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"[T]he frenzy that would have silenced his master-work," W. B. Yeats wrote in J. M. Synge and the Ireland of his Time, "was, like most violent things, artificial, that defence of virtue by those who have but little, which is the pomp and gallantry of journalism and its right to govern the world". Thus polemicizing against the rhetoric of Synge's opponents, Yeats breathed new life into the arguments that - as he saw it — had by their "bitterness and ignorance" killed his friend and fellow dramatist. Yet also evident in the indictment is Yeats' commentary on his own flair for controversy, as the critics' critic, energetically condemning his era's easy condemnations: "[L]ife became sweet again when I had learnt all I had not learnt in shaping words, in defending Synge against his enemies"