Evening star., 1936-04-11

developed story. 1t is an account Of
q boys life through the Parnell agi-
tation, when he would be put up on
the platform at meetings to sing 1.-The
Wexford Boys" through to his grad
uation from the Jesuit School Of st.
Ignatius, when he decides against
entering the church and emigrates to
America. He is shown to be human
youngster, though his humanity Is
deeply qualified by race.
There is little that is remarkable
in the story, which must be conceded
to have its chief merit in its drawing
of Irish scenes. Against these scenes
the experiences of its hero, in so far
as he has personal experiences, are
fairly conventional. His life in the
Jesuit school is reminiscent Of James
Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man" if that acid work were
to be translated into fiction of a genial
and mellow kind Beyond that. 1.-THE
Green Lion" suggests little comment.
PLAYS OF CHANGING IRELAND.
Edited by Curtis Garfield. New
York: The Macmillan Co.
IRELAND is changing! 1t is weak
ening citadel-the last, many
think-of individualism. The River
Shannon, about which poets have
sung, now sings its own song and it is
a threnody of industrialization. The
Shannon has been harnessed and one
wonders what will happen now to the
Irish soul. Will it, too, go the way
of conformity to changing world?
One would say no. thinking of the
general conception of the Irish. But
it is not this traditional conception
that counts. One knows that when
one reads the works of Ireland's later
playwrights. They are changing, par
ticularly the Dublin Gate theater
group No longer do they find the
materials for their work in the people
and the soil, which were the in
gradients of the naturalistic drama
that has been so peculiarly Irish.
Expressionism and impressionism
are new words in the vernacular of the
Irish drama. But Prof. Garfield ap-
plies them with an interchangeable
exactitude. He chooses eight plays to
illustrate the character Of the change
that is taking place. Even Yeats. at
70, is changing, and so is Lenox Rob-
inson, much younger, but of the Abbey
theater tradition.
Prof. Canheld's book is destined,
naturally, for no large sale, but one
could well afford to read it as docu-
ment of social change as we'll as an
anthology of eight representative
works of the Irish dramatic art.
F. J. c.
SIR WALTER RALE1GH-LAsT OF
THE ELIzABETHANS. BY Ed
ward Thompson. New Haven:
Yale University Press.
MANY lifes have been written OF
A'A Raleigh, but then Raleigh lived
many. In his present book. Edward
Thompson deals with precisely that
aspect Of the great captain, setting
him down not merely as sailor and
courtier, in which roles we think OF
him most commonly, but also as
scholar, administrator. pirate, poet,
patron of letters, member Of Parlia-
ment, investigator Of new ideas and
engineer. In all, he says, Sir walter
was the perpetual amateur, drawn by
keen intellectual curiosity to delve into
every new thing, and obsessed with a
sense of unreality which kept him
from devoting himself to any one of
the many careers in which ne might
have excelled so brilliantly.
That this combined outreaching and
unbelief was a phenomenon of the
Elizabethan mentality Mr.. Thompson
seems to imply, for he attributes it to
Raleigh in his character as archtype
of the Elizabethans. The unbelief
found its expression in almost as many
ways as the outreaching. Raleigh was
accused of atheism in religion, his
ideas of statecraft were unorthodox
in many respects and surely his search
for the tabled perfections Of the New
World was based rather on desire than
expectation. He looms a giant, in Mr..
Thompson's biography, but q giant
who was footloose and unable to rest
anywhere.
The book is by no means hero
worshipping in its tone, yet is it plain
that the author loves his subject. He
seems to set Raleigh's failings down in
a mood of pride, as one who says.
Even So" He clearly brings an
immense knowledge of Elizabeths
great day to his work, and surely a
critics word is not needed to make
plain that this means richness and
splendor in episode.
Yet of all this material not enough
exists that bears on Raleigh directly to
take him quite out of the mists of
legend and make mere modern-sized
man of him. Mr.. Thompson has been
constrained to set down the brief con-
temporary record, and then to argue
from that as to what may have been.
He follows this method all through his
book. 1t may not be one calculated
to produce a work Of mathematical ex-
actitude, but it seems excellent for its
subject. For Sir Walter ought to be
q legend. There should be legends in
every time and every language like the
legend of Sir Walter. Such legends
make it possible for the rest of us to
live.
For this reason the present work
seems a happy one. Such hard and
fast facts as it produces are well at
tested to, and, for the rest, those Of
us who unreasoningly love the idea Of
the hero who replied to his enemies
guns with q "blare Of the trumpets"
can read the book with feeling that
its author, too, has been under the spell
and has scorned to set himself quite
free.
JAMES LONGSTREET, LEES WAR
HORSE. BY H. ]. Eckenrode and
Bryan Conrad. Chapel Hill: Uni
versity of North Carolina Press.
THIS curious biography would seem
to have for itself the most un-
grateful task, namely, Of making a