Katharine Tynan (1861–1931), the voluminous Irish poetess and novelist who was friends with Gerard Manly Hopkins, that greatest of all 19th century poets, and W.B. Yeats—whom she knew well enough to call “Willie”!—once observed—whether rightly or no, I shall leave for the reader to judge—that when it comes to lectures and debates:
“The Englishman likes to sit still and have his mind improved. The Irish want to improve other people’s minds.”
[Twenty-five Years: Reminiscences (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1913), 142].