ich, unlike the jargon
that is affectation in many Irish writers, used by him, has the power
of affecting us as the old Ionic could move those who spoke in Attic
Greek. It helps us to get into the fanciful and grotesque atmosphere
which he conjured up out of the most real life. In all his modern
plays there are character, dramatic intensity, fidelity to the folk
life--and that life, with its brutality and its delicacy, attains the
utmost that life can hold, seen through the poetic vision of Synge,
made poignant and vivid by his imagination.

VII

THE SHRAMANA EKAI KAWAGUCHI

Books are like places of entertainment in that they often afford a
pleasure wholly different in kind from that intended by the author. An
original and cultured gentleman of my acquaintance has a habit of
visiting suburban music-halls, and deriving therefrom a delight
exquisite beyond the dreams of the artists who forgather at the
Wormwood Scrubs Empire. In like manner there are books which have come
to be accepted as classics on the ground of excellences not aimed at
by their authors, not necessarily because the authors were artless,
but because their conscious art had no relation to the quality in them
which pleases. Pepys was a first-rate Admiralty official and a
desirable boon companion, but to his many excellences, known to
himself no less than to his friends, that of being a master in English
literature would never have been added. A still better example is the
_Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi_. We read them now because of
what we are accustomed to call their "human interest," because they
show us the robust, ordinary, fleshly, and ideal side of pious
mediaeval Catholics; they appeal to us humorously and pathetically;
they are tragi-comedies of the transcendental life. But they were
written to commemorate the pious acts of the saints, and the authors
would have been shocked to think that they were contributing to the
profane delight of the general and possibly heretical reader. In the
same way the _Journal of John Wesley_ is a delight to many people to
whom Wesley's peculiar excellences make no appeal. He was a great
evangelist, a powerful emotional influence, a considerable thinker, a
scholar, a robust man, and a gentleman of the Church of England. But
when we have named all these qualities we have scarcely begun to
account for the endless delight of his _Journal_. That which he
consciously aimed at is not that which gives