I have known young Dublin working men slip out of their workshop
to see 'the second Thomas Davis' passing by, and even remember a
conspiracy, by some three or four, to make him 'the leader of the
Irish race at home & abroad,' and all because he had regular
features; and when all is said, Alexander the Great & Alcibiades
were personable men, and the Founder of the Christian religion was
the only man who was neither a little too tall nor a little too
short but exactly six feet high. We in Ireland thought as do the
plays and ballads, not understanding that, from the first moment
wherein nature foresaw the birth of Bastien-Lepage, she has only
granted great creative power to men whose faces are contorted with
extravagance or curiosity or dulled with some protecting
stupidity.
I had now met all those who were to make the nineties of the last
century tragic in the history of literature, but as yet we were
all seemingly equal, whether in talent or in luck, and scarce even
personalities to one another. I remember saying one night at the
Cheshire Cheese, when more poets than usual had come, 'None of us
can say who will succeed, or even who has or has not talent.
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