of any other. Even if there was not essential greatness in them we
would love them for the same reasons which bring back so many
exiles to revisit the haunts of childhood. But there was essential
greatness in that neglected bardic literature which O'Grady was
the first to reveal in a noble manner. He had the spirit of an
ancient epic poet. He is a comrade of Homer, his birth delayed in
time perhaps that he might renew for a sophisticated people the
elemental simplicity and hardihood men had when the world was
young and manhood was prized more than any of its parts, more than
thought or beauty or feeling. He has created for us or
rediscovered one figure which looms in the imagination as a high
comrade of Hector, Achilles, Ulysses, Rama or Yudisthira, as great
in spirit as any. Who could extol enough his Cuculain, that
incarnation of Gaelic chivalry, the fire and gentleness, the
beauty and heroic ardour or the imaginative splendour of the
episodes in his retelling of the ancient story. There are writers
who bewitch us by a magical use of words, whose lines glitter like
jewels, whose effects are gained by an elaborate art and who deal
with the subtlest emotions. Others again are simple as an Egyptian
image and yet are more impressive and you remember them less for
the sentence than for a grandiose effect. They are not so much
concerned with the art of words as with the creation of great
images informed with magnificence of spirit. They are not lesser
artists but greater, for there is a greater art in the
simplification of form in the statue of Memnon than there is in
the intricate detail of a bronze by Benvenuto Cellini. Standish
O'Grady had in his best moments that epic wholeness and
simplicity, and the figure of Cuculain amid his companions of the
Red Branch which he discovered and refashioned for us is I think
the greatest spiritual gift any Irishman for centuries has given