6 Mr. A. P. Graves on 



broad and sympathetically minded. He had many difficulties to 

 overcome, one being the fact that Irish themes had no public 

 behind them at the time. Ferguson would live in selections, 

 though large selections, from his works rather than in its entirety. 

 Yet " The Forging of the Anchor " was a remarkably clever 

 achievement for a young man of twenty, and " The Fairy's 

 Dance " was equally wizardy itself. Patriotic to the core, 

 Ferguson was most eager to achieve something high for Ireland's 

 sake, something to lift her from the intellectual ruts into which 

 she had fallen. Another Belfast man, Dr. Robert Gordon, who 

 was keeping him up to his highest self, wrote " You rejoice me. 

 You are strong, and I would have you strike some note that would 

 reverberate down the vistas of time." Ferguson responded to his 

 friend's appeal with a poem in which he displayed great cleverness. 

 " Thomas Davis, an Elegy," was a poignant expression of his 

 grief at the death of one of his country's defenders, and the last 

 verse of it sounded like a prophecy. Further on, Ferguson's 

 " Lays of the Western Gael " were published, and, according to 

 the description of a commentator, these were a series of ballads 

 founded on events in Irish history. It was wonderful the 

 number of contemporary poets who found and appreciated what 

 Ferguson was. The tendency to act at times as a commentator on 

 his own work, and his disregard of verbal delicacies were the 

 only proclivities to which exception could be taken in his 

 poems. But his method was uniformly manly, and he swept all 

 their minor critical objections before him. They grew to love his 

 ponderosities and carelessness, which formed part of his greatness. 

 Having dealt with and quoted from " Congal," the lecturer said 

 at the time of the pubHcation of this work Ferguson's genius had 

 yet to break into its finest flower. A volume published in the 

 year 1880 contained some striking verses of a religious and 

 philosophical character, but in " Deirdre " and " Conari " he 

 reached his greatest height as a poet. William Allingham 

 described " Deirdre' as reminding him of a Greek play, and he 

 (the lecturer) might say that he should like to see " Deirdre " 



