ad made my plans I heard an alarming rumour. Old
Sir Charles Gavan Duffy was coming from Australia to start an Irish
publishing house, and publish a series of books, and I did not expect to
agree with him, but knew that I must not seek a quarrel. The two societies
were necessary because their lectures must take the place of an educated
popular press, which we had not, and have not now, and create a standard
of criticism. Irish literature had fallen into contempt; no educated man
ever bought an Irish book; in Dublin Professor Dowden, the one man of
letters with an international influence, was accustomed to say that he
knew an Irish book by its smell, because he had once seen some books whose
binding had been fastened together by rotten glue; and Standish O'Grady's
last book upon ancient Irish history--a book rather wild, rather too
speculative, but forestalling later research--had not been reviewed by any
periodical or newspaper in England or in Ireland.

At first I had great success, for I brought with me a list of names
written down by some member of the Southwark Irish Literary Society, and
for six weeks went hither and thither appealing and persuading. My first
conversation was over a butter-tub in some Dublin back street, and the man
agreed with me at once; everybody agreed with me; all felt that something
must be done, but nobody knew what. Perhaps they did not understand me,
perhaps I kept back my full thoughts, perhaps they only seemed to listen;
it was enough that I had a plan, and was determined about it. When I went
to lecture in a provincial town, a workman's wife, who wrote patriotic
stories in some weekly newspaper, invited me to her house, and I found all
her children in their Sunday best. She made a little speech, very formal
and very simple, in which she said that what she wrote had no merit, but
that it paid for her children's schooling; and she finished her speech by
telling her children never to forget that they had seen me. One man
compared me to Thomas Davis, another said I could organise like Davitt,
and I thought to succeed as they did, and as rapidly. I did not examine
this applause, nor the true thoughts of those I met, nor the general
condition of the country, but I examined myself a great deal, and was
puzzled at myself. I knew that I was shy and timid, that I would often
leave some business undone, or purchase unmade, because I shrank from
facing a strange office or a shop a little grander than