as of almost all his other work done under the name of William Sharp, that it is imitative; but it is equally true that a large part of the "Fiona Macleod" work is imitative, too. "Silence Farm" is done under the influence of the later work of Mr. Hardy, but the material of "Silence Farm" is its author's own, and the color of the writing is as distinctly of the Lowlands as the color of "Tess" is of Wessex. That "Silence Farm" is better work in its kind, though that kind is less original than some of his writing as "Fiona Macleod," I have been forced against my prejudices to believe. If I did not so believe I would not have spoken of it side by side with "Tess."
Secondly, that as "Fiona Macleod," William Sharp did much good writing in almost everything published under the pseudonym, achieving wholeness of good tissue in certain sketches and tales and verses on rather varying kinds of subjects, but that his work as "Fiona Macleod" that is really distinguished is in stories of prehistoric Scotland and Ireland, and of Scotland and Ireland in the earliest historic time. In these tales of the Gaels of old time he for the first time breaks ground for others. Before he wrote "Silk o' the Kine," and "The Harping of Cravetheen," "The Annir Choile," and "Enya of the Dark Eyes," there were no short tales of like temper and content and style in literature.
To me little is significant in the early verse of "Fiona Macleod," as little was significant in all the verse of William Sharp until the time of "Sospiri di Roma." And for all the beauty of these pictures in words of the Campagna it is but a transient beauty. It was not until he was mas-
