Apollo sounds sweet, but it is pleasant also to listen to the pipes of Pan.
(b) Originality of language. Grandiloquence, and exaggerated pomp and majesty of words characterised the Gaelic poets at all times. Stiff unnatural dignity and conventionalism characterised poets everywhere in the eighteenth century. Brian had no fondness for the practice of calling a spade an agricultural implement. He was content to write the everyday speech of the County Clare, a marvellously vigorous and expressive speech, of which he had a royal command. He never clothes a trite thought in stately words, like his contemporaries. He sometimes seems to squander recklessly his wonderful resources of language, but the speech of the "Cúirt" is always the spoken speech of Clare. It compares with the work of his contemporaries, as, for instance, the language of Swift's verses compares with that of Pope's.
(c) Originality of treatment. Of this I shall say more presently. Suffice it to declare here that his sense of proportion, his clear, definite grip of his subject from start to finish, are qualities rather Greek than Gaelic. Dounchadh Ruadh's rambling "Eachtra Ghiolla an Amarráin" illustrates the common Gaelic faults of diffuseness. That is why the Gaelic mind craves for the discipline of strict forms.
(d) Originality of thought. Nothing is more clearly marked in the Gaelic poets than their reverence for religion, law, institutions, traditions, authorities. The ideas in their poetry always followed strictly conventional lines. The daring of the ideas in the "Cúirt," obvious enough in itself, becomes trebly daring when one remembers this fact. Not only in his sense of form, but in his attitude to life, there is more of the Greek than the Gael in Brian.
