terms of modern art and thought is a book which has just broken the silence of Irish literature, The Return of the Hero, by "Michael Ireland." The name of the author somehow sets one thinking of "Anatole France," and one is in fact reminded of Anatole France by certain characteristics of the book, as well as of Algernon Blackwood, Mark Twain, and the Bhagavad Gita: finally, however, one settles down to thinking of no one else but Mr James Stephens. A writer of the modern Irish school was bound to reverse the intention of the legend—in which it was understood that the future, both in this world and the next, belonged to Saint Patrick—and to make Oisin even dialectically the conqueror; and this was permissible, so long as the issue lay in dialectic. But one begins at last to find it a little unfair that while the Saint is restricted to the theological formulae of his own period, his antagonist is free to range far into the future, and to confound Saint Patrick with the oracles of Blake and Nietzsche. If the book is by Mr Stephens—I must not assume this—it seems almost regrettable that this debate was not left as an inconclusive episode in his rendering of the whole cycle of Irish mythology, and that he was tempted to convert it into a story, with an appropriate ending secured by magical transformations akin to those practised by Mr Algernon Blackwood.
When Irish literature, in Miltonic language, "reassembles its afflicted powers," it will find a good many gaps in its ranks: not so much that our poets, in any considerable number, have been executed, assassinated, or banished, as that a fell disillusionment has seized upon many Irishmen with respect to the realization of long-cherished ideals, and in particular the ideal of a Gaelic-speaking Ireland. Ireland being no longer a country in which it is permitted to dream dreams, but one in which it is pre-eminently necessary to circumvent British trade-competition by hard work, the Gaelic idealists, who really flourished best under provincial conditions, are looking for a way of escape, and some of them, if they are allowed to emigrate, may even nurse the old ideals in other lands. The legitimate outlet of this dissatisfaction will no doubt be in the formation of a constitutional party representing these ideals, and it remains to be seen whether this party will represent an Ireland which is still the main source of literature. Meanwhile that manner of life which seemed threatened with extinction by Sinn Fein appears likely enough to reassert itself and to continue under trans-
