ioo Yeats and Gilbert Murray [1904 



George in the sense of our conversation of yesterday, urging him to 

 get the Tibetan expedition withdrawn, now that Russia has been so 

 smashed up in Manchuria, proposing also a scheme of settlement for 

 Egypt. 



'' 10th May.— Dined with Lady Gregory/ Yeats, Gilbert Murray, 

 and Robert Gregory. Yeats is just back from America, where they 

 have made a great fuss with him, and he takes himself very seriously 

 in consequence. Though doubtless a man of genius, he has a strong 

 touch in him of the charlatan, and his verse is thin stuff, not so good 

 as his prose. Gilbert Murray is worth ten of him as a poet, and 

 is bringing out his • Hippolytus ' this month at a London theatre. 

 I walked home with Murray as far as Hyde Park Corner. I like 

 him, though he is rather dry in his talk, a sayer of the obvious rather 

 than of the exquisite, the antipodes in this to Yeats, who is brilliant 

 in conversation and full of affectation, while Murray, in spite of his 

 poetic gift, is dull. Yeats talked to me about getting George Wynd- 

 ham to grant them a patent at Dublin for their new theatre. This I 

 readily agreed to see to. 



"nth May. — Lunched in Park Lane. George promised at once 

 to befriend the Abbey Theatre as I was sure he would. Then we 

 got on to Eastern politics. George told me he had b'jen adverse all 

 along to the Tibet expedition, and would be glad to stop it now if he 

 could. On all these matters he declares Arthur Balfour to be quite 

 sound, and he explained to me the standing Committee in the Cabinet 

 on Foreign Affairs, and how well it was working in the way of 

 preventing Departmental extravagances. I told him there was one 

 thing that needed reform more than all, that was that instead of 

 promoting an official who had caused an unnecessary war as they 

 always do, he should be punished. I am glad to see him taking an 

 interest in foreign affairs, and if he could one day be Foreign Secre- 

 tary, my life's hopes would be fulfilled. 



" 18th May. — I have been reading Herbert Spencer's autobiography, 

 an astounding document, one of those that console the least of us 

 that he is not a great man, comic too, and reminiscent of Happy 

 Thoughts, and the author of ' Typical developments.' Burnand must 

 have known Spencer to have written it. 



" 30th May. — To the Lyric Theatre with Cockerell to see Hippolytus. 

 I expected to find it dull, and perhaps vulgar, in spite of the beauty 

 of the poetry as translated by Murray, but it was all the contrary. 

 I have never seen a tragedy like this, not even Salvini's Othello, or 

 Annunzio's Francesca da Rimini. Hippolytus stands upon a higher 

 and nobler plane. It has dramatic effects one does not dream of when 

 reading it, not that the acting was more than moderately good. Most 

 of those on the stage were amateurs, and rather clumsy, but I think this 



