depth men have who are much in nature in companionship with the
elements, the elder brothers of humanity: it must have been out of
such a boyhood and such intimacies with natural and
unsophisticated people that there came to him the understanding of
the heroes of the Red Branch. How pallid, beside the ruddy
chivalry who pass huge and fleet and bright through O'Grady's
pages, appear Tennyson's bloodless Knights of the Round Table,
fabricated in the study to be read in the drawing-room, as anaemic
as Burne Jones' lifeless men in armour. The heroes of ancient
Irish legend reincarnated in the mind of a man who could breathe
into them the fire of life, caught from sun and wind, their
ancient deities, and send them, forth to the world to do greater
deeds, to act through many men and speak through many voices. What
sorcery was in the Irish mind that it has taken so many years to
win but a little recognition for this splendid spirit; and that
others who came after him, who diluted the pure fiery wine of
romance he gave us with literary water, should be as well known or
more widely read. For my own part I can only point back to him and
say whatever is Irish in me he kindled to life, and I am humble
when I read his epic tale, feeling how much greater a thing it is
for the soul of a writer to have been the habitation of a demigod
than to have had the subtlest intellections.

We praise the man who rushes into a burning mansion and brings out
its greatest treasure. So ought we to praise this man who rescued
from the perishing Gaelic tradition its darling hero and restored
him to us, and I think now that Cuculain will not perish, and he
will be invisibly present at many a council of youth, and he will
be the daring which lifts the will beyond itself and fires it for
great causes, and he will also be the courtesy which shall