I attack things that are as dear to many as some holy image carried
hither and thither by some broken clan, and can but say that I have
felt in my body the affections I disturb, and believed that if I could
raise them into contemplation I would make possible a literature, that
finding its subject-matter all ready in men's minds would be, not as
ours is, an interest for scholars, but the possession of a people. I
have founded societies with this aim, and was indeed founding one in
Paris when I first met with J.M. Synge, and I have known what it is to
be changed by that I would have changed, till I became argumentative
and unmannerly, hating men even in daily life for their opinions. And
though I was never convinced that the anatomies of last year's leaves
are a living forest, or thought a continual apologetic could do other
than make the soul a vapour and the body a stone; or believed that
literature can be made by anything but by what is still blind and dumb
within ourselves, I have had to learn how hard in one who lives where
forms of expression and habits of thought have been born, not for the
pleasure of begetting but for the public good, is that purification
from insincerity, vanity, malignity, arrogance, which is the discovery
of style. But it became possible to live when I had learnt all I had
not learnt in shaping words, in defending Synge against his enemies,
and knew that rich energies, fine, turbulent or gracious thoughts,
whether in life or letters, are but love-children.