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74 Gregory, to mention them in the order of prominence that Mr. Moore gives them.

Lady Gregory and Mr. Yeats have learned their art, the highest and most difficult of all forms of literary art, so that each is sure in the shaping of fable and emotion to the stage, though neither is to drama native-born as was Synge. Mr. Martyn and Mr. Moore have neither of them, however, learned the art of the playwright. Mr. Martyn has the root of the matter in him, but he remains the amateur. Mr. Moore was once the amateur, even in the novel, in "A Modern Lover" (1883), for instance, true as that story is to the London art life and aristocratic life it is intended to reflect, but he has since then won his way, book by book, to the position, now that Mr. Hardy has given up the novel, of first novelist of the English-speaking peoples. Had he studied the play as painfully and as long as he has studied the novel, it may be that Mr. Moore had conquered it, too, though I doubt it, for the concentration necessary to drama is alien to his method as a novelist. As it is, his best plays are but the good journeyman work of one who is a skilled literary craftsman. Mr. Martyn has more originality of theme, more intimacy with Irish character, a surer instinct for effective situation, and more nobility of intention, though Mr. Moore's greater power over words gives his plays a dignity as art that the plays of Mr. Martyn do not attain.

Alone of the quartette that founded "The Irish Literary Theatre," Mr. Martyn is possessed of none of the instincts of the publicist. Lady Gregory has edited