neity against unyielding, mechanical, abstract
principles. I ask indulgence if I overrate
their value, for it may be that I cannot judge
sentences that call up memories of the time
when I was most alive, having most friends
and enemies. All needful explanations are
in Lady Gregory's book, Our Irish Theatre.

The plays are so abundantly annotated
and prefaced that I need say nothing more
except that the first was planned and partly
written when I was little more than a boy,
and that it gives me more pleasure in the
memory than any of my plays. It was all
thought out in the first fervour of my gen-
eration's distaste for Victorian rhetoric; that
rhetoric once away, every poetical virtue
seemed possible.

W. B. YEATS.

DUBLIN,
February 1923

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