s in relation to
English literature, and always, it should be added, with French
literature and Greek literature in the background. In this wide outlook,
in his freedom from political prejudice, in his sympathy with Celtic
literature and his knowledge of it, is his greatest strength as a critic
of the Celtic Renaissance. His greatest weakness is his willingness in
this writing, as elsewhere in his writing, to abide by first
impressions, to abide also by the first-come phrase or epithet, banes of
the ready writer. But read his essay "Celtic" after you have read the
great essays of Renan and Arnold, and read it alongside of what Mr.
Yeats has to say of that literature, and you will find it, as I said,
of the stature of these. You will at the same time find in this writing
the answer to the contention that there were really two personalities in
William Sharp. Even Mrs. Sharp, who writes so restrainedly about this
question of dual personality, believes the analytical faculty belonged
to William Sharp, the imaginative to "Fiona Macleod." But in this
criticism of the Celtic Renaissance which is signed "Fiona Macleod,"
there is as much analysis as is to be found anywhere in his work as
William Sharp. So obviously was he identifying "F.M." with "W.S." in
this critical writing that Mrs. Janvier, of those in the secret, wrote
to him to take warning lest he betray himself. She pointed out to him
that such a display of learning as he was making in the later "Fiona
Macleod" work would surely lead to discovery. But he did not heed. The
truth probably was that he wrote about Celtic things as "Fiona Macleod"
because he perhaps felt about them, as "Fiona Macleod," as one who is
bilingual thinks about work he is doing, say in German, in German, and
about work he is doing in English, in English; but just as surely I
believe, because what "Fiona Macleod" wrote commanded more respect than
what William Sharp wrote, readier entrance into the magazines, and
better pay. If there are those to whom such an explanation seems
belittling to William Sharp, I can only say that they cannot have
realized that he was a driven man earning his living by his pen. I am
not, I confess, a sentimentalist in such matters, and while I do not
wholly like his procedure in maintaining the fiction of "Fiona Macleod,"
it does not seem to me a very heinous sin.

He who would write of the work of William Sharp, indeed, must be
resolute to remember that it is to be consi