the personality and this looking out on life from the viewpoint of Esther Waters or Lewis Seymour, or Edward Dempsey or Rose Leicester, of Kate Lennox or Mr. Innes. Such a power is akin to one of the greatest powers of the Gael, his quick sympathy with what appeals to him in others, his momentary absorption in their interests and his passing possession by their purpose. It is this habit of his nature that makes the Gael tell people what they wish to hear, it is this that makes him so courteous, it is this that makes him so good an actor. And the power that makes one man a good actor, a real actor,—not one who happens to fit a part, but one who can change his personality from part to part,—is but another manifestation of the power that enables a man to identify himself wholly, now with this character, now with that, in a story which he is writing. If a man can express such identification in dialogue, he can, if he master dramatic construction, make himself into a dramatist; if he express it in subtle analytic writing about the character, it gives him one of the great powers of the novelist, a power which, if it is united with the power of story-telling, makes him a great novelist, and, oftentimes, even if he be but a fair story-teller, a great novelist. The English novel has been famously deficient in story-telling ability since Scott's day, and Mr. Moore is no exception to the rule. As, however, the emphasis of all his stories is on character, his deficiency in narrative power matters hardly at all.
Mr. Moore is, then, Ireland's greatest novelist because he has in greatest measure—in full measure—this greatest gift of the Gael, the gift of dramatic impersona-
