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heavens!" said Leigh Kelway sitting up very straight in his chair. "Was he hurt, Slipper?" asked Flurry casually. "Hurt is it?" echoed Slipper in high scorn; "killed on the spot!" He paused to relish the effect of the dénouement on Leigh Kelway. "Oh, divil so pleasant an afthernoon ever you seen; and indeed, Mr Flurry, it's what we were all sayin', it was a great pity your honour was not there for the likin' you had for Driscoll."'

Leigh Kelway, it may be noted, is the lineal descendant of Mr Prettyman, the pragmatic English under-secretary in ‘Charles O'Malley' who, having observed that he had never seen an Irish wake, was horrified by the prompt offer of his Galway host, a notorious practical joker, to provide a corpse on the spot. But this is only one of the instances of parallelism in which the later writers, though showing far greater restraint and fidelity to type, have illustrated the continuance of temperamental qualities, which Lever and his forerunner Maxwell-the author of 'Wild Sports of the West' portrayed in a more extravagant form. On the other hand, it would be impossible to imagine a greater contrast than that between Lever's thrasonical narrator-heroes and Major Yeates, R.M., whose fondness for sport is allied to a thorough consciousness of his own infirmities as a sportsman. There is no heroic figure in 'Some Experiences of an Irish R.M.,' but the characters are all lifelike, and at least half a dozenFlurry' Knox, his cousin Sally and his old grandmother Mrs Knox of Aussolas, Slipper, Mrs Cadogan and the incomparable Maria-form as integral a part of our circle of acquaintance as if we had known them in real life. The Real Charlotte' is a greater achievement, but the R.M. is a surer passport to immortality.

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The further instalment of Experiences' published a few years later did not escape the common lot of sequels. They were brilliantly written; but one was more conscious of the excellence of the manner than in any of their predecessors. The two volumes of short stories and sketches, published in 1903 and 1906 under the titles of 'All on the Irish Shore' and 'Some Irish Yesterdays' respectively, show some new and engaging aspects of the genius of the collaborators. There is a chapter called 'Children of the Captivity' in which the would-be English humorist's conception of Irish humour is dealt with faithfully—as it

deserves to be. The essay is also remarkable for the passage in which are set down once and for all the true canons for the treatment of dialect. Pronunciation and spelling, as the authors point out, are after all of small account in its presentment::

The vitalising power is in the rhythm of the sentence, the turn of phrase, the knowledge of idiom, and of, beyond all, the attitude of mind. . . . The shortcoming is, of course, trivial to those who do not suffer because of it, but want of perception of word and phrase and turn of thought means more than mere artistic failure, it means want of knowledge of the wayward and shrewd and sensitive minds that are at the back of the dialect. The very wind that blows softly over brown acres of bog carries perfumes and sounds that England does not know: the women digging the potato-land are talking of things that England does not understand. The question that remains is whether England will ever understand.'

The hunting sketches in these volumes include the wonderful Patrick Day's Hunt,' which is a masterpiece in the high bravura of the brogue. Another is noticeable for a passage on the affection inspired by horses. When Johnny Connolly heard that his mistress was driven to sell the filly he had trained and nursed so carefully, he did not disguise his disappointment:

"Well, indeed, that's too bad, miss," said Johnny comprehendingly. "There was a mare I had one time, and I sold her before I went to America. God knows, afther she went from me, whenever I'd look at her winkers hanging on the wall I'd have to cry. I never seen a sight of her till three years afther that, afther I coming home. I was coming out o' the fair at Enniscar, an' I was talking to a man an' we coming down Dangan Hill, and what was in it but herself coming up in a cart! An' I didn't look at her, good nor bad, nor know her, but sorra bit but she knew me talking, an' she turned in to me with the cart. Ho, ho, ho!' says she, and she stuck her nose into me like she'd be kissing me. Be dam,

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but I had to cry. An' the world wouldn't stir her out o' that till I'd lead her on meself. As for cow nor dog nor any other thing, there's nothing would rise your heart like a horse!"' And if horses are irresistible, so are Centaurs. That is the moral to be drawn from Dan Russel the Fox,' the latest work from the pens of Miss Somerville and Miss

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Martin, in which the rival claims of culture and foxhunting are subjected to a masterly analysis.

The joint authors of the 'R.M.' have paid forfeit for their popularity by being expected to repeat their first resounding success. Happily the pressure of popular demand has not impaired the artistic excellence of their work, though we cannot help thinking that if they had been left to themselves they might have given us at least one other novel on the lines of 'The Real Charlotte.' Their later work, again, has been subjected to the ordeal, we do not say of conscious imitation, but of comparison with books which would probably have never been written, or would have been written on another plan, but for the success of the 'R.M.' To regard this rivalry as serious would be, in the opinion of the present writer, an abnegation of the critical faculty.

The only formidable competitor Miss Martin and Miss Somerville have encountered is the genial writer who chooses to veil his identity under the freakish pseudonym of 'George A. Birmingham.' Canon Hannay-for there can be no longer any breach of literary etiquette in alluding to him by his real name-had already made his mark as a serious or semi- serious observer of the conflicting tendencies, social and political, of the Ireland of to-day before he diverged into the paths of fantastic and frivolous comedy. The Seething Pot,' 'Hyacinth,' and 'Benedict Kavanagh' are extremely suggestive and dispassionate studies of various aspects of the Irish temperament, but they do not come within the scope of the present survey. It is enough for our present purpose to note the consequences of a request addressed to Canon Hannay by two young ladies somewhere about the year 1907 that he would 'write a story about treasure buried on an island.' The fact is recorded in the dedication of Spanish Gold,' his response to the appeal, and the first of that series of jocund extravaganzas which have earned for him the gratitude of all who regard amusement as the prime object of fiction.

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The contrast between his methods and those of the joint authors discussed above is apparent at every turn. He maintains the impartiality which marked his serious novels in his treatment of all classes of the community, but it is the impartiality not of a detached and self

effacing observer, but of a genial satirist. His knowledge of the Ireland that he knows is intimate and precise, and is shown by a multiplicity of illuminating details and an effective use of local colour. But the co-operation of nonIrish characters is far more essential to the development of his plots than in the case of the novels of Miss Somerville and Miss Martin. The mainspring of their stories is Irish right through. He depends on a situation which might have occurred just as well in England or America, while employing the conditions of Irish life to give it a characteristic twist or series of twists. Even his most notable creation, the Reverend Joseph John Meldon, is too restlessly energetic to be an altogether typical Irishman, to say nothing of his unusual attitude in politics: 'Nothing on earth would induce me to mix myself up with any party.' An Irishman of immense mental activity, living in Ireland, and yet wholly unpolitical is something of a freak. Again, while the tone of Canon Hannay's books is admirably wholesome, and while his frank distaste for the squalors of the problem novel will meet with general sympathy, there is no denying that his treatment of the 'love interest' is for the most part perfunctory or even farcical. Lastly, in regard to style he differs widely from the authors of the 'R.M.' Their note is a vivid conciseness; his the easy charm of a flowing pen, always unaffected, often picturesque and even eloquent, never offending, but seldom practising the art of omission.

But it is ungrateful to subject to necessarily damaging comparisons an author to whom we owe the swift passage of so many pleasant hours. It might be hard to find the exact counterpart of J. J.' in the flesh, but he is none the less an unforgettable person, this athletic, exuberant, unkempt curate, unscrupulous but not unprincipled, who lied fluently, not for any mean purpose, but for the joy of mystification or in order to carry out his plans, or justify his arguments. His crowning achievement is his conquest of Mr Willoughby, the Chief Secretary, by a masterly vindication of his conduct on the lines of Pragmatism' a statement isn't a lie if it proves itself in actual practice to be useful-it's true.' 'J. J.' only once meets his matchin Father Mulcrone, the parish priest of Inishmore, who sums up the philosophy of government in his criticism of

Mr Willoughby's successor: A fellow that starts off by thinking himself clever enough to know what's true and what isn't will do no good in Ireland. A simple-hearted innocent kind of man has a better chance.' Needless to

say, the rival treasure-hunters, both of them rogues, are bested at all points by the two padres, while poetic justice is satisfied by the fact that the treasure falls into the adhesive hands of the poor islanders, and J. J.'s' general integrity is fully re-established in the epilogue, where, transplanted to an English colliery village, he devotes his energies to the conversion of agnostics, blasphemers and wife-beaters.

The extravagance of the plot is redeemed by the realism of the details; by acute sidelights on the tortuous workings of the native mind, with its strange blending of shrewdness and innocence; by faithful reproductions of the talk of those qui amant omnia dubitantius loqui' and habitually say 'it might' instead of 'yes.' And there are delightful digressions on the subject of relief works; hits at the Irish-speaking movement; pungent classifications of the visitors to the wild west of Ireland; and, now and again, in the rare moments when the author chooses to be serious, passages marked by fine insight and sympathy. Such is the picture of Thomas O'Flaherty Pat, the patriarch of the treasure island: 'An elderly man and five out of the nine children resident on the island stood on the end of the pier when Meldon and the Major landed. The man was clad in a very dirty white flannel jacket and a pair of yellowish flannel trousers, which hung in a tattered fringe round his naked feet and ankles. He had a long white beard and grey hair, long as a woman's, drawn straight back from his forehead. The hair and beard were both unkempt and matted. But the man held himself erect and looked straight at the strangers through great dark eyes. His hands, though battered and scarred with toil, were long and shapely. His face had a look of dignity, of a certain calm and satisfied superiority. Men of this kind are to be met with here and there among the Connacht peasantry. They are in reality children of a vanishing race, of a lost civilisation, a bygone culture. They watch the encroachments of another race and new ideas with a sort of sorrowful contempt. It is as if, understanding and despising what they see around them, they do not consider it worth while to try to explain themselves; as if, possessing a wisdom of their

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