natured clown or Handy Andy as therein depicted; but quite the contrary, is a being of moods and passions, of contrasting yet humanly consistent traits, simple yet shrewd, candid yet cunning, kind yet vindictive, drunken maybe, yet devout, such as Synge has observed and painted him. Had he been content merely to revamp the old scarecrows of Irish comedy, his name had perhaps never crossed the Channel, not to say the Atlantic.

In one of Synge's plays a drunken tinker, his mistress and his hag of a mother do some irreverence to a priest who reflects no great honour upon the Order of Melchizedek. The whole scene and conception are "low," it may be granted, but strictly within the province of dramatic art. Synge has as valid a right to his Michael Byrne as Shakespeare to his Christopher Sly. So in the "Playboy" a simpleton of a fellow has some speeches in which he invokes the "Holy Father" and the "Scarlet Cardinals of the Court of Rome." In the given situation nothing could be more

exquisitely comic and at the same time, more natural in the mouth of an omadhawn. There is also in this, as in other plays by Synge, much loose talk of God and the Virgin and the Saints, not as intended irreverence but as a transcript of the popular speech. Poetic beauty is scarcely ever absent from these speeches and only an ear sharpened for offence would take umbrage at them. Synge never appears in his plays as a scoffer at things sacred or religious, nor is there a trace of polemics in any of them. He limited himself strictly to his artistic province, reproducing life and character as he found them in years of the most familiar association with the people. His little book on the Arran Islands fully reveals his method in all its anxious integrity, and it contains the germ of his plays.

Thus we have the head and front of Synge's offending before us. His plays do not flatter priestly sensibilities-they even wound ecclesiastical coquetry in a land where the priest is supreme.

THOMAS MOORE

Oh, forgive, if while list'ning to music whose breath Seemed to circle his name with a charm against death, He should feel a proud Spirit within him proclaim— "Ev'n so shalt thou live in the echoes of Fame:

"Ev'n so, tho' thy memory should now die away, 'Twill be caught up again in some happier day; And the hearts and the voices of Erin prolong Thro' the answering future thy NAME and thy SONG!" -Irish Melody.

HE usage of biography requires me to

TH

state, at the outset, that the sweetest of all Irish poets and English lyrists, Thomas Moore, was born in Dublin on May 28, 1779, and died at Sloperton Cottage, Wiltshire, in England, in the year 1852.

A charming story is preserved of a grand reception held at the Lord Lieutenant's house

38

in Dublin when the last century was still in its teens. Among the guests was a lady whose husband, a British military officer, had been ordered on that very evening to rejoin his regiment for active service. filled with the alarum of war.

Europe was

The forces of

Corsican and

fate were closing in upon the the terrific struggle of the "last days" was at hand. Many were the gentle hearts that shared a dumb sense of dread, a fear that shrank from expression, with her who amid the brilliant throng in the Viceroy's palace sate preoccupied with her own sadness. And you will not marvel at this—a common incident of the time-knowing how they danced and revelled on the very eve of Waterloo.

In such a mood, we are told, the lady thus suddenly bereaved, wondered pettishly at the extraordinary deference which the whole company united in paying to a little gentleman who came late in the evening, and whose simple black dress contrasted strongly with the gold lace of the viceregal staff and the

garish splendour of the military corps. Presently the little gentleman was led to the piano. After preluding a moment he struck the keys with resounding harmony

Go where glory waits thee,

But while fame elates thee,
Oh, still remember me!

Ah, she listened now with a flying heart to words that made poignantly real for her the sentence of separation. Then the matchless voice, thrilling with power and sweetness, sank to the softest note of sympathy:

When around thee dying,
Autumn leaves are lying,

Oh! then remember me.

And at night when gazing

On the gay hearth blazing,

Oh! still remember me.

Still the wondrous voice sang on, a murmur of polite applause rising at each cessation of the music. But ere the final bravos came, one overburthened heart had given