Mention, Jan. 29.
The chief interpreter of Celtic myths and tradition, and leader of the Irish literary renaissance, Professor William Butler Yeats, died here today at the age of 74.
His broad shelf of books, the fruits of a rich and enthusiastic life, includes not only the fragile lyric things of his literary self, but also treatises on all manner of public questions, for nineteen years ago Mr. Yeats became a member of the Irish Free State's ürst Senate.
From the bony-handed, gaunt and ethereal poet, who was given to dropping the sugar absent-mindedly into the tobacco jar instead of the tea cup Mr. Yeats metamorphosed into a husband, family man, and land-owner, with a Nobel Prize for 1923 in his purse, and ability for preaching the rights of minorities.
The old days when he was fighting ihe battle of the National Theatre Movement with keen brain and airy mystic dramas were definitely over long before his death. In his last years Mr. Yeats was campaigning for the formation of an Irish Academy of Letters.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.