that first plunge away from oneself that is always pure technique, delight in doing, not because one would or should, but merely because one can.
He once said to me "a man has to bring up his family and be as virtuous as is compatible with so doing, and if he does more than that he is a Puritan; a dramatist has to express his subject and to find as much beauty as is compatible with that, and if he does more he is an aesthete." That is to say, he was consciously objective. Whenever he tried to write drama without dialect he wrote badly, and he made several attempts, because only through dialect could he escape self-expression, see all that he did from without, allow his intellect to judge the images of his mind as if they had been created by some other mind. His objectivity was however technical only, for in those images paraded all the desires of his heart. He was timid, too shy for general conversation, an invalid and full of moral scruple, and he was to create now some ranting braggadocio, now some tipsy hag full of poetical speech, and now some young man or girl full of the most abounding health. He never spoke an unkind word, had admirable manners, and yet his art was to fill the streets with rioters, and to bring upon his dearest friends enmities that may last their lifetime.
No mind can engender till divided into two, but that of a Keats or a Shelley falls into an intellectual part that follows, and a hidden emotional flying image, whereas in a mind like that of Synge the emotional part is dreaded and stagnant, while the intellectual part is a clear mirror like technical achievement.
But in writing of Synge I have run far ahead for in 1896 he was but one picture among many. I am often astonished when I think that we can meet unmoved some person, or pass some house, that in later years is to bear a chief part in our lives. Should there not be some flutter of the nerve or stopping of the heart like that of Macgregor experienced at the first meeting with a phantom?
XLIII
Many pictures come before me without date or order. I am walking somewhere near the Luxembourg Gardens when Synge, who seldom generalizes and only after much thought, says "There are three things any two of which have often come together, but never
