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John Butler Yeats
Published by Good Press, 2021
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At that time I was a very busy student working from morning to night, otherwise I should have tried to see more of Butler. There is nothing so winning as a look of helpful kindness in a mocking face. Besides, he was a good deal my senior and seniority is attractive to ingenuous youth; and I was then ingenuous. I sometimes think I have lost all my opportunities; the chance of knowing Butler well was one of these. Slowly I have come to feel that affection for human nature which is at the root of all poetry and art, whether the poet be pessimist or optimist. Had I stayed much with Butler I should have learned my lesson almost at once. Matthew Arnold’s “sweetness and light” was not much to his taste, and he cared nothing for the high ethics of Wordsworth. An affectionate mother, such as we have among the peasants of Ireland, where mother-love is a passion, does not want her children to be good half as much as she wants them to be happy. It was so Butler regarded poor, struggling and deceived human nature. There was the source of his “good nature” and of his influence. In this he was pre-eminently English of the English, and in this there was nothing of the system maker or the philanthropist. Nor was he a philosopher or anything else except a mere man touching and handling the concrete matters of everyday life. With tenderness of humour and a most real poetry he touched, healingly, all the sores of ailing humanity.
Though he avoided marriage, his flesh was weak. “I have a little needle-woman, a good little thing. I have given her a sewing machine. I go to see her.” As he made his confession he retired backwards, bowing his head several times as in mockery of himself and acknowledgment of a sad necessity from which even he was not exempt. For it was given to him also to tread “The Way of All Flesh.” It was always part of his philosophy that he should confess his sins, besides being a necessity to his social nature and one of his most engaging qualities.
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