and nearly as popular as, say, Mr. Mark Twain.

I suppose that next to the Scotch, the Irish are out and out the dirtiest people on the earth. But whereas Scotch dirt is a crude and gross affair, Irish dirt has still a pathetic and almost tender grace about it. “Dear, dirty Dublin” sigh the emotional in such matters—though you never catch anybody shedding a tear for remembrance of dear, filthy Glasgow. Dublin is indubitably a dirty city, just as Ireland is a dirty country, and for Irishmen, at any rate, the Government is a dirty Government. And it is not because Dublin or Ireland is dirty of necessity, or in the way that the Black Country or the East End of London are dirty. Not a bit of it: Dublin and Ireland are dirty simply and solely because the Dublin and Irish people steadfastlyrefuse to keep them clean. To all intents and purposes the Irish people have lost, if indeed they ever possessed, that gift of punctilious domesticity, which insists first and last and always on cleanliness. In Dublin you will come upon more dirty hotels and more dirty houses than in pretty well any other city of its size in Europe. True, the dirt has the merit of not being too obvious, and falling short of the scandalous; but it is still there, and you cannot get away from it. Properly looked into, it recommends itself to you as the dirt of a happy-go-lucky, neglectful, behind-hand and poverty-stricken people, rather than of a people who are flagrantly given over to dirt for its own sake. It is the dirt of the slattern who is forever dusting things with her apron, rather than of the stout idleback for whom dust and grime and sloppiness have no terrors, and no reproach. It is a dirt which is the direct consequence of bad seasons, the decay of trade, monetary stringency, and public and private listlessnessand apathy. It is the kind of dirt which one associates with the boarding-houses of elderly ladies who have seen “better days.” Ireland’s better days have been few and far between, and they would seem to be all past. Hence, no doubt, the dustiness and dinginess and shabby gentility of her parlors. In an Irish hotel dirt and its common concomitant, tumbledownness, are ever before you. The floors clamor to be swept, the furniture would give a day of its life for a polishing, the wall papers are faded and fly-blown, there are cobwebs in the top corners and dust in the bottom corners, the windows are rickety and perfunctorily cleaned, the carpets infirm and old, the linen worn and yellow with age, the crockery cracked and chipped, the cutlery dull and greasy, and the general air of the place shabby and forlorn. I do not say that there are no cleanly and spick-and-span hotels in Dublin; for there is at least one such establishment. But, in the main, what one may term the semi-clean, semi-dirty, used-to-bekind of hotel prevails. Even the waiters, though their hair be greased and their faces shine by virtue of vigorous applications of soap, wear frayed and threadbare swallow-tails and a sort of perennial yesterday’s shirt-front. And what is true of the hotels is true of the houses. There is a district between Sackville Street and the ⸺ Railway Station which contains a very large number of the somberest, most forbidding, and dirtiest-looking domiciles it has ever been my lot to come across. Formerly these houses were the homes of the easy and the well-to-do; now they are let off in tenements to the poorest of the poor. Black and grinding poverty peeps out of the cracked and paper-patched windows of them; groups of grubby, bare-legged, blue-cold children huddle round their decrepit doors, or scamper up and down the filthy pavements in front of them. The places may be sanitary enough within the meaning of the Acts, but that they are filthy and foul, to a nauseating degree, no personcan doubt. Such rookeries would be clean swept away by the authorities in any English city. In Dublin nobody seems to trouble about them, or to be in the smallest sense disturbed by them. They are a part and parcel of dear, dirty Dublin, and haply Dublin would not be Dublin without them.

In the other Irish cities and towns the same tendency to squalor and grime and filth is painfully noticeable. Even in a center like Portadown, which, be it noted, is Protestant and to a great extent new, the same undesirable traits assail you pretty well wherever you go. In a city set on a hill, without a factory to its name, I found a blackness and a grime which reminded me of nothing so much as Gravesend or Stockport. The hotel in that same city was as crazy as it was chilly and comfortless—poky rooms and dark little passages, meager and dubious furnishings, and dirt, dirt, dirt, from basement to attic. Yet the place seemed populous with cleaner wenches, floor-scrubbers, and clout-women.There was a boy in a green apron, who appeared to do nothing all day but dust the banisters, and the waiters were eternally flicking the dust off things with their napkins. And such waiters: wall-eyed, heated, fumbling, grumpy, and incompetent. They insisted on getting in one another’s way, and they had a gift of dilatoriness that amounted to genius. In this place, let me set down a small fact about the Irish waiter which may, perhaps, save future travelers in Ireland some trouble. If you ask an English waiter for a time-table he will bring it to you, and leave you to your own devices. If you ask an Irish waiter, he will say “Time-table, yes, sir. Where will you be afther goin’, sir?” You are taken unawares, and quite foolishly tell him the name of the next town on your itinerary. Forthwith he informs you that there is a very good hotel there “be the name of the Jukes Head,” and that the next train “convanient” goes at “wan-thirty.” Is it a quick train? “Oh, yes.” Will he see thatyour baggage Is taken to the station in time to catch it? Certainly he will. You keep your mind easy and turn up at the station at “wan-thirty.” There is a train at one-thirty, it is true, but, unluckily for you, it does not go within a hundred miles of your place of destination. The train you ought to have caught went at ten-thirty, and there is not another one till late at night, while, if it be Saturday, you must wait till Monday morning, because there are practically no Sunday trains in Ireland. Do not imagine for a moment that your Irish waiter has misinformed you with malice aforethought, or out of a desire to lengthen your sojourn in his employer’s hotel; because this is not the case. He is merely an Irishman, and therefore a born blunderer; and he does his best to blunder every time.

The tourist is the curse of Ireland, as he is the curse of most places. When one comes to consider the enormous number of grievances the Irish and their political figure-heads have managed to rake up, one wonders that the tourist should hitherto have escaped. That he constitutes a grievance, and a grievance which affects seriously the main body of the Irish people, can not be doubted. It is quite obvious, to begin with, that the tourist in Ireland is usually of the hated Sassenach race. Irishmen do not tour in their own country as Englishmen do, or as Scotchmen have been known to do. They have too little money for indulgences of that kind, and if money be plentiful they prefer to visit England or America. The Englishman, however,insists on taking a holiday in Ireland sometime in his life, even though it be only on his honeymoon. So that in the more suitable months the country bristles with tourists, and the great majority of them are English. Secondly, the tourist, being English, is always more or less hilarious, supercilious and aggressive, and these are qualities of which the Irish of all people least like a display, at any rate from an Englishman. Time out of mind the English tourist has been the covertbête noireof the Continental peoples on account of these very traits. An Englishman on the Continent, especially if he be a middle-class Englishman, or a very wealthy Englishman, has a knack of divesting himself utterly of the thin veneer of social decency which he manages to maintain at home. Somehow the air of the Continent exhilarates him to all sorts of posturing and ridiculousness. The vulgarian, the Philistine and the snob in him become greatly emphasized. He can shout aloud, and be rude to everybody,because he believes that nobody understands what he is pleased to call his lingo. Besides which the Englishman on the Continent always believes in his private bosom that he is a philanthropist, a sort of circular-touring benevolence, as it were. “Who is it,” he inquires grandiloquently, “that keeps these pore foreigners going? Why, the English, and the English alone. It is we who bring millions of pounds to their starved, tax-burdened countries. It is we who populate their rapacious hotels and make their seasons for them, and drop our idiot moneys at their gambling tables, and pay francs at the entrances to their art galleries, and climb their rotten mountains, and steam, to soft Lydian airs, up their rivers, and bathe in their lukewarm seas, and tip them and patronize them, and joke with them, and generally afford them opportunities for existence.” This attitude has been noted and laughed at by the cynical, time out of mind; but it can not be eradicated from the Englishman’s fairlycomprehensive stock of idiosyncrasies, and it remains to this day typical of the breed. To Ireland the English tourist proceeds focused for pretty well the same view of things. Of course, he is disposed to look upon your Irishman as being rather more of a man and a brother than is the low foreigner. Further, he invariably believes that by a judicious expenditure on “drinks,” coupled with an easy, slap-you-on-the-back but still superior manner, he can extract from the Irishmen with whom he comes in contact the whole secret of the Irish Question. In other words, he makes a point of going to Ireland with his eyes open; so that when he returns he may remark huskily in his club—“Sir, I have visited Ireland, and I know the Irish people through and through. Waiter, a large Scotch, please!” Thus is the altruism of the tourist in Ireland tempered with a taste for inquiry and politics. I suppose that in no country in the world is the tourist allowed so much of his fling as in this samegreen Erin. For example, in Ireland he takes care to call every man “Pat,” and every woman “Kathleen mavourneen.” If he called a Frenchman “Froggy,” or a German “Johnny Deutscher” he would stand a good chance of getting his nose pulled. But in Ireland a bold peasantry has learned to smile and smile and touch the hat, and take the coppers, and provide the political information for which his honor is gasping without so much as turning a hair. It is not really in the Irish blood to take these traveling mountebanks, with their loud suits and louder manners and louder money, seriously or even indifferently. On the other hand, your true Irish resent in their hearts the entire business. It is their poverty and not their wills which consent; though singularly enough, as I have already said, you will seldom find an Irishman indulging himself in growls about it. And it is this very poverty which might reasonably give rise to the Irishman’s third grievance against the tourist. For an Englishmantraveling in Ireland is always a sort of perambulating incitement to envy, because of his apparent wealth. He may be only a clerk out for a fortnight’s “rest and change” on money squeezed out of the meagerest kind of salary; yet to the penniless Irishman he seems literally to be made of wealth. And Pat—let us call him Pat, so that the tourists of this world may know whom we mean—is not without certain reasoning powers of his own, poverty-stricken though he may be. It seems to me only human that he should reason about the English tourist in a way which brings him little comfort and throws considerable discredit on England. He perceives that compared with himself the Englishman is not altogether a person of genius or an angel of light. His ignorance is appalling, even to an Irishman; his manners are none of the choicest; his capacity for eating and drinking borders on the marvelous. “Pat” notes these things and wonders. He wonders why there shouldbe such tremendous gulfs between loving subjects of the King. He wonders where people who travel on cheap tickets get all their money; he wonders how they manage to pay fifty pounds a rod for certain fishing; or fifty pounds a gun for certain shooting; he wonders why they cackle so about priestcraft, and Home Rule, and the development of industry; he wonders whether they have really been elected by heaven to be a dominant people; he wonders why he himself should have been given over to their governance; and with all his wondering he is not consoled. There is probably nobody to tell him that for irremediable reasons the Irish are never likely to become a happy and prosperous nation. There is nobody to tell him that this dazzling Englishman is so much gross material, with no tradition of spirituality at the back of him. There is nobody to tell him that it is the British habit to think first and foremost of its own welfare and comfort, and that it pities rather than admiresthose countries or persons who have been foredoomed to contribute to them. Therefore he goes on wondering without consolation, and within him there is discontent and bitterness, despite his outward subservience. There has been very tall talk in sundry well-meaning circles as to the advantages which are to accrue to Ireland from the development of her trade in tourists. No doubt it is extremely heterodox to say so, but for myself, I incline to the opinion that the tourist business on its present lines is a snare and a delusion and a demoralization. It takes money into the country certainly, but it takes other things which are not by any means so desirable. Moreover, that very money helps materially to cloud and confuse important issues. The real condition of Ireland, as it is known to Irish officialdom, and as it should be known to Englishmen, is glossed over and hidden away as a direct result of the eleemosynary tendencies of the English tourist. A people of the temper andparts of the Irish people should be in a position to live out of Irish land and Irish industry, and not be in any serious sense dependent upon the fitful generosity of sight-seers and problem-solvers. Ireland has had far too muchlargesse, both private and public. The English tourist distributes his shillings; the English Government distributes its loans and other financial bolsterings-up. What is wanted is a fair field and no favor for Irish labor. It will take many generations of tourists to provide for Ireland any such good gift. I do not believe that the Government loans can provide either. A newer and little less rapacious and less unintelligent race of landlords might achieve it. The bland, benevolent money-dropping Englishman, who out of his generosity or his scheme of politics desires to assist the Irish people, should buy a place in Ireland and do his best to live there. The country is full of properties which would be cheap at treble the prices that are now being asked for them.There is plenty of land and there is plenty of labor. The Land Laws, it is true, seem on the face of them ridiculous, that is to say, if you happen to be a landlord whose eye is forever on the rent-roll and the automatic improvement of properties at other people’s expense. But if, on the other hand, you are a comfortable, high Tory, patriarchal landlord, with bowels, and a proper appreciation of sport, and a proper interest in agriculture and the breeding of cattle, Ireland need have no terrors for you. There is a notion abroad that the Irish farmer has deep-rooted prejudices against landlords of whatever degree. We are told that he is a confirmed shirker of the prime duty of rent-paying, and that he will let a holding go to rack and ruin for the sole purpose of cheapening its value, so that he may himself buy it in for the merest song. The demand throughout the country, we are told, is for farmer and peasant proprietorship, and the legislature has formulated wonderful machineryin the interest of such proprietorship. My own view is that of two evils the Irish cultivators have in this matter chosen the lesser. On the one hand they had rack rents, absentee landlords and agents who, if they had bodies to be shot, appear to have had very small souls to be saved. On the other hand, they have been offered schemes of purchase that sound very well but do not work out quite so well in practise. Still a bad scheme of purchase is better than bad landlords and worse agents. An intelligent and reasonable landlord of bucolic tastes, who will look as sharply after his agent or factor as he will look after his tenants on rent-day, could in my opinion do quite as well in Ireland as he can do in England. In a sentence, Ireland wants settling, not touring.

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