And so in these four volumes there is nothing whatever to regret--nothing that can be passed over as dull or indifferent, nothing that has not both a hard basis of actuality and also an intensity of imagination that lifts it into the region of poetry. In one of his later moments of self-consciousness he uttered a sentence of criticism worthy to be treasured by the modern poet, and perhaps by the Irish poet especially. "It may almost be said that before verse can be human again it must learn to be brutal." What would we not give to have Synge's "brutality" introduced into the over-idealised and sonorous poetry of Mr. Yeats? He does not mean the brutality of our English realists, or ugliness, sheer fact, mis-called truth, without beauty; what he wants is fidelity to _common_ truth, a realisation of the root, primitive facts--the most grim primitive facts--that hard basis of fact which must be accepted before the imagination can bear fruit. One of the most singular qualities of Synge is the extraordinary common sense which sustains the gruesomeness of his tragic imagination on the one side, and his no less gruesome humour on the other. It holds together this humour and this grimness which are so truthfully united in his work. It is the common sense of the old-fashioned poet, the common sense which is all-pervading in Homer's Odyssey--based upon a strong, keen sense for the concrete, ordinary things of life. It is this which makes him find the masterly conclusion to _Riders of the Sea_, when old Maurya, lamenting the death of her sons, comforts herself, "No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied;" it is this which gives Naisi the ancient love of life, "It's a hard and bitter thing leaving the earth;" which produces so admirable a proverb as, "Who would listen to an old woman with one thing and she saying it over?"; and enables Pegeen, in _The Playboy of the Western World_, to perceive, if only from pique, the preposterousness of her infatuation--"There's a great gap," she says--and this is the gist of the matter--"between a gallous story and a dirty deed." But never does such common sense stay the flight of the poetic dream. Pegeen may know the difference "between a gallous story and a dirty deed," but that does not stop her from breaking out into wild lamentations: "Oh, my grief, I've lost him surely. I've lost the only Playboy of the Western World."