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 demi-god 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 be also the courtesy which shall overcome
the enemy that nothing else may overcome.

I am sure that Standish O'Grady would rather I should speak of his
work and its bearing on the spiritual life of Ireland, than about
himself, and, because I think so, in this reverie I have followed
no set plan but have let my thoughts run as they will. But I would
not have any to think that this man was only a writer, or that he
could have had the heroes of the past for spiritual companions,
without himself being inspired to fight dragons and wizardry. I
have sometimes regretted that contemporary politics drew O'Grady
away from the work he began so greatly. I have said to myself he
might have given us an Oscar, a Diarmuid or a Caolte, an equal
comrade to Cuculain, but he could not, being lit up by the spirit
of his hero, he merely the bard and not the fighter, and no man
in Ireland intervened in the affairs of his country with a superior
nobility of aim. He was the last champion of the Irish aristocracy,
and still more the voice of conscience for them, and he spoke to
them of their duty to the nation as one might imagine some fearless