dentify himself
wholly, now with this character, now with that, in a story which he is
writing. If a man can express such identification in dialogue, he can,
if he master dramatic construction, make himself into a dramatist; if he
express it in subtle analytic writing about the character, it gives him
one of the great powers of the novelist, a power which, if it is united
with the power of story-telling, makes him a great novelist, and,
oftentimes, even if he be but a fair story-teller, a great novelist. The
English novel has been famously deficient in story-telling ability since
Scott's day, and Mr. Moore is no exception to the rule. As, however, the
emphasis of all his stories is on character, his deficiency in narrative
power matters hardly at all.

Mr. Moore is, then, Ireland's greatest novelist because he has in
greatest measure--in full measure--this greatest gift of the Gael, the
gift of dramatic impersonation of all manner of men in all their
changing moods. A personality as intense as was that of Meredith, as is
that of Mr. Hardy, Mr. Moore has not always one attitude, as have both
Welshman and Saxon of the Saxons, however completely they write from the
standpoint of each character they create. By the side of the characters
of Meredith is always Meredith, high-hearted and confident, and by the
side of the characters of Mr. Hardy is always Mr. Hardy, lamenting what
woe fate has brought them, but by the side of Ned Carmady or Oliver
Gogarty, the Mummer or Montgomery, Sir Owen Asher or Ulick, there is
seldom Mr. Moore. He almost never plays chorus to his characters, either
through a commenting character or by direct interposition in the manner
of Thackeray, though, of course, the characters again and again express
his views. So in "The Wild Goose," in which Ned Carmady represents one
year's outlook of Mr. Moore, there is only one choric observation.

When one considers how alien to Ireland were all the interests of Mr.
Moore for years, his rendering of the Irish characters of "The Untilled
Field" and "The Lake" is realized to be all the more remarkable. It is
not easy to pick up threads that one has dropped in a period of one's
life that is dead and done, but Mr. Moore has picked them up more than
once. From time to time he had, of course, made visits home, writing "A
Mummer's Wife" in Galway in 1884 and finding there then, no doubt, the
material for "A Drama in Muslin" and the sketches of "Parnell and his
Island