to appear in 1897 under the title Ireland, with Other Poems. This contained some of his most exquisite work; religious lyrics that soared up straight as the tapers upon an altar, songs of hapless Innisfail, and chastened meditations upon life and love. And it proved, beyond all doubt, that here was a poet of Other-world fealties, with no intention of conciliating the practical English public. With heart-whole sincerity Johnson followed the gods of his affection—and for the most part, they were neglected divinities. Yet his poet's insight had prophetic clearness; looking backward now, one is almost amazed at the number of public movements which shared his sympathy. There was, first of all, the Catholic reaction in England, admittedly one of the great phenomena of nineteenth-century thought; and Lionel Johnson was as distinctively its product as the Westminster Cathedral. Again, he was one of the first to give ardent support to that Celtic Renaissance which has since proved itself a reality. As an early member of the Irish Literary Society, he mourned with Douglas Hyde over the decline of the Gaelic tongue; while, with his friend William Butler Yeats, he shared hopes for the future of Irish drama. So, too, did Johnson raise his protest against a certain decadent literary influence from across the Channel, and against various native "professors of strange speech" and stranger graces, who "suffer under the delusion that they are very French."
But throughout these years when his critical activity brightened the pages of the Academy, the Daily Chronicle and other papers, Johnson's health was perceptibly failing. His body, always frail, grew less and less able to support the continued mental strain. Even those long, wondrous rambles through Wales and Cornwall, which
