I'll fetch from my fancy a tale that won't tire you. O, your step's like the rain to the summer-vexed farmer, Or sabre and shield to a knight without armor; Something in the Irish character-something of the genius of the race-seems to have died with the brilliant fiasco of New Ireland. There have been patriots since, but few of the fellowship of Mitchel. As for the poets of 'Forty-eight, we shall not look upon their like again. A certain impatience of Irish poetry, patriotism, sentiment, is manifest after that period, as if the world resented having had its sympathies too warmly engaged, to no purpose, and was bound it should not be so taken in again. For the world, like the individual, is selfish, and does not care to spend its grace with no prospect of return. The revolutionary spirit which animated those "high sons of the lyre" has long since died out (the Fenian fever of a later day was hardly a heroic symptom), and although one may not safely predicate either of Irish patriotism or Irish temperament, it is improbable that we of this generation shall live to see a flame rekindled from its ashes. The paltering ways of parliamentary reform, the doctrine of mortal suasion, the "paradise of cold hearts"—to apply a phrase from Macaulay-will not give us another Davis, another Mangan. Now and then, mayhap, a fierce note shall be struck out of the sullen apathy of the people, recalling that splendid burst of poetry, that rapture of patriotism, which marked the magic era of 'Forty-eight. But the lover of "Dark Rosaleen" shall lie quiet in his obscure grave; the elegist of O'Neil shall not waken from his dreamless sleep. If consciousness shall ever come to these, under the weeping dews, the caressing shamrocks, it must be in that day for which the children of Erin cease not to cry, like the Psalmist; and in which their faith is as enduring as the mercy of their God. GERALD GRIFFIN HE love of poetry is given unto most of TH conf the children of men, but the literary concept of the thing is too often a pain and a weariness. The critics and the professors of poetry are evermore bandying their apple of discord. The great public,—as the newspapers phrase it, the vulgar many, if you will, are not seldom a unit and cast a single suffrage. The many are in the wrong, of course, but I am not always sure of it. After much critical reading, one recurs with a refreshing sense to those sources of pleasure about which even the critics are agreed that it is not worth while to dispute. The mental ache is gone; the tension of thought which latter-day poetry induces is instantly relieved. There is hardly any artifice in these rhymes; an occa sional false quantity does not displease us; the poet cannot tell his tale simply enough and his words are the gold of common speech-we are very far from the Browningesque conviction that to be great is to be turgid and obscure. Here is passion enough, but of a natural sort, without a damnable complexity of motive and refinements that are super-sexual. Here is patriotism that shames the diluted article of our day. Here is love that does not lack the essentials of human interest because it is pure and Innocence may hold the page, unharmed of any lurking satyr. It is told of Handel that he once said he would rather have composed the tender melody of "Eileen Aroon" than all the elaborate works of his genius. Simplicity, the first note in nature, is the last result in art. After a strong course of the reigning Muscovite or Slavic fiction, even after the more delicate and artistic pruriencies of the French realists, we think better of Doctor Primrose, take down the little volume reverently and follow with a chastened heart the simple fortunes of the good vicar. And against the judgment of the critics who have in our day discounted Dickens, who have told us that one generation is enough to weep over Tiny Tim and Little Nell-against this chilling decree may be set the fact-reassuring to some of us who have felt the spell of the wizard-that "David Copperfield" is still the high water mark by which we measure the popular sense of the good, the true and the beautiful in fiction. In a lately published volume of Irish songs, compiled by Mr. Charles MacCarthy Collins, M.R.I.A., the editor makes it a subject of lament that Irish poetry offers "no epics with a trace of the fire of Homer, of the grandeur of Dante, of the majesty of Milton; no descriptive poems like 'Childe Harold,' no satires like the 'Dunciad.' "Truly, I do not think the Irish are greatly to be pitied for their lack of epics. Ancient Irish nomenclature, to say the least, raises such difficulties that the reading of them might perforce be left |