t, which does not persuade, which does not
condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible. It is made by men
who expressed themselves to the full, and it works through the best
minds; whereas the external and picturesque and declamatory writers,
that they may create kilts and bagpipes and newspapers and guidebooks,
leave the best minds empty, and in Ireland and Scotland, England runs
into the hole. It has no array of arguments and maxims, because the
great and the simple (and the Muses have never known which of the two
most pleases them) need their deliberate thought for the day's work,
and yet will do it worse if they have not grown into or found about
them, most perhaps in the minds of women, the nobleness of emotion
associated with the scenery and events of their country by those great
poets who have dreamed it in solitude, and who to this day in Europe are
creating indestructible spiritual races, like those religion has created
in the East.

September 14th, 1910.

THE TRAGIC THEATRE

I did not find a word in the printed criticism of Synge's _Deirdre of
the Sorrows_ about the qualities that made certain moments seem to me
the noblest tragedy, and the play was judged by what seemed to me but
wheels and pulleys necessary to the effect, but in themselves nothing.

Upon the other hand, those who spoke to me of the play never spoke of
these wheels and pulleys, but if they cared at all for the play, cared
for the things I cared for. One's own world of painters, of poets, of
good talkers, of ladies who delight in Ricard's portraits or Debussey's
music, all those whose senses feel instantly every change in our mother
the moon, saw the stage in one way; and those others who look at plays
every night, who tell the general playgoer whether this play or that
play is to his taste, saw it in a way so different that there is
certainly some body of dogma--whether in the instincts or in the
memory, pushing the ways apart. A printed criticism, for instance, found
but one dramatic moment, that when Deirdre in the second act overhears
her lover say that he may grow weary of her; and not one--if I remember
rightly--chose for praise or explanation the third act which alone had
satisfied the author, or contained in any abundance those sentences that
were quoted at the fall of the curtain and for days after.

Deirdre and her lover, as Synge tells the tale, returned to Ireland,
though it was nearly certain they would die th