land is indeed a violent
change. Nothing could be more dissimilar than the two types of paganism
out of which they spring; and if Fiona Macleod's work may have its
dangers for the precarious faith of modern days, they are certainly
dangers which attack the soul in a different fashion from those of Omar.

The revelation of Fiona Macleod's identity with William Sharp came upon
the English-reading world as a complete surprise. Few deaths have been
more lamented in the literary world than his, and that for many reasons.
His biography is one of the most fascinating that could be imagined. His
personality was a singularly attractive one,--so vital, so
indefatigable,--with interests so many-sided, and a heart so sound in
all of them. It is characteristic of him that in his young days he ran
away for a time with gipsies, for he tells us, "I suppose I was a gipsy
once, and before that a wild man of the woods." The two great influences
of his life were Shelley and D.G. Rossetti. The story of his literary
struggles is brimful of courage and romance, and the impression of the
book is mainly that of ubiquity. His insatiable curiosity seems to have
led him to know everybody, and every place, and everything.

At length Fiona Macleod was born. She arose out of nowhere, so far as
the reading public could discover. Really there was a hidden shy self in
Sharp, which must find expression impossible except in some secret way.
We knew him as the brilliant critic, the man of affairs, and the wide
and experienced traveller. We did not know him, until we discovered that
he was Fiona, in that second life of his in the borderland where flesh
and spirit meet.

First there came _Pharais_ in 1893, and that was the beginning of much.
Then came _The Children of To-morrow_, the forerunner of Fiona Macleod.
It was his first prose expression of the subjective side of his nature,
together with the element of revolt against conventionalities, which was
always strongly characteristic of him. It introduced England to the
hidden places of the Green Life.

The secret of his double personality was confided only to a few friends,
and was remarkably well kept. When pressed by adventurous questioners,
some of these allies gave answers which might have served for models in
the art of diplomacy. So Sharp wrote on, openly as William Sharp, and
secretly as Fiona Macleod. Letters had to reach Fiona somehow, and so it
was given out that she was his cousin, and that l