as his beautiful prologue in verse to the first performances of "The
Irish Literary Theatre" in 1899, is to me a poet of a power as great as
theirs.

One wonders, at first thought, that Ireland had never until our day
given to English literature a novelist of first rank. The Irishman is
famous the world over as a story-teller, but neither in romance nor in
the story of character had he reached first power, reached a position
where he might be put alongside of other Europeans as a novelist. No
Irishman from the time of Scott on, until Mr. George Moore wrote "Esther
Waters" (1894), had written a story that might stand the inevitable
comparison with the work of Thackeray and Dickens, Meredith and Mr.
Hardy. Of Mr. George Moore I have written in detail below.

Miss Edgeworth may have taught Scott his manner of delineating peasant
character, but her comparatively little power is revealed when you put
her beside Miss Austen, and so it is all the way down the list to our
own day. There are many contemporary story-tellers who have managed well
the tale, but what Irish novelist of to-day other than Mr. Moore bulks
big, can be compared to even lesser men, like Scotland's Mr. Neil Munro
or Dartmoor's Mr. Phillpotts?

Lady Gilbert (Rosa Mulholland) has written many, pleasant stories of
Irish life, and Mrs. Katherine Tynan Hinkson has followed worthily in
her footsteps. Equally pleasant, but lighter and more superficial, is
the writing of the two ladies who subscribe their names "E.OE.
Somerville and Martin Ross." Their "Some Experiences of an Irish R.M."
(1899) and their "All on the Irish Shore" (1903) are like so much of the
Irish writing of a generation ago,--Irish stories by Irish people for
English people to laugh at.

The Hon. Emily Lawless has written many kinds of stories about the West
Coast, reaching almost to greatness in her "Grania" (1892). In the short
story, Miss Jane Barlow, accused of superficiality by many Irish critics
and as eagerly declared to get the very quality of Connemara peasant
life by others, has sure power and a charm all her own. No one who reads
"Irish Idylls" (1892) will stop at that collection. Mr. Seumas MacManus
is as truly a shanachie as the old story-tellers that yet tell the old
tales about peat fires in Donegal. "Through the Turf Smoke" (1899) and
"In Chimney Corners" (1899) and "Donegal Fairy Stories" (1900) are alike
in having the accent of the spoken story, but when the last word is said