ance that are
of powers only short of greatness, Nora Hopper Chesson chief among them.
Only Mr. W.B. Yeats of them all has more "natural falterings" in his
verse than she. Mrs. Hinkson, too, whose name has come inevitably into
these pages from time to time, is a poet with as sure a place in English
literature to-day as has Mrs. Meynell. Beginning, like Mr. Yeats, as an
imitator of the Pre-Raphaelites, Mrs. Hinkson found herself in little
poems on moods of her own and moods of landscape She writes also of her
love of God, of St. Francis, and of Ireland. "Moira O'Neill" (Mrs.
Skrine), too, has a sure place, her verses crying out her homesickness
for Ireland, and redolent, every line of them, of the countryside. "The
Passing of the Gael" is known wherever there are Irish emigrants, but
there are other verses of "Ethna Carberry" (Mrs. Anna Johnstone
MacManus) that are as fine as this. Mrs. Dora Sigerson Shorter is a
balladist of stark power, and Miss Eva Gore-Booth a lyric poet whose
natural lilt no preoccupation with mysticism can for more than a moment
obscure.

Mr. Herbert Trench has of recent years surrendered to theatrical
management, but there is to his credit a substantial accomplishment of
lyrical verse that George Meredith would have approved. Mr. Colum's
verse I have spoken of below, incidentally, in considering his plays. A
distinct talent, too, is Mr. Seumas O'Sullivan's, whose "Twilight
People" (1905) indicates by its title the quality of his verse.

I have mentioned all these writers, some known in America, but others
utterly unknown, not only to indicate the relation of the drama to the
other literary forms of the Renaissance, but to account, perhaps in some
measure, for the literary quality of the plays themselves. They are
written, as plays in English during the past century have too seldom
been written, by writers who have read widely in all forms of literature
and to whom words are, if not "the only good," at least a chief good.
Mr. Russell and Mr. Yeats have sent all the younger men who would write
to the masterpieces of the world, telling them to get what they need of
the technique of the centre, to know the best in the world, but to write
of the ground under their feet. The plays are, as I have said, written,
many of them, by men who are widely read, and by men whose friends are
writers of some other form of literature, by men who wish their work in
drama to be of as high intention as the work of thei