tered by the new beauty that Mr. Yeats brought into English poetry that the verse of William Sharp won to itself abiding beauty and glamour and inevitable phrase. "The House of Usna" (1900) brought to me "Dim face of beauty haunting all the world," and the 1901 edition of "From the Hills of Dream," "The Enchanted Valleys,"; but it was not until after his death that I came upon his best verse of all, the verse of his last five years, which was gathered together posthumously in the 1907 edition of "From the Hills of Dream," and included as "The House of Beauty" in "The Poems and Dramas" of 1911. Who does not know these sets of verses and "The Dirge of the Four Cities," does not know the ultimate accomplishment of William Sharp in poetry.
That the "'Fiona Macleod' mystery" ended with the death of William Sharp is, then, my belief, as it is that it began before he conceived of exploiting a feminine sub-self he had long been aware of in himself. The beginnings of that sort of writing that made "Fiona Macleod" a reputation are to be found very early in his writing, in "The Son of Allan" of 1881, in the "Record" of 1884, in the preface to the "Romantic Ballads" of 1888, in the "Vistas" of 1894. That these earlier expressions of "spiritual" states and guesses at mysteries are not, except for certain parts of "Vistas," so well written as the best writing of similar kind by "Fiona Macleod," is true, and perhaps, at first glance, a matter of wonder. It is, however, I think, not difficult to find an explanation of the better quality of the later work, and that explanation is afforded, firstly and most largely, by the Celtic Renaissance. A
