Kilmer’s successive literary passions were a curious medley. He seemed to have been born with a great love for Scott, and he held stoutly to Sir Walter throughout the years. In his burly days he found a humorous sport in defending, with jovial emphasis, the old-fashioned chivalrous romance against the scientific modern novel. In his æsthetic period he had a touch, hardly more, of Oscar Wilde, though early in his literary career he experienced a rather severe case of Swinburneitus. Some time shortly after this he was very much intrigued by the Celtic revival. Shaemas O’Sheel, a friend dating back to Columbia days, bears testimony that an early boast of Kilmer’s was that an ancestor of his had been hanged for taking a rebel’s part in ’ninety-eight. And though as we know, Kilmer’s immediate ancestry was not Irish, a Gaelic enthusiast who has made a specialty of the Irish language, suggests in his ardour, that the name Kilmer is a derivation of Mac Gilla Mor. At any rate, an affection for Ireland--her literature, her lore, her traditions, and her people--was indeed natural with him. In his Yeats period Kilmer had about chosen “Nine Bean Rows” as the name of his house then in the course of construction, though it was not altogether “of clay and wattles made.” The thing which deterred him from this decision was that persons unacquainted with the poem “Innisfree,” to whom he spoke of the matter, conceived his address as Number Nine Beanrose Avenue. What a funny street, they said, that is. Literary merely, of course, that; and though a part of the whole, remote from later, deeper and graver things. Something inherently Irish in Kilmer undoubtedly was felt by many, Irish themselves and very much so, who, in some cases, are “quite certain” that the fact of their being Irish was the reason why he regarded them and their work as writers with friendship. He did, indeed, like all manner of Irish. He liked the Irish fairies, he liked Lady Gregory, he liked most decidedly the poor Irish people who went to the Catholic church, and (as he later showed), of all soldiers, Irish soldiers he liked best. Romantic Ireland is not old; For years untold her youth will shine, Her heart is fed on Heavenly bread, The blood of martyrs is her wine. Everything chivalrous and sacrificial appealing to his deepest instincts, he felt noble “delight in hopes that were vain.” It is not at all improbable that had he been an Irishman born and resident in Ireland he would have been among the martyrs of Easter Week. In certain qualities of his soul a kinship with these spirits may readily be traced. Some of them, I have been told, he knew personally; and his reverence for Plunkett he has written. There is no rope can strangle song, And not for long death takes his toll; No prison bars can dim the stars, Nor quicklime eat the living soul.