ck, "an' that
other man would be glad of another glass." It is enough for our
purpose to note that such sayings are typically Irish and that their
peculiar felicity consists in their combining both wit and humor.

To what element in the Irish nature are we to attribute this joyous
and illuminating gift? No one who is not a Gaelic scholar can venture
to dogmatize on this thorny subject. But, setting philology and
politics aside, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Ireland has
gained rather than lost in this respect by the clash of races and
languages. Gaiety, we are told, is not the predominating
characteristic of the Celtic temperament, nor is it reflected in the
prose and verse of the "old ancient days" that have come down to us.
Glamour and magic and passion abound in the lays and legends of the
ancient Gael, but there is more melancholy than mirth in these tales
of long ago. Indeed, it is interesting to note in connection with
this subject that the younger school of Irish writers associated with
what is called the Celtic Renascence have, with very few exceptions,
sedulously eschewed anything approaching to jocosity, preferring the
paths of crepuscular mysticism or sombre realism, and openly avowing
their distaste for what they consider to be the denationalized
sentiment of Moore, Lever, and Lover. To say this is not to disparage
the genius of Yeats and Synge; it is merely a statement of fact and
an illustration of the eternal dualism of the Irish temperament,
which Moore himself realized when he wrote of "Erin, the tear and the
smile in thine eye."

A reaction against the Donnybrook tradition was inevitable and to a
great extent wholesome, since the stage Irishman of the transpontine
drama or the music-halls was for the most part a gross and unlovely
caricature, but, like all reactions, it has tended to obscure the
real merits and services of those who showed the other side of the
medal. Lever did not exaggerate more than Dickens, and his portraits
of Galway fox-hunters and duellists, of soldiers of fortune, and of
Dublin undergraduates were largely based on fact. At his best he was
a most exhilarating companion, and his pictures of Irish life, if
partial, were not misleading. He held no brief for the landlords, and
in his later novels showed a keen sense of their shortcomings. The
plain fact is that, in considering the literary glories of Ireland,
we cannot possibly overlook the work of those Irishmen who were