SENSITIVE, NOT EMOTIONAL.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 229, 27 September 1928, Page 6

SENSITIVE, NOT EMOTIONAL.

Your correspondent, ''Irishman, Too," hae retreated a little, and admitted that evee Shakespeare was not original, and that ht borrowed his plots, but still contends that nationality counts in the production of * genius. Now, sir, if a genius is a persoe endowed to a certain extent with superior intellect, it seems unreasonable to suppose that the question of nationality is involved. Nature brings out all men's powers, and their increase springs from use. Greatness alsa depends a great deal upon environment. For instance, the world's greatest military genins. the Emperor Napoleon, owed his elevation te the peculiarity of the times, and it seems nationality did not count in his case. It is generally conceded by educate! persons that a poet's heart is in unison with his time and country, and, if so. why should an intensely patriotic race like the Irish lack the natural capacity of the English? Hundreds of year* ago. in tlie dim past, the ".rish race, in the words of Mrs. J. R. Green, possessed a literary language of great richness and of the utmost musical beauty, and a system of metrical rules for poets shaped with infinite skill. The early Anglo-Saxons on the other hand allowed their songs to die out shortly after the Conquest. The English people, whom I greatly admire, are not by any means an emotional race, but instead an extremely sensitive one. Your correspondent's contention is a common one, but decidedly old-fashioned. JOHX GUIXIVEX.