of refreshing 'common sense' with uncommon scorn of mere expediency, of deep piety with humorous horror of cant, of gentle manners and melodious voice, with warrior-swift insight into the characters of saints, men of action, and heroic poets of different eras and races. Whimsical as her talk and writing sometimes seemed,for she had certain antique principles and preferences which appeared to some prosaic persons scarcely consistent with her American citizenship,-beneath the dancing play of her fancy there was a rock of immutable faith; and on this was built the fortress of her life. Her affection for the active. saints, Saint Paul, Saint Sebastian, Saint George, Saint Patrick, Saint Martin of Tours, and, not least, the tardily canonised Jeanne d'Arc,-saints who were not just edifying names to her, but perpetual "fire and wings" to cheer and to inspirit, was typical of one who never forgot she was a soldier's daughter. Her father, General Patrick Robert Guiney, died when she was a young girl; but the constructive influence of his career affected her profoundly; and in his chivalrous and unworldly outlook may be found the key to his daughter's character, principles, and ideals. Zealous for moral and spiritual progress, she could recognise no virtue in the type of material progress which consists in ruthless extinction of the graces; nor would she tolerate the class of literature' from which everything exalted, ardent or exquisite, is drastically excluded on the pretext that'realism' would be outraged by such flights. "The play which leaves us miserable and bewildered, the harrowing social lesson leading nowhere, the transcript from commonplace life in which nothing is admirable but the faithful skill of the author-these are bad morals because they are bad art. . . . Many of the Elizabethan dramas are dark and terrible; but they compel men to think, and teach more humanities than a University course.' "Wilful sadness in literature" she denounced as nothing less than an actual crime." But "sadness which is impersonal, reluctantly uttered, and adjusted (in the utterance) to the eternal laws, is not so. . . . Melancholy, indeed, is inseparable from the highest art. We cannot wish it away; but we can demand a mastery over it.... Art is made of seemly abstinences. The moment it speaks out fully, lets us know all, ceases to represent a choice and a control of its own material, -ceases to be, in short, an authority and a mystery, and prefers to set up for a mere Chinese copy of life,— just so soon its birthright is transferred." 1 Her own poem To an Ideal" wafts us back into the atmosphere of some of her "starrie gentlemen" of the seventeenth century: That I have tracked you from afar, my crown I call it and my height, All hail, O dear and difficult star! All hail, O heart of light! No pleasure born of time for me, Who in you touch eternity. If I have found you where you are, I win my mortal fight.” In her "Knight Errant," purporting to be a soliloquy of ✔ St. George, we hear her own voice : "Spirits of old that bore me, And set me, meek of mind, Between great dreams before me, And deeds as great behind,— As first abroad I ride, Shall help me wear, with every scar, Let claws of lightning clutch me Or ever malice touch me And glory make me proud. O give my youth, my faith, my sword, 1" Wilful Sadness in Literature," 1892 (reprinted in A short life in the saddle, Lord! I fear no breathing bowman, And may Our Lady lend to me Sight of the Dragon soon!" Self-revealing, too, is the "Ode for a Master-Mariner ashore": "There in his room, whene'er the moon looks in To silver now a shell and now a fin, And o'er his chart glide like an argosy,— Quiet and old sits he. Danger! He hath grown heart-sick for thy smile!" And Danger, which the old seaman erstwhile wooed as a bride, is adjured to whirl him out, even if only in a dream, from dull drab safety into welcome storm, and grant him a ship in which to go down, dauntless to the end. Age, in Louise Guiney's poems, is always lovable, always tenderly depicted, not least so in her imitations of epitaphs from the Greek Anthology: "Me, deep-tressèd meadows, take to your loyal keeping, Hard by the swish of sickles, ever in Aulon sleeping, Philophron, old and tired, and glad to be done with reaping." When Charles Lamb was told that his work did not "suit the age," he responded cheerfully, "Damn the age! I'll write for antiquity!" and this retort Louise Guiney delighted to remember. She had much in common with Elia, even to her love for the Bodleian, which she described as her " Mecca" and from which she could not endure to remain long absent. But never was there any book-lover less of a proverbial dryas-dust. Wearing her scholarship with as debonair a gaiety as one of her Cavalier poets would have worn his jewel-hilted rapier, she was never supercilious to the unlearned. Perhaps her versatility and charm were partly owing to the contrasting nationalities which went to the making of the mortal part of her. Protesting against being described as an "Irish-American," she pointed out that she was an "Irish-French-Scots-English American!" Certainly she had some of the elements of all these races blended in a manner which was entirely her own. "My father," she declared, used to say my character was 'wholly un-Irish'; and I am sure my tight, unfertile, law-and-order muse is so. But in Ireland, in its history and people, I have an unchanging interest." 'Tight' and 'unfertile' are hardly the epithets which fall most readily from the lips of any reader who remembers "The Wild Ride": I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses, All night in their stalls the importunate pawing and neighing. Let cowards and laggards fall back! but alert to the saddle, Weather-worn and abreast, go men of our galloping legion, With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him. The trail is through dolour and dread, over crags and morasses; There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us : What odds? We are Knights of the Grail, we are vowed to the riding. Thought's self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb, A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle, We spur to a land of no-name, outracing the storm-wind; Yet in spite of, or perhaps because of, this keen zest in life, this love of movement, the gift of timely tranquillity also was hers; and however busy, however strenuous, she never appeared perturbed or in a hurry. In some of her idylls there is a hush so exquisite as to be almost unearthly : the moonlit "Nocturne," the mediaeval Christmas Carols, the stately cadences of "Beati Mortui," the concentrated calm power of "The Inner Fate," are notable instances; and in a few graphic lines she could paint pictures of rural peace, whether in New England or Old, so seemingly spontaneous in their dewy freshness that they shine like mirrored nature rather than conscious art. This beauty of quietness smiles also from one little lyric, which in its way is just as personally significant as her "Wild Ride." "Take Temperance to thy breast Of all that shall thee betide; For better than Fortune's best Is mastery in the using, And sweeter than anything sweet The art to lay it aside." 1 Three slender books of her verse, "The White Sail" (1887), “A Roadside Harp" (1893), “England and Yester 1 In "A Roadside Harp" (Boston, 1893). لا |