Grant Allen, was his
equal here, and his knowledge had been gained, as such knowledge can
only be gained, in that receptive period of an adventurous boyhood of
which he has thus written: "From fifteen to eighteen I sailed up every
loch, fjord, and inlet in the Western Highlands and islands, from Arran
and Colonsay to Skye and the Northern Hebrides, from the Rhinns of
Galloway to the Ord of Sutherland. Wherever I went I eagerly associated
myself with fishermen, sailors, shepherds, gamekeepers, poachers,
gypsies, wandering pipers, and other musicians." For two months he had
"taken the heather" with, and had been "star-brother" and "sun-brother"
to, a tribe of gypsies, and in later years he had wandered variously in
many lands, absorbing the wonder and the beauty of the world. Well
might he write to Mrs. Janvier: "I have had a very varied, and, to use a
much abused word, a very romantic life in its internal as well as in its
external aspects." Few men have drunk so deep of the cup of life, and
from such pure sky-reflecting springs, and if it be true, in the words
of his friend Walter Pater, that "to burn ever with this hard gem-like
flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life," then indeed the
life of William Sharp was a nobly joyous success.

And to those who loved him it is a great happiness to know that he was
able to crown this ecstasy of living with that victory of expression for
which his soul had so long travailed, and to leave behind him not only a
lovely monument of star-lit words, but a spiritual legacy of perennial
refreshment, a fragrant treasure-house of recaptured dreams, and
hallowed secrets of the winds of time: for such are _The Writings of
"Fiona Macleod"_.

XXIV

FORBES-ROBERTSON: AN APPRECIATION

The voluntary abdication of power in its zenith has always fascinated
and "intrigued" the imagination of mankind. We are so accustomed to
kings and other gifted persons holding on to their sceptres with a
desperate tenacity, even through those waning years when younger men,
beholding their present feebleness, wonder whether their previous might
was not a fancy of their fathers, whether, in fact, they were ever
really kings or gifted persons at all. In so many cases we have to rely
on a legend of past accomplishment to preserve our reverence. Therefore,
when a Sulla or a Charles V. or a Mary Anderson, leave their thrones at
the moment when their sway over us is most assured and brilliant, we