imaginative fervor, of sensuous enjoyment of beauty, of the romantic temper in its most uncompromising form. He might be mistaken for a thoroughly wellbred stock-broker or a cultivated lawyer of literary tastes. His talk is equally free from any suggestion of the professional man of letters. It is very direct, trenchant, slightly though not superciliously critical. In answer to questions he speaks simply and frankly about his work; but autobiography is not his favorite conversational vein. He strikes the listener as a fastidious, selfcontained man; absorbed in his work and confident of the soundness of his aims; tireless in getting at the fact for the sake of the temperament which it expresses; rigorously exacting of himself in the matter of craftsmanship; and indifferent both to praise and to criticism unless it shows clear intelligence of his aims; a man, in a word, of rare qualities of imagination and an intense lover and practitioner of art, who stands firmly on his feet, never confuses his dreams with realities, is possessed by his subject but possesses the methods and means of dealing with it for the highest effectiveness; a visionary with a business instinct, an artist who has an uncommon amount of good sense. It is only ten years since his first book, "Earthwork Out of Tuscany," was published; a record of observation and insight of so fine a quality that many readers found delight in it without suspecting its real object. There was a certain fascination in the indirectness of the treatment; even those who were occasionally aware that they were moving about in "worlds not realized" found those worlds mysteriously agreeable. The book struck the keynote of Mr. Hewlett's career as it revealed the temper of his mind. It is a penetrating study of the Tuscan art at the roots because it is an extraordinary divination of Tuscan character. This prose excursion into a past which survives not only in visible monuments but in invisible instincts, passions, and ways of looking at life, was followed by "Pan and the Young Shepherd," an idyl of the good old kind, but wholly free from the pallor and anæmia which give such revivals of old poetic forms a spectral, moon-stricken aspect. There was the charm of the pastoral life, the ancient beauty of dusky wood and flower-strewn meadow; but there was also full-blooded life. There were touches of artifice, forcings of the note, reinforcement of the exhausted springs by barely concealed pipe-lines; but there were originality, freshness of feeling, and vividness of style. With the publication of "The Forest Lovers" Mr. Hewlett stood out distinctly from his contemporaries, and caught the attention of a wide circle of readers. Nothing could have been further removed from the immediate interest of the present generation than this prose story which touched the springs of romance with the quiet assurance of a fifteenth-century writer, and dealt with elemental passions as frankly as they were dealt with in the Middle Ages. There were traces of artificiality in the style, touches of that preciosity which is the besetting temptation of fastidious writers dealing with themes or using methods somewhat outside the sympathy of their readers; there were, too, passages in which the sensuousness was too self-conscious; but there was also a quality of imagination rare in any kind of writing, and exceptionally rare in English fiction. The "Little Novels of Italy " contained two or three masterpieces, full of the intoxication of the senses blended with passionate love of beauty and joy in the possession of genius which gave the Italian Renaissance such vitality both of good and evil. In two of these tales Mr. Hewlett comes very near Boccaccio, not only in the charm of his style but in his freedom. That he is at times sensuous beyond wholesome limits must be frankly confessed. He would be quick to scorn any evasion or make any defense on that score. He believes as deeply as did the men and women of the Renaissance in the power and place of passion, and in that he is entirely right. Nothing has wrought more mischief in life and in literature than the unwholesome, unnatural, and misguided condemnation and dismissal to obscure and obscene places of instincts and desires in which and with which the creative energy of the Nothing more original has come from his pen than this audacious modern rendering of "Joseph Andrews" in the dress of the seventeenth century; this hilarious vagabondage on the open road with all sorts of disreputable people, but with the immense relish of youth, the open country, the patience of a great love, and the rich picturesqueness of a life that held together, with childlike unconsciousness, the forms of religion and the practices of the devil. race has been rooted and mysteriously bold disregard of the aid of a plot. involved since the beginning of history. Mr. Hewlett's offending lies less in his frankness than in his occasional overemphasis, his relish for dealing with wholesome things apart from the conditions and circumstances which consecrate them. The reticence of Englishspeaking peoples is sometimes prudish and sometimes Pharisaic; but it is based on an instinct sound alike in morals and in art; and on all accounts, if a choice were imperative, it is better for society and for literature than the nakedness of speech of some of the Latin peoples. "Richard Yea-and-Nay" and "The Queen's Quair" show a thoroughness and deftness of construction which are the expression in art of pure intellectual force of a very high order. The texture of the first has the richness of an old tapestry, and produces much of the same effect; the second is a searching and merciless interpretation of one of those children of passion whose fate it is to involve those whom they love and those whom they hate in a common tragedy, and to uncover in themselves generous and base motives in such baffling combinations as to set in motion passionate and interminable discussion. The story is overloaded with history; but that it is a story at all, with beginning, dramatic unfolding, and tragic climax, is an extraordinary achievement; while as a piece of portraiture it is little short of a work of genius. In his latest story, "The Fool Errant," Mr. Hewlett has made a study of Italy in the late afterglow of the Renaissance, less dramatic than these longer tales, but showing extraordinary intimacy with the people and the country, and a Those who value Mr. Hewlett's work for its rare qualities will rejoice in the disappearance from "The Fool Errant" of those occasional touches of preciosity, those far-fetched similes, those strained uses of words, that marred the style of the earlier books. He has no need of the artifices of writers to whom nature has given fastidiousness without power; and he has a force and vitality which deliver him from the slough of languor into which Pater fell at times. The pictorial energy of his imagination, reinforced by a rare faculty of assimilation; the fullness of his human interest and the ease with which it leads him to dramatic situations; the magic of atmosphere which he can evoke at will; his genius for the romantic: these qualities put him in the way of doing work of the highest quality in a field in which he is almost without competitors; they make him also one of the most fascinating writers of his time. The new edition of his works in ten volumes, in a style uniform with the dignified and tasteful editions of Arnold and Pater, is a formal recognition of Mr. Hewlett's entrance into the circle of standard authors. to why this distinguished novel, which had but a "success of esteem" in her native country, should be loved here by both critics and people is interesting. At least two explanations have been offered by people of no small experience in publishing. The first thought it was our democracy that made the successful struggle of the poet Rickman against great obstacles peculiarly appeal to us, and the second that it was the growing tendency among the better-informed Americans to gain wherever possible either culture or profit as well as amusement from their reading. She was born at Rock Ferry in Cheshire, and has lived, as her books show, The in various parts of England. county of Devon she knows particularly well, and Harmouth, where many of the scenes of "The Divine Fire" are laid, is Sidmouth in South Avon. Of herself she writes: "I have lived a very quiet life in the country until the last nine years. I can think best in the country and work best in town-the former, strange as it may seem, offers too many distractions. no help except in her own reading. This was by preference from the Greek classics and from the wealth of Elizabethan literature. Her literary life began by the writing of verse. Two volumes of poetry were published in 1887 and 1890 respectively, and she has contributed sonnets to the magazines at various times. Experiments in blank verse drama, which were not carried beyond the experimental stage, may have given her MAY SINCLAIR From a new photograph by E. Huggins I have never been out of England, except for an occasional short visit to Ireland." For the last nine years Miss Sinclair has made her home in or near London. While her work shows that she possesses an unusual amount of classical and general scholarship, she has had very little education in the technical sense. She studied at a private school for one year, and at the Ladies' College, Cheltenham, for another year. Beyond this she had practice in writing of dialogue Her story is the old one of success after years of plucky fighting. None of her former books-"Audrey Craven," "Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson," and "Two Sides of a Question" (though the last named was lavishly praised by some reviewers in England)brought herany appreciable returns; and before the success of "The Divine Fire" changed the aspect of things, she had to review other people's books and make translations. Regarding her next book Miss Sin clair will say little, except that she means to start it shortly after her return to England, which she expects will be soon after Christmas. It may be finished by the end of next summer. We say "may be," for there were seven years between the commencement and finishing of "The Divine Fire," five years of which, however, were an interlude, during which she did shorter books, which meant less strain. She is an uncommonly conscientious writer, and finds no one less easy to please than herself. She often works eight hours a day, but her daily output is comparatively small, varying from six hundred to six words. She says, 66 'I work hard at all my novels, especially with regard to style. Each character has to be thought out, to be alive and present to me, before I can begin. I sketch out the whole book first, carefully, and each chapter separately, before writing a line. Therefore, as the whole is before me more or less, it doesn't matter where I begin a novel. I frequently begin in the middle. I write sometimes rapidly, sometimes at a snail's pace. I have no regular methods of work, no theories of art, no test of it except excellence of style and construction, and truth to life-the latter the supreme test." Gilbert Keith George Perry Morris Comparison between Mr. Chesterton and Dr. Samuel Johnson on the physical side has been made. There the comparison ends. Johnson was a Tory who distrusted democracy and the people. Chesterton is an old-fashioned Liberal born out of time. Johnson spoke sense in a straightforward way understood of all men. His spades were called spades, and his yea was yea, and his nay, nay. Chesterton also is a practical philosopher, but he speaks in paradox, revels in the abnormal, and lets a virile imagination have full play. In the garb of a warrior he is at heart a lover. In a day of seemingly triumphant materialism he is an idealist. Science having grown impudent and scornful, he comes to the defense of Religion. rather alarming statement, but in this case the survival of the fittest may be awaited with confidence on the part of the public. A nearly complete list of Miss Sinclair's writings, as given by herself, is as follows: "I first began to write novels when I settled in London nine years ago. Before that I wrote nothing but verse and philosophic criticism. My first published prose article came out in an American review, 'The New World,' in December, 1903, on the 'Ethical Import of Idealism.' I began to write when I was nine years old, but strongly suppressed all my juvenilia. My first volume of verse, 'Hakiketas and Other Poems,' published by Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. in 1887, was followed by Essays in Verse' (same publishers) in 1890. Sonnets and verses appeared in various magazines between 1893 and 1895. My first novel,' Audrey Craven' (Blackwood), published in 1897, was followed by Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson,' 1898, 'Two Sides of a Question' (Constable), 1901, and 'The Divine Fire,' 1904. A few short stories appeared in 'Macmillan's,' 'Blackwood's,' and Temple Bar.'" attention. The range of his comment on life is from British municipal or colonial politics to Greek art, from yellow journalism to current agnosticism and perennial mysticism, from a defense of slang to polemics against the "art for art's sake" theory of art. One has scarcely grown accustomed to the flare and splutter of his arc light of paradox, with its effects of intense light and shade and the unnatural shadows stalking by the side of prosaic facts, when he is asked to wander serenely under the mellow light of the sun of wisdom. One has hardly recovered from the sense of moral exhilaration at seeing some intrenched evil hit square between the eyes with a caustic bit of candor, when one begins to hear the pious strains of a religionist who extols the supernatural and revels in the mysterious and the mystical. If challenged for uttering himself in His intellectual fertility first compels terms that are parabolic and paradoxical, |