pretty, as certainly as the vulgar and insincere, and because it has
gathered into itself the simplest and most unforgetable thoughts of the
generations, it is the soil where all great art is rooted. Wherever it
is spoken by the fireside, or sung by the roadside, or carved upon the
lintel, appreciation of the arts that a single mind gives unity and
design to, spreads quickly when its hour is come.

In a society that has cast out imaginative tradition, only a few
people--three or four thousand out of millions--favoured by their own
characters and by happy circumstance, and only then after much labour,
have understanding of imaginative things, and yet "the imagination is
the man himself." The churches in the Middle Age won all the arts into
their service because men understood that when imagination is
impoverished, a principal voice--some would say the only voice--for the
awakening of wise hope and durable faith, and understanding charity,
can speak but in broken words, if it does not fall silent. And so it
has always seemed to me that we, who would re-awaken imaginative
tradition by making old songs live again, or by gathering old stories
into books, take part in the quarrel of Galilee. Those who are Irish
and would spread foreign ways, which, for all but a few, are ways of
spiritual poverty, take part also. Their part is with those who were of
Jewry, and yet cried out, "If thou let this man go thou art not
Caesar's friend."


1901.