Johnson's poetry, as Johnson himself before his last decay, conveys an emotion of joy, of intellectual clearness, of hard energy; he gave us of his triumph; while Dowson's poetry is sad, as he himself seemed, and pictures his life of temptation and defeat,
"Unto us they belong,
Us the bitter and gay,
Wine and women and song."
Their very attitude to intoxication displayed their characters. Johnson, who could not have written Dark Angel if he did not suffer from remorse, showed to his friends an impenitent face, and defeated me when I tried to prevent the foundation of an Irish convivial club—it was brought to an end after one meeting by the indignation of the members' wives—whereas the last time I saw Dowson he was pouring out a glass of whisky for himself in an empty corner of my room and murmuring over and over in what seemed automatic apology "The first to-day."
XXXI
Two men are always at my elbow, Lionel Johnson and John Synge whom I was to meet a little later; but Johnson is to me the more vivid in memory, possibly because of the external finish, the clearly-marked lineaments of his body, which seemed but to express the clarity of his mind. I think Dowson's best verse immortal, bound, that is, to outlive famous novels and plays and learned histories and other discursive things, but he was too vague and gentle for my affections. I understood him too well, for I had been like him but for the appetite that made me search out strong condiments. Though I cannot explain what brought others of my generation to such misfortune, I think that falling back upon my parable of the moon I can explain some part of Dowson's and Johnson's dissipation—
"What portion in the world can the artist have,
Who has awaked from the common dream,
But dissipation and despair."
When Edmund Spenser described the gardens of Phaedria and of
