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He knew nothing of the operation of tracheotomy, and though he spoke English well he found it difficult to follow Michael's soft, thick, County Cork speech. "She's a grand heap of a girl, isn't she?" continued that gentleman, regarding Arithelli with kindly eyes. He had all the Celt's love of romance, and the ingrained reverence of the Irish Catholic for women.
"For ages and ages the world has been constantly slipping ever more and more out of the Celt's grasp," wrote Matthew Arnold. But all the while the Celt has great compensations. To him belongs another world than the visible; the world of phantasmagoria, of emotion, the world of passionate beginnings, rather than of things achieved.
The Celt's quick feeling for what is noble and distinguished gave his poetry style; his indomitable personality gave it pride and passion; his sensibility and nervous exaltation gave it a better gift still, the gift of rendering with wonderful felicity the magical charm of nature. The forest solitude, the bubbling spring, the wild flowers, are everywhere in romance.
The Celt's exuberance jarred on his soul. Since the affair with "Captain Alden," the Master's nerves had gone a little raw. Bohannan rallied bravely. "Of course," he went on, "it was unfortunate about that New Zealand chap going West. He looked like a right good fellow. But, well c'est la guerre!
For ages and ages the world has been constantly slipping, ever more and more out of the Celt's grasp. 'They went forth to the war, Ossian says most truly, 'BUT THEY ALWAYS FELL. And yet, if one sets about constituting an ideal genius, what a great deal of the Celt does one find oneself drawn to put into it!
He handled each with the reverence of a son. Having dressed in them, he drew himself up with not a little of the Celt's pleasure in fine clothes, and walked into the painting room. Lenorme started with admiration of his figure, and wonder at the dignity of his carriage, while, mingled with these feelings, he was aware of an indescribable doubt, something to which he could give no name.
Nothing more natural than that a cold draught should have soughed from the pent interior of the temple, or that the air-liner, slowly turning as she hung above the Haram, should with her vast planes have for a moment thrown her shadow over the square. But the Celt's imaginative nature quivered as he gripped the stone. "You, quick, on the other end!" he cried to Emilio. "You, Lombardo, steady her!
And they baptized her, and gave her the name of Flower-Aspect. Celtic romance is full of exquisite touches like that, showing the delicacy of the Celt's feeling in these matters, and how deeply nature lets him come into her secrets.
In some respects, at any rate, these documents are what they claim to be, they hold what they pretend to hold, they touch that primitive world of which they profess to be the voice. The true critic is he who can detect this precious and genuine part in them, and employ it for the elucidation of the Celt's genius and history, and for any other fruitful purposes to which it can be applied.
The tall, dark-eyed, beautiful Celt, attainted in blood and brain by generations of famine and drink, alternating with the fervid sensuousness of the girl, her Saxon sense of right alternating with the Celt's hereditary sense of revenge, his dreamy patriotism, his facile platitudes, his acceptance of literature as a sort of bread basket, his knowledge that he is not great nor strong, and can do nothing in the world but love his country; and as he passes his thirtieth year the waxing strong of the disease, nervous disease complex and torturous; to him drink is at once life and death; an article is bread, and to calm him and collect what remains of weak, scattered thought, he must drink.