SOURCE: Review of "The Countess Kathleen and Various Legends and Lyrics," in The Academy, Vol. 42, No. 1065, October 1, 1892, pp. 278-79.

Johnson, an English poet of Irish descent, was a friend of Yeats. In the following excerpt, Johnson praises Yeats for his use of Celtic themes and his ability to seize his readers emotionally.

Mr. Yeats has published two volumes of verse: The Wanderings of Oisin and The Countess Kathleen. Doubtless it is difficult to speak with perfect security about the first books of a living writer; but I feel little diffidence in speaking of these two volumes. In the last two or three years much charming verse has been published by many writers who may make themselves distinguished names; but nothing which seems to me, in the most critical and dispassionate state of mind, equal in value to the poems of Mr. Yeats. Irish of the Irish, in the...