Page:Irish plays and playwrights (IA irishplaysplaywr00weygrich).pdf/302

 266 word to the simple one, the Latinical adjective to the Saxon; both had rather see visions and dream dreams than write about the "common light of common hours"; both goad their imaginations until they run riot and so confuse their possessors, who should control them, that they are unable to distinguish between what is fact and what is fancy. You could carry the analogy further, to events of their lives—the runnings-away in boyhood; the devoted friendships to poets in youth; the incredible amount of hard work achieved in manhood despite of often recurring illnesses.

Of the long stories published as by "F.M.," Sharp repudiated "Flora MacDonald" because it was too much in the way of "ordinary romance," and "Green Fire" for the same reason and because it was largely about Brittany, a country with which, by some strange chance, he did not make himself familiar, though he had visited and learned to know well at least parts of all the other Celtic countries. It is to my mind, however, if not so definitely of a wholeness of texture as "Pharais" or "The Mountain Lovers," or so singular, less monotonous than either. All three of these stories disappoint my memory of them when I again read them. This is, I believe, because all three of them—and for that matter many of the short stories as well—are incompletely realized, or because—in the case of two of them, "The Mountain Lovers" and "Green Fire"—they are unevenly written. Their high intention and atmosphere remain with you after you have put the books aside, and in the course of time you forget their hurried writing, their inconsistencies, and