as it is pictured in the "Cúirt." Brian's heart brightens when he sees the lake, and the mountains lifting their heads one behind the other. But he loves no less to see a fine full-blooded young man, full of fire and energy, a splendid animal! His sentiment of humanity is as broad and full as his delight in the hills and woods of his native Thomond.
The full-blooded vigour, the delight in what is hearty natural life, runs through every line of the poem. Brian preaches the return to nature just as the Romantic poets of twenty years later preached it in England. His preaching is not the less effective because it is so artfully concealed. He sees in nature not something hateful to be suppressed, but something beautiful to be understood and harmonised with the necessities of life. The old man argues against marriage, the young woman for marriage and against celibacy, but both rest their arguments upon the forces and processes of nature.
IX.
Hence it is that Brian is rather a Greek than a Gael in his attitude towards life. He had the same quick inquiring mind as the Athenian of old, and the same lack of reverence. His love of the beauty of nature, as all-sufficing, as a moral force in itself was accompanied by the Greek lack of spirituality. At the same time, he had one Gaelic quality, his sense of humour, of laughter, which kept him from extravagance. He is indelicate, coarse, but never wantonly indecent. He is just as frank and free and shameless as nature itself. Compare the low obscenities of the "Mangaire Súgach" and the other typical Gaelic poets dealing in double-meaning suggestiveness, with the rather terrible outspokenness of the "Cúirt" and you will understand that Brian was a moralist.
