fore him when he takes up pen or
brush. A strong will is always directing the strong lines, forcing them
to repeat an image present to the inner eye. In his early days Jack
Yeats loafed about the quays at Sligo, and we may be sure he was at all
the races, and paid his penny to go into the side-shows, and see the
freaks, the Fat Woman and the Skeleton Man. It was probably at this
period of his life he was captured by pirates of the Spanish Main. My
remembrance of Irish county towns at that time is that no literature
flourished except the Penny Dreadful and the local press. I may be
doing Jack Yeats an injustice when hailing him at the beginning of a
fascinating career I yet suspect a long background of Penny Dreadfuls
behind it. How else could he have drawn his pirates? They are the only
pirates in art who manifest the true pride, glory, beauty, and terror
of their calling as the romantic heart of childhood conceives of it. The
pirate has been lifted up to a strange kind of poetry in some of Jack
Yeats' pictures. I remember one called "Walking the Plank." The solemn
theatrical face, lifted up to the blue sky in a last farewell to the
wild world and its lawless freedom, haunted me for days. There was also
a pen-and-ink drawing I wish I could reproduce here. A young buccaneer,
splendid in evil bravery, leaned across a bar where a strange, beastly,
little, old, withered, rat-like figure was drawing the drink. The little
figure was like a devil with the soul all concentrated into malice,
and the whole picture affected one with terror like a descent into some
ferocious human hell.

In all these figures, pirates or peasants, there is an ever present
suggestion of poetry; it is in the skies, or in the distance, or in the
colors; and these people who laugh in the fairs will have after hours
as solemn as the quiet star-gazer in the "Midsummer Eve." This poetry
is evident in the oddest ways, and escapes analysis, so elusive and so
original is it, as in the "Street of Shows." Nothing at first thought
seems more hopelessly remote from poetry than the country circus, with
its lurid posters of the Giant Schoolgirl, the Petrified Man, and the
Mermaid, all in strong sunlight; but the heart carries with it its
own mood, and this flaring scene has undergone some indefinite
transformation by the alchemy of genius, and it assumes the character of
a fairy tale or Arabian Nights Entertainment imagined in the fantastic
dreams of childhood. The