some far-off spacious land and time.




XI


There are artists like Byron, like Goethe, like Shelley, who have
impressive personalities, active wills and all their faculties at the
service of the will; but he belonged to those who like Wordsworth, like
Coleridge, like Goldsmith, like Keats, have little personality, so far as
the casual eye can see, little personal will, but fiery and brooding
imagination. I cannot imagine him anxious to impress, or convince in any
company, or saying more than was sufficient to keep the talk circling.
Such men have the advantage that all they write is a part of knowledge,
but they are powerless before events and have often but one visible
strength, the strength to reject from life and thought all that would mar
their work, or deafen them in the doing of it; and only this so long as
it is a passive act. If Synge had married young or taken some profession,
I doubt if he would have written books or been greatly interested in a
movement like ours; but he refused various opportunities of making money
in what must have been an almost unconscious preparation. He had no life
outside his imagination, little interest in anything that was not its
chosen subject. He hardly seemed aware of the existence of other writers.
I never knew if he cared for work of mine, and do not remember that I had
from him even a conventional compliment, and yet he had the most perfect
modesty and simplicity in daily intercourse, self-assertion was
impossible to him. On the other hand, he was useless amidst sudden
events. He was much shaken by the Playboy riot; on the first night