He believes intensely in himself, and he has no real faith in anybody else, so that he is always more or less cold towards anybody who tries to do any political work on his own, in or about his own particular sphere. And this unfortunate tendency in him has been strengthened by the fact that his immediate friends and co-workers in Dublin are all far below his level in intellect and outlook, follow him blindly, and are equally suspicious of any other attempt to do similar work. He has never had any hero-worship for anybody save William Rooney, and for him he, as well as all Rooney's co-workers, had the affection and the awe which the Young Irelanders had for Davis. Since the death of Rooney he has been alone intellectually, and while that has doubtless strengthened him, it has also strengthened the difficulty of working with him amicably without being a mere echo. When he got married, everybody gasped, but whatever he may be as a family man, in public life he has continued to be just the same aloof, impenetrable sphinx as before.
It is a pity that circumstances have put him in the way of making propagandist speeches extensively, for it is not his work. He is an effective speaker. He will stand on a platform and, coolly and without the least trace of passion or emotion, will be more effective in the pungent deadliness of half-a-dozen sentences, without word painting or ornamentation of any kind, than the most flambuoyant orator. But his weapon is the pen, and one article in his best style is worth more than a dozen of his platform speeches. As leader-writer he is unequalled, and as a writer of obituary notices he is unsurpassable.
Once he has made up his mind on anything he never changes. In controversy he is like a bull-dog; he is always the last to let go, and by that time there isn't much left of the other man's case. As a controversialist he is able and totally unscrupulous, but he is nearly always right.
Until the recent strenuous period set in, his paper was like a huge magnet which attracted to itself from the length and breadth of Ireland all the poets and budding litterateurs. Its contributors have included W. B. Yeats and Æ and John Eglinton; Seumas O'Sullivan and Padraic Colum; Thomas Boyd and Alice Milligan and Ethna Carbery; finally James Stephens. But in his heart he believes that