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II
The melancholy, the philosophic irony, the elaborate music of a play
by John Synge, the simplicity, the sense of splendour of living in
Lady Gregory's lamentation of Emer, Mr. James Stephens when he makes
the sea waves 'Tramp with banners on the shore' are as much typical
of our thoughts and day, as was 'She dwelt beside the Anner with mild
eyes like the dawn,' or any stanza of the 'Pretty girl of Lough Dan,'
or any novel of Charles Lever's of a time that sought to bring Irish
men and women into one nation by means of simple patriotism and a
genial taste for oratory and anecdotes. A like change passed over
Ferrara's brick and stone when its great Duke, where there had been
but narrow medieval streets, made many palaces and threw out one
straight and wide street, as Carducci said, to meet the Muses.
Doubtless the men of 'Perdóndaris that famous city' have such
antiquity of manners and of culture that it is of small moment should
they please themselves with some tavern humour; but we must needs
cling to 'our foolish Irish pride' and form an etiquette, if we would
not have our people crunch their chicken bones with too convenient
teeth, and make our intellect architectural that we may not see them
turn domestic and effusive nor nag at one another in narrow streets.
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