The Outlook for Literature with Special Reference to Ireland

Abstract

It is as easy to foretell next year’s weather as to foretell next year’s literary orientation, but the laws underlying supply and demand are so curiously perfected that even a demand for prophecy can be met with some kind of goods. There is a great deal known about weather, and although the knowledge does not greatly assist the weather-forecasters in their prognostications, it does provide them with matter upon which they can converse intelligently; and there is a sufficiency of data about art to enable us not only to gossip agreeably, but to speculate upon it, and to draw conclusions from it which we may allow the march of events to prove or disprove or neglect.