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94 / A M E S [ 1900-1902 ]evenings. 62George asked James to sing to him, and took comfort in hisbrother's melancholy chant of Yeats's poem, 'Who Goes with Fergus?'.The doctor thought the boy had recovered, and instructed Mrs. Joyce tofeed him anything she liked; but he was not ready for the solid food shegave him, and, perhaps as a result of it, suddenly relapsed. There thenoccurred the horrible scene described in one of Joyce's epiphanies andlater inserted in Stephen Hero:Mrs. Joyce—(crimson, trembling, appears at the parlour door). . . Jim!Joyce—(at the piano) . . . Yes?Mrs. Joyce—Do you know anything about the body? . . . What oughtI do? . . . There's some matter coming away from the hole in Georgie'sstomach . . . Did you ever hear of that happening?Joyce—(surprised) ... I don't know. . .Mrs. Joyce—Ought I send for the doctor, do you think?Joyce—I don't know. . . . What hole?Mrs. Joyce—(impatient) . . . Thehole we all have . . . here.(points)* 63James ran to the sickroom and tried helplessly to revive his brother. 64George died of peritonitis on March 9, 1902, as James himself was todie. The bond between the two is suggested by another epiphany:They are all asleep. I will go up now. ... He lies on my bed where Ilay last night! they have covered him with a sheet and closed his eyes withpennies . . . Poor little fellow! We have often laughed together. He borehis body very lightly ... I am very sorry he died. I cannot pray for himas the others do. Poor little fellow! Everything else is so uncertain!Three years later he decided upon George as the name for his firstchild.Joyce was to leave the University in June. He had done well enoughto pass, but had not bothered to excel. 65His principal effort during hislast year was devoted to a paper he was to read to the Literary and HistoricalSociety on February 1, 1902. His subject this time was not aEuropean, but the Irish poet James Clarence Mangan (1803-49), two ofwhose poems he had set to music. By choosing Mangan, Joyce impliedthat, however widely he might range in European literature, he was altogetherready to discover merit in his countrymen when it existed. Theburden of his talk was that Mangan, though a nationalist poet, had beenneglected and maligned by the nationalists. It was left to an Irishmanwith European standards to recover him.Where his 'Drama and Life' paper two years before had been aggressiveand declaratory, this one was meant to be seductive and lyrical. 66Joyce's air of discovering Mangan was a little pretentious, for Yeats (whohad proclaimed in verse that Mangan along with Davis and Fergusonwas his literary ancestor) and Lionel Johnson had both preceded him in* Joyce turned George into Stephen's sister Isabel in Stephen Hero.