ed that his readers should regain their poetic feeling for
ordinary life; and presented them with Pegeen with the stink of
poteen on her, and a playboy wet and crusted with his father's
blood.

The conception of ordinary life--or is it only ordinary Irish life?--in
the last half-sentence leaves one meditating.

But, after all, it is not Synge's characters or his plots, but his
language, which is his great contribution to literature. I agree with
Mr. Howe that the question how far his language is the language of the
Irish countryside is a minor one. On the other hand, it is worth noting
that he wrote most beautifully in the first enthusiasm of his discovery
of the wonders of Irish peasant speech. His first plays express, as it
were, the delight of first love. He was always a shaping artist, of
course, in search of figures and patterns; but he kept his passion for
these things subordinate to reality in the early plays. In _The Playboy_
he seemed to be determined to write riotously, like a man straining
after vitality. He exaggerated everything. He emptied bagfuls of wild
phrases--the collections of years--into the conversations of a few
minutes. His style became, in a literary sense, vicious, a thing of
tricks and conventions: blank-verse rhythms--I am sure there are a
hundred blank-verse lines in the play--and otiose adjectives crept in
and spoilt it as prose. It became like a parody of the beautiful English
Synge wrote in the noon of his genius.

I cannot understand the special enthusiasm for _The Playboy_ except
among those who read it before they knew anything of Synge's earlier and
better work. With all its faults, however, it is written by the hand of
genius, and the first hearing or reading of it must come as a revelation
to those who do not know _Riders to the Sea_ or _The Well of the
Saints._ Even when it is played, as it is now played, in an expurgated
form, and with sentimentality substituted for the tolerant but
Mephistophelean malice which Synge threaded into it, the genius and
originality are obvious enough. _The Playboy_ is a marvellous
confection, but it is to _Riders to the Sea_ one turns in search of
Synge the immortal poet.

IX

VILLON: THE GENIUS OF THE TAVERN

It is to Stevenson's credit that he was rather sorry that he had ever
written his essay on Villon. He explains that this was due to the fact
that he "regarded Villon as a bad fellow," but one likes to think that
hi