Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/232

206 SIR W. ROBERTSON NICOLL of this influence, the secrets of this power, the char- acteristics of the man and his work. * And A Bookman s Letters ^ (his new book) enables us to attempt this with special ease — for the volume is made up, for the most part, of the actual British Weekly letters, its contents being, *' in the main, a selection from some hundreds of similar letters con- tributed under the general title The Correspondence of Claudius Clear, and addressed to a large popular audience interested in books and authors." There are forty-eight papers in all, each from eight to twenty pages long, their subjects stretching from Meredith to Mark Rutherford — and I have read them through from end to end with (I am ashamed to say) a perpetually astonished admiration and delight. " Ashamed " — because I feel the astonishment to be disgraceful — I feel that I ought to have discerned long ago the special qualities I now see lifting these utterances into eminence : it ought not to have been necessary for the type to don deep margins, for the columns to expand in comely pages, before I could realize the best distinctions of the style. One has always, indeed, ardently admired Claudius Clear's critical work : it is quite impossible for any journalist not to have the most enormous respect for its tire- lessness and temperance, its readiness and range ; for its rare combination of a grasp of curious detail with a capacity for quick and high enthusiasm ; its splendid habit of referring all things to certain spiritual standards and yet for evincing all the time a homely humour. But this statelier dress brings out even finer qualities than these — qualities which "^ A Bookman's Letters, By W. Robertson Nicoll.