an apple of banter, which one afterwards ate and forgot.

He never tried to be brilliant. I never heard him say a brilliant
thing. He said shrewd things. I do not know what he could have
done if stirred to talk. Few people born out of old, sunny
countries talk well. I never heard him engaged with a brilliant
talker, either man or woman. He told me that once, in Paris, he
had gone to hear a brilliant talker--a French poet, now dead. It
was like him that he did not speak to the talker. "We sat round on
chairs and the great man talked."

During the evening, I spoke a few words to Synge about some Irish
matter. We pushed back our chairs out of the circle and discussed
it. I did not know at that time that he was a writer. I knew by
name most of the writers in the Irish movement. Synge was not one
of the names. I thought that he must be at work on the political
side. I wronged him in this. He never played any part in politics:
politics did not interest him. He was the only Irishman I have
ever met who cared nothing for either the political or the
religious issue. He had a prejudice against one Orange district,
because the people in it were dour. He had a prejudice against one
Roman Catholic district, because the people in it were rude.
Otherwise his mind was untroubled. Life was what interested him.
He would have watched a political or religious riot with gravity,
with pleasure in the spectacle, and malice for the folly. He would
have taken no side, and felt no emotion, except a sort of pity
when the losers could go on no longer. The question was nothing to
him. All that he asked for was to hear what it made people say and
to see what it made people do.