“There is an impression in America, Mr. Shaw, that you regard yourself as the greatest man that ever lived.”
“I dare say. I sometimes think so myself when the others are doing something exceptionally foolish. But I am only one of the first attempts of the new Ireland. She will do better—probably has done better already—though the product is not yet grown up enough to be interviewed. Good morning.”
From “The Gaelic American”
WHAT THE IRISH COUNTY ASSOCIATIONS OF BOSTON SAID OF BERNARD SHAW
January 13, 1912:—The writer of such fool conceptions is as blind as an eight-hour-old puppy to the operation of all spiritual agencies in the life of man. Shaw’s writings bear about the same relation to genuine literature as Bryan O’Lynn’s extemporised timepiece, a scooped out turnip with a cricket within, does to the Greenwich Observatory....
Shaw stumbles along the bogs, morasses, and sand dunes of literature, without a terminal, leading the benighted and lost wayfarers still farther astray. His unhappy possession of infinite egotism and his utter lack of common sense make of him a rara avis indeed, a cross between a peacock and a gander....
In conclusion let us say before we again notice this Barnum of literature he must produce a clean bill of sanity, superscribed by some reputable alienist.
APPENDIX IV
IN THE EYES OF OUR ENEMIES
From “America”