les an' glisnen glances:
Stars a-winken,
Days a-shrinken,
Sheaedes a-zinken,
Brought anew the happy meeten,
That did meaeke the night too fleeten.

JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE

(1860-)

James Matthew Barrie was born May 9th, 1860, at Kirriemuir, Scotland
('Thrums'); son of a physician whom he has lovingly embodied as 'Dr.
McQueen,' and with a mother and sister who will live as 'Jess' and
'Leeby.' After an academy course at Dumfries he entered the University
of Edinburgh at eighteen, where he graduated M.A., and took honors in
the English Literature class. A few months later he took a place on a
newspaper in Nottingham, England, and in the spring of 1885 went to
London, where the papers had begun to accept his work.

[Illustration: "JAMES M. BARRIE"]

Above all, the St. James's Gazette had published the first of the 'Auld
Licht Idylls' November 17th, 1884; and the editor, Frederick Greenwood,
instantly perceiving a new and rich genius, advised him to work the vein
further, enforcing the advice by refusing to accept his contributions on
other subjects.

He had the usual painful struggle to become a successful journalist,
detailed in 'When a Man's Single'; but his real work was other and
greater. In 1887 'When a Man's Single' came out serially in the British
Weekly; it has little merit except in the Scottish prelude, which is of
high quality in style and pathos. It is curious how utterly his powers
desert him the moment he leaves his native heath: like Antaeus, he is a
giant on his mother earth and a pigmy off it. His first published book
was 'Better Dead' (1887); it works out a cynical idea which would be
amusing in five pages, but is diluted into tediousness by being spread
over fifty. But in 1889 came a second masterpiece, 'A Window in Thrums,'
a continuation of the Auld Licht series from an inside instead of an
outside standpoint,--not superior to the first, but their full equals in
a deliciousness of which one cannot say how much is matter and how much
style. 'My Lady Nicotine' appeared in 1890; it was very popular, and has
some amusing sketches, but no enduring quality. 'An Edinburgh Eleven'
(1890) is a set of sketches of his classmates and professors.

In 1891 the third of his Scotch works appeared,--'The Little
Minister,'--which raised him from the rank of an admirable sketch writer
to that of an admirable novelist, despite its fantastic plot and
detail. Since