er the strain
of the long tropical years, his bodily health declined as he approached
the age of sixty. But his mental activity, his marvellous receptivity,
were not merely maintained, but seemed steadily to advance. He continued
to be consumed by that lust for knowledge, _libido sciendi_, which he
admired in the ancient Greeks. When the physicians forbade him, four
years ago, to expend his failing strength any longer on political and
social propaganda, instead of retiring, as most men of his age would
have done, to dream in the recesses of his library, he plunged with
renewed ardour into the one occupation still permitted to him:
literature. The accident of his publishing a criticism which excited
wide popular attention led to his becoming, when past his seventieth
birthday, a "regular reviewer" for the _Spectator_, where the very
frequent papers signed "C." became a prominent feature. Those articles
were, perhaps, most remarkable for the light they threw on the writer's
own temperament, on his insatiable desire for knowledge. Lord Cromer's
curiosity in all intellectual directions was, to the last, like that of
a young man beginning his mental career; and when he adopted the
position, so uncommon in a man of his experience and authority, of a
reviewer of current books, it was because he wished to share with others
the excitement he himself enjoyed in the tapping of fresh sources of
information.

III

THE LAST DAYS OF LORD REDESDALE

The publication of Lord Redesdale's _Memories_--which was one of the
most successful autobiographies of recent times--familiarised thousands
of readers with the principal adventures of a very remarkable man, but,
when all was said and done, left an incomplete impression of his taste
and occupations on the minds of those who were not familiar with his
earlier writings. His literary career had been a very irregular one. He
took up literature rather late, and produced a book that has become a
classic--_Tales of Old Japan_. He did not immediately pursue this
success, but became involved in public activities of many kinds, which
distracted his attention. In his sixtieth year he brought out _The
Bamboo Garden_, and from that time--until, in his eightieth year, he
died in full intellectual energy--he constantly devoted himself to the
art of writing. His zeal, his ambition, were wonderful; but it was
impossible to overlook the disadvantage from which that ambition and
that zeal suffered in th