YEATS AND THE OTHERS SIR, —Miss Kate O'Brien, in her breathless
account of Yeats's burial under Ben Bulben, makes two statements which call, I think, for question. In the italicised introduction to her article, for which, perhaps, she is not responsible, Yeats is said to be " Ireland's greatest poet and dramatist," and in the unitalicised part, "the greatest poet in English since Wordsworth "! As I read these words, my tongue, so far as the dramatist is concerned, began to mutter " Goldsmith, Sheridan, Shaw, even Synge and O'Casey," and when I read the astounding second statement, it muttered again, "What! Greater than Keats, Shelley, Browning, Tennyson, Swinburne, Meredith, Hardy, Morris, Bridges, Masefield, Walter de la Mare and—yes—Kipling? " Eireanns are easily excited by funerals, but is not the lady over-excited?—Sincerely,
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