that have come down to us.  Glamour and magic and passion abound in the lays and legends of the ancient Gael, but there is more melancholy than mirth in these tales of long ago.  Indeed, it is interesting to note in connection with this subject that the younger school of Irish writers associated with what is called the Celtic Renascence have, with very few exceptions, sedulously eschewed anything approaching to jocosity, preferring the paths of crepuscular mysticism or sombre realism, and openly avowing their distaste for what they consider to be the denationalized sentiment of Moore, Lever, and Lover.  To say this is not to disparage the genius of Yeats and Synge; it is merely a statement of fact and an illustration of the eternal dualism of the Irish temperament, which Moore himself realized when he wrote of “Erin, the tear and the smile in thine eye.”

A reaction against the Donnybrook tradition was inevitable and to a great extent wholesome, since the stage Irishman of the transpontine drama or the music-halls was for the most part a gross and unlovely caricature, but, like all reactions, it has tended to obscure the real merits and services of those who showed the other side of the medal.  Lever did not exaggerate more than Dickens, and his portraits of Galway fox-hunters and duellists, of soldiers of fortune, and of Dublin undergraduates were largely based on fact.  At his best he was a most exhilarating companion, and his pictures of Irish life, if partial, were not misleading.  He held no brief for the landlords, and in his later novels showed a keen sense of their shortcomings.  The plain fact is that, in considering the literary glories of Ireland, we cannot possibly overlook the work of those Irishmen who were affected by English influences or wrote for an English audience.

Anglo-Irish humorous literature was a comparatively late product, but its efflorescence was rapid and triumphant.  The first great name is that of Goldsmith, and, though deeply influenced in technique and choice of subjects by his association with English men of letters and by his residence in England, in spirit he remained Irish to the end—­generous, impulsive, and improvident in his life; genial, gay, and tender-hearted in his works.  The Vicar of Wakefield was Dr. Primrose, but he might just as well have been called Dr. Shamrock.  No surer proof of the pre-eminence of Irish wit and humor can be found than in the fact that, Shakespeare alone excepted, no writers of comedy have held the boards longer or more triumphantly than Goldsmith and his brother Irishman, Sheridan. She Stoops to Conquer, The Rivals, The School for Scandal, and The Critic represent the sunny side of the Irish genius to perfection.  They illustrate, in the most convincing way possible, how the debt of the world to Ireland has been increased by the fate which ordained that her choicest spirits should express themselves in a language of wider appeal than the ancient speech of Erin.