neration younger than themselves. It is not possible to deny that
Ireland's literary output during those last twenty years is far more
important and serious than that of the whole preceding century. The only
part of it exempt from these influences is the work of Edith Somerville
and Martin Ross; and even that is based on a closer study of
distinctively Irish speech than had ever been attempted in earlier days.
The propagandist work of Pearse and Arthur Griffiths--equal in merit to
that of their forerunners, Davis and Mitchel--was Irish only in
substance and spirit, not in form or accent--a thing the less
surprising, since both men were only half Irish by parentage. But the
whole group of writers, of whom it may be said that their writings are
almost as unmistakably Irish as the work of Burns is Scotch, have
followed Mr. Yeats and Synge in this, that in writing they assume an
Irish public, not an English one; they make no explanations, they speak
as to those who share their own inheritance. In this group has been
fostered a spirit of the freedom which belongs properly to art. Thus the
school, for it may justly be called a school, has created its own
tradition, and it has been a tradition of freedom, not asserted but
exercised: a freedom, not as against England, but as against all the
world. Everywhere, but especially in countries undergoing revolutionary
change, there is a tyranny of the crowd. When the Gaelic League decided
to make the learning of Irish compulsory, it attorned to this tyranny.
On the other hand, Mr. Yeats, at a moment when the Abbey Theatre seemed
about to become popular, was threatened by a fiat of this
mob-dictatorship; he was told that his theatre must become unpopular
unless he would throw overboard most of Synge's work. By the stand which
he then made he did a greater service to freedom of the mind in Ireland
than has yet been at all recognised; he helped to make his country
fearless and strong. Thanks mainly to him and to those who worked with
him, Ireland's thought is freer and more outspoken; there is more
thought in Ireland than there used to be. This does not make the country
easier to govern, and just now, Ireland, if given the opportunity, would
have a hard task to govern itself. But Ireland would not be the only
country in the world in that predicament. The schoolmaster has been
abroad, and where you have education without liberty there is bound to
be trouble. The only cure is, not to suppres