hear about things when they can have the things themselves."
This statement explains in part why it is that the life of the people,
even that part of their life that fronts the past, has escaped him. He
prefers his dream, thinking that it is their dream, or the dream of
their ancestors. He has, indeed, the thing itself, the Highlander's
dream, and when it is given to him to impart that dream fully we forgive
him the proud words I have just quoted. The pity of it is he has not
always so succeeded through the way he has chosen, and then it is, of
course, that we condemn him for the lack of that humility the great
dramatic artist must have whereby he must forget himself and so
subordinate himself that tradition or life speaks through him.

It is not to be wondered, then, that there is little direct record of
folk-lore of his own collecting in his writing, even when he is writing
of folk-topics. There are borrowings in plenty, especially in "Where the
Forest Murmurs," and even when the collecting seems his own, as it does
in "Earth, Fire, and Water," "Children of Water," and "Cuilidh Mhoire,"
it is diamond dust, not diamonds, to which he gives so beautiful
setting.

Just as appealing to Sharp as the old myths themselves are the
localities that tradition or the stories themselves assign as background
to them. He loves Iona not only for its gray and barren beauty, but
because it was here Columba wrought his wonders. "Iona," which fills the
major part of the volume "The Divine Adventure" gives title to, is the
finest in quality as well as the longest of his writings that may be
called, prosaically, topographical. They, in their varying ways, are
much more than merely topographical, whether done in the way of "F.M.,"
as "Iona" is, and as "From the Hebrid Isles" is, and several papers from
"Where the Forest Murmurs"; or in the way of "W.S.," as "Literary
Geography" is. In this last-named book, Scott and Stevenson, among
others, are put against the background that inspired their work, as in
"Iona" certain stories are imagined so as to fit their surroundings and
certain legendary history narrated that is fitting to these surroundings
with an appropriateness almost too exact to be believable. In "Iona,"
because he loved the island that inspired its writing beyond any other
of the places he loved greatly, is to be found some of his very best
work, and examples of all kinds of his writing, as I have said; and even
when this "topogr