MR. YEATS ON SYNGE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1252, 7 October 1911, Page 9

MR. YEATS ON SYNGE.

A treasurable book comes to us from the Ciiala Press at Dundruiu. in Ireland. It. is Iho paper on "Synge and the Ireland of his-Time" that, but for a dispute, would have introduced the recent fourvolumo edition.of .7. M.-'aynge's work. Like that'edition itself, Iho divorced introduction bids fair to - become a prize fo: collectors. Its issue is limited, it is ccmely in the Morris tradition, like all things they print at Dundrurn,. and— finishing grace—it ha-s several slips in tho printing, by tho. lack of which any later re-issue, no doubt, will be swiftly detected and condemned. And, then. there is what fcho book says, much of it said beautifully, as one knew it to be; and yet it docs not quito seem like'a fruit dropped from the tree because it -was ripe, as nil the best things of Mr. Yeats do. Wo looked to bo told things about SyDge, to hear news about him as ho was to the ear and eyo of a follow in his craft; and certainly we find some, such things, like the notes on Syngo's talk and his- chariness of it (conversation, to him, being "not an experimental thing, an instrument of research"), and on his Goldsinjth-likc ineffectivenpss in company and in external emergencies, and. ; again, on -his inoffensive bnt complete- want of interest in other writers' work. But the strongest impression left at tho ond is that Mr. YoatS has been striving nnd crying onco moro arainst striving and crying, in nrtdst.i. He carries you with him as lons as; you read, and perhaps for a little time after, but then it occurs to you perhaps th_fi_fc jtjg all a quarrel betjveen.rjie sun nn"d fire liroo'n or between stars in'difTorent quarters, or that whito Tripe • has been trying to arguo the life out of red, both being jrood. all the while. To some who know the late ,T. p. Tnylo , ., Hie Trish orator, there was a more memorable fire in things he said and wrote than Mr. .Yeats can now find warm in his own remembrance.or rnadini; of Hi'im. And when Mr. Yeats would ban the arttets .who nrgno or teach we think bow "Joseph Andrews" was a kind of argument and "Lo Malado Imaginaire" a serious i.Tact against tho doctors, and so we incline tp think that the ecstasy in which the greatest things ajp invented, may visit either ft Synge.or a pedant or even a party man, 'and that i each would bring forth beauly after 'his kind, to tho perplexity or scandal of the others. A great artist is commonly an anti-catholic critic, and we cannot wish it otherwise, for artists often seem, like streams, to flow with . moro force for being narrowed. But those who are only critics or readers may take leavo without shamo to tind an enual joy in Mr. Galsworthy and Synge, Air. Masefield ond Ibsen, besides those writers, liko Mr. Shaw and Wilde, in whom Mr. Yeats sees a falling-short of belter possibilities "becaufe they have not been able to-turn out of their plays an alien trick of zeal picked up in struggling youth." ■ Seo how many things other than Synge one talks about after reading this book. One has tt follow its author's lead.—"Manchester Guardiin."