be his book, 'The Aran Islands.'

His writings, up to this time, had been tentative and imitative,
being mainly reflections from (and upon) what had most struck him
in his reading. He had read considerably in some six languages,
(Hebrew, Irish, German, Italian, French and English) and widely in
at least four of them, besides his scholarship in the universal
language of music. Among his early plans for books were schemes
for a translation from some of the prose of St. Francis of Assisi,
(which he abandoned, because an English translation was published
at the time) and for a critical study of Racine, whose pure and
noble art always meant much to him. Some critical and other
writings of this period exist in manuscript. They are said to be
carefully written, but wanting in inner impulse.

Throughout this period if not throughout his life he lived with
the utmost ascetic frugality, bordering always, or touching, on
poverty. He used to say that his income was "forty pounds a year
and a new suit of clothes, when my old ones get too shabby." He
had no expensive habits, he was never self-indulgent, he had no
wish to entertain nor to give away, no desire to make nor to own
money, no taste for collection nor zest for spending. He eschewed
all things that threatened his complete frugal independence and
thereby the integrity of his mind.

The superficial man, not seeing this last point, sometimes felt
that he "did not know how to abound."

* * * * *