Synge and the Ireland of his Time by W.B. Yeats

Young Ireland had taught a study of our history with the glory of / Ireland for event, and this for lack, when less than Taylor studied, of / comparison with that of other countries wrecked the historical / instinct. An old man with an academic appointment, who was a leader in / the attack upon Synge, sees in the 11th century romance of Deirdre a / re-telling of the first five act tragedy outside the classic languages, / and this tragedy from his description of it was certainly written on / the Elizabethan model; while an allusion to a copper boat, a marvel of / magic like Cinderella's slipper, persuades him that the ancient Irish / had forestalled the modern dockyards in the making of metal ships. The / man who doubted, let us say, our fabulous ancient kings running up to / Adam, or found but mythology in some old tale, was as hated as if he / had doubted the authority of Scripture. Above all no man was so / ignorant, that he had not by rote familiar arguments and statistics to / drive away amid familiar applause, all those had they but found strange / truth in the world or in their mind, whose knowledge has passed out of / memory and become an instinct of hand or eye. There was no literature, / for literature is a child of experience always, of knowledge never; and / the nation itself, instead of being a dumb struggling thought seeking a / mouth to utter it or hand to show it, a teeming delight that would / re-create the world, had become, at best, a subject of knowledge.