Sir, - I wish to add a crucial point to Mr Kevin Myers's account of John MacBride (March 5th). Maud Gonne's marriage to MacBride on February 21st, 1903, when Yeats was almost 38, brought about the poet's mid-life crisis. When he became aware of this betrayal, Yeats experienced a psychosomatic anxiety attack (as we see in the poem Reconciliation) and for a long time afterwards wrote very little lyric poetry.
Many creative people die at this time of crisis, including Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Hopkins; others, like Jung, make a spectacular recovery. Yeats's recovery - the great volumes The Tower and The Winding Stair were written from his mid-fifties on - is one of the most astonishing in art. - Yours, etc.,
Associate Professor of Classics, University College, Galway.