THE " MECHANICAL" ENGLISH.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 225, 22 September 1928, Page 8

THE " MECHANICAL " ENGLISH.

OUTWARD MANNER AND INWARD FEELING.

(To the Editor.)

Probably Mr. Mulvihill and I think aliks on many aspects of Anglo-Irish relations. I am well acquainted with the kind of Irian opinion he quotes, and I am not unmindful of the differences between national temperaments that have helped to make the Irish tragedy. It has been said that the occupation of Ireland was the marriage of a slow-witted man with a quick-witted woman. I do not think, however, that Mr. Mulvihill's quotations are quite so relevant as he thinks. Incidentally I am not greatly impressed by what Bernard Shaw says of the English. Shaw has said some profound things and a great many extremely foolish ones. He thinks he understands the English, but of course he does not, and he has so little of—shall we say the sporting spirit?—that in more than forty years of life among the English, during which he has won fame and fortune, he has hardlv spoken or written one word of praise of his adopted country. The reason for my first letter was that I resented the patronage of the English expressed or implied. Mr. Mulvihill judges by outward manner and overlooks inner light and warmth. We all know that the Englishman has a relatively cold and distant manner, but that does not prove that ha is not emotional. My point was that he is a poet at heart, and I stick to it. Very often his cool, indifferent manner is used as a mask to hide intense feeling, just as cynicism was used by Thackeray to cover his natural disposition to sentiment. English literature has countless illustrations of the essential warmheartedness and emotional and spiritual depths of the English nature. A recent cue may be found in Mr. Galsworthy's "Swan Song," in the description of young Jons feelings on returning to England after a long absence. Here you have the poet in the Englishman asserting himself. Ido not know exactly what Mr. Guiniven means in his letter; perhaps he is not sure himself. He says that no great man is original and that nationality not count. But what do you mean by originality t Shakespeare borrowed his plots but transfigured them by his genius; just as Browning made a great poem out of the forgotten Btory of Pompilia, her husband and her lover. Nationality does count. There is an English genius " and a French genius. And Mr. Guiniven's remark that Shakespeare was "a master mind in the science of arrangement" recalls the retort to D'Annunzio when he said that he used as many words as Shakespeare— "Yes, but not in the same order." IRISHMAN, TOO.