Yeats who knows the brooding
landscape of West Ireland can escape that realization, but only he who
has met the poet amid the scenes that inspired his verse may know how
complete is their accord. Such a meeting was mine one lowering August
day, in whose late afternoon we walked in the Woods of Coole. Then I
knew at last what Mr. Yeats meant by "druid charm" and "druid light." I
felt the "druid charm" that was potent in gray skies over gray water and
gray rock and gray-green woods; the bewildering "druid light" flashed
out as the sun followed westward the trail to Hy Brasil, leaving in the
Atlantic skies wild after-glow of winter yellow.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] _Collected Works_. Stratford-on-Avon, 1908, vol. II, p. 251.

CHAPTER IV

MR. EDWARD MARTYN AND MR. GEORGE MOORE

The announcement of Mr. Edward Martyn as playwright of "The Irish
Literary Theatre" was, outside of the narrow circle of his friends, a
great surprise to all interested in letters in Ireland. But the almost
simultaneous announcement that Mr. George Moore was lending his aid to
the adventure was an even greater surprise. Mr. Moore had, of course,
written more than once of Ireland, and there were many who had not
forgotten the unpleasantnesses of "A Drama in Muslin" (1886), and Mr.
Martyn, though the author of "Morgante the Lesser" (1890), was not known
as its author, as he had published it anonymously, and as it had not
made enough of a stir for its anonymity to be disclosed. Yet for the
landlord-author, who had turned his back on Ireland, to return to his
country with a greater interest in its life and its writers than he had
ever betrayed, was more remarkable than for another landlord of the same
family connection, comparatively a stay-at-home landlord, to turn from
sport and religion to the stage. Mr. Martyn had lived in London and his
love of music had taken him to the Continent, but he had been something
of a Nationalist, whereas Mr. Moore had lost few opportunities to scoff
at the country his father had striven so unselfishly to aid. What of Mr.
Moore that was not French in 1899 was confessedly English.

[Illustration]

Now that those interested have read "Ave," the first volume of the three
of "Hail and Farewell," in which Mr. Moore is confessing the reasons of
his return to Ireland and of his second departure from Ireland, they
know that he had been mildly interested in Ireland as material for art
as far back as 1894, and that it was Mr