always that the highest life unites, as in one fire, the greatest passion and the greatest courtesy. A feeling for the form of life, for the graciousness of life, for the dignity of life, for the moving limbs of life, for the nobleness of life, for all that cannot be written in codes, has always been greatest among the gifts of literature to mankind. Indeed, the Muses being women, all literature is but their love-cries to the manhood of the world. It is now one and now another that cries, but the words are the same—‘Love of my heart, what matter to me that you have been quarrelsome in your cups, and have slain many, and have given your love here and there? It was because of the whiteness of your flesh and the mastery in your hands that I gave you my love, when all life came to me in your coming.’ And then in a low voice that none may overhear—‘Alas! I am greatly afraid that the more they cry against you the more I love you.’ There are two kinds of poetry, and they are co-mingled in all the greatest works. When the tide of life sinks low there are pictures, as in _The Ode to a Grecian Urn_ and in Virgil at the plucking of the Golden Bough. The pictures make us sorrowful. We share the poet’s separation from what he describes. It is life in the mirror, and our desire for it is as the desire of the lost souls for God; but when Lucifer stands among his friends, when Villon sings his dead ladies to so gallant a rhythm, when Timon makes his epitaph, we feel no sorrow, for life herself has made one of her eternal gestures, has called up into our hearts her energy that is eternal delight. In Ireland, where the tide of life is rising, we turn, not to picture-making, but to the imagination of personality—to drama, gesture. FOOTNOTES: [A] Both Mr. Moore and Mr. Martyn dropped out of the movement after the third performance at the Irish Literary Theatre in 1901.—W.B.Y. [B] That mood has gone, with Fenianism and its wild hopes. The National movement has been commercialized in the last few years. How much real ideality is but hidden for a time one cannot say.—W.B.Y., _March, 1908_. [C] An illusion, as he himself explained to me. He had never seen _Phèdre_. The players were quiet and natural, because they did not know what else to do. They had not learned to go wrong.—W.B.Y., _March, 1908_. [D] This play was _John Bull’s Other Island_. When it came out in the spring of 1905 we felt ourselves unable to cast it without wronging Mr. Shaw. We had no ‘Broadbent’ or money to get one.—W.B.Y., _March, 1908_. [E] _The Poor House_, written in Irish by Dr. Hyde on a scenario by Lady Gregory. [F] _Riders to the Sea._ This play made its way very slowly with our audiences, but is now very popular.—W.B.Y., _March, 1908_. [G] The players, though not the playwrights, are now all paid.—W.B.Y., _March, 1908_. [H] _John Bull’s Other Island._ THE PLAY, THE PLAYER, AND THE SCENE.