adroit, his answer to the criticism that the book is monotonous, "if that term be meant as equivalent to monotoned, it can be admitted." He laments that an early proclivity has smirched the book as it smirched Hail and Farewell, but pronounces it none the less, "the work of a mature unaging mind, the prose masterpiece perhaps of our time." Of Astrolabe, Mr Freeman says it is strange "that the writer who has so often been dismissed as affected should almost alone have created the natural and beloved child." "Natural" and obviously beloved, is he lovely? He justifies the description of him by Mr Moore in the question, "Why should nature have given him such witty eyes?" His resentful grief, however, at the death of the musician is scarcely that of a child; and captivating and diverting though he is, when one recalls his relentless investigating activity, his conflicting ambitions, the snare for the ducks, the wish to be a gleeman, his determination to go on a crusade, and his superiority at the age of eleven or less, to his mother's society and that of her companions—the only society he had known—one feels that to have such a child in tow would deprive one of reason.
Not so much a composite as a gallery of aspects from childhood to maturity, Mr Freeman's portrait is surprisingly augmented by the addendum of Mr Henry Danielson's bibliography of Mr Moore's works. The connoisseur here sees in the notes appended, the price approximated at which volumes may be obtained and exults or is abased accordingly.
Exemplifying his own ideal of portraiture, Mr Freeman has set forth "the character, the spirit, the inward history" that Mr Moore's work "has expressed or suggested," giving a portrait so faithful that a detractor could not say that he has suppressed blemishes or idealized his subject; moreover in refusing to minimize an unbeautiful feature, he has not immortalized it. He is at every point his own man and Mr Moore's deepest admirer could not wish a more glowing likeness or a finer light.
