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32o J A M E S [ 1912 ]been won. (Actually the House of Lords rejected it.) Joyce declared that,among the perfidies of the English and the self-betrayals of the Irish, oneghost would haunt the new state.* It was Parnell who had started thecountry towards parliamentary victory only to receive obloquy for his pains.Joyce admires Parnell's Joycean qualities, his utter coldness in the face ofadulation or hostility, 'his sovereign bearing, mild and proud, silent anddisconsolate.'t After his fall, Parnell 'went from county to county, fromcity to city, "like a hunted deer." ' 7'The citizens of Castlecomer threwquicklime in his eyes,' Joyce says, and a few months later called up thisdetail again in 'Gas from a Burner.' But the closest connection betweenhimself and Parnell was Parnell's profound conviction that, 'in his hourof need, one of the disciples who dipped his hand in the same bowl withhim would betray him. . . . That he fought to the very end with thisdesolate certainty in mind is his greatest claim to nobility.'$ 8RichardRowan, in Exiles, announces to Robert, 'There is a faith still strangerthan the faith of the disciple in his master. . . . The faith of a master inthe disciple who will betray him.' In Defoe's mastery of fact, in Blake'smastery of imagination, and in Parnell's mastery of his betrayers, Joyceadumbrated his view of his own powers.From these lofty comparisons he descended to make a new effort togain a livelihood. Late in 1911 the idea of teaching in an Italian publicschool had come to him. He learned from inquiries that he would haveto pass examinations offered by the Italian government at the Universityof Padua. Some preliminary correspondence with officials there in November,1911, persuaded him that the scheme might work, and that hisBritish citizenship and Austrian residence would not prevent his receivinga teaching assignment in Italy. So encouraged, he travelled to Padua,managed to find a room in the crowded city at the Albergo Toretta, andtook a series of written examinations there from April 24 to 26, 1912.On April 25 he wrote Stanislaus, 'Today, I had to write my Englishtheme—Dickens and saw my English examiner, an old, ugly spinsterfrom the tight little island—a most dreadful fRump (reformed spelling).'10Joyce was set two essays to be written in Italian, the one onDickens and the other on 'The Universal Literary Influence of the Renaissance.'It was Dickens's centennial year, but Joyce's celebration of awriter to whom he felt little akin was reserved. He allowed Dickens'sdistinction as being second only to Shakespeare in his influence upon thespoken language. On the other hand, while admitting 'creative fury,' heregretted a deficiency in art. As to Dickens's touted 'greatness of soul,''Yeats's poem, 'To a Shade,' written a year and a half later, uses Parnell in the samerole of disapproving revenant.t He emphasizes Parnell's speech impediment, attributed later to Earwicker in FinnegansWake.t In the early 1920's Joyce estimated Parnell more closely, and said to Djuna Barnes,'The Irish have produced one skeleton—Parnell—never a man.' 9