unclassifiable, uncontrollable, capricious,
uncompromising genius of J. M. Synge that altered the direction of the
movement and made it individual, critical, and combative. If his had
not, some other stone would have blocked up the old way, for the public
mind of Ireland, stupefied by prolonged intolerant organisation, can
take but brief pleasure in the caprice that is in all art, whatever its
subject, and, more commonly, can but hate unaccustomed personal
reverie.

I had dreamed the subject of "Cathleen ni Houlihan," but found when I
looked for words that I could not create peasant dialogue that would go
nearer to peasant life than the dialogue in "The Land of Heart's
Desire" or "The Countess Cathleen." Every artistic form has its own
ancestry, and the more elaborate it is, the more is the writer
constrained to symbolise rather than to represent life, until perhaps
his ladies of fashion are shepherds and shepherdesses, as when Colin
Clout came home again. I could not get away, no matter how closely I
watched the country life, from images and dreams which had all too
royal blood, for they were descended like the thought of every poet
from all the conquering dreams of Europe, and I wished to make that
high life mix into some rough contemporary life without ceasing to be
itself, as so many old books and Plays have mixed it and so few modern,
and to do this I added another knowledge to my own. Lady Gregory had
written no Plays, but had, I discovered, a greater knowledge of the
country mind and country speech than anybody I had ever met with, and
nothing but a burden of knowledge could keep "Cathleen ni Houlihan"
from the clouds. I needed less help for the "Hour-Glass," for the
speech there is far from reality, and so the Play is almost wholly
mine. When, however, I brought to her the general scheme for the "Pot
of Broth," a little farce which seems rather imitative to-day, though
it plays well enough, and of the first version of "The Unicorn," "Where
there is Nothing," a five-act Play written in a fortnight to save it
from a plagiarist, and tried to dictate them, her share grew more and
more considerable. She would not allow me to put her name to these
Plays, though I have always tried to explain her share in them, but has
signed "The Unicorn from the Stars," which but for a good deal of the
general plan and a single character and bits of another is wholly hers.
I feel indeed that my best share in it is that idea, which I