ess had entirely evaporated from
him the moment he was put on an island where he had nothing
to do."

It is very fitting that Mr. Frederic's last book should be in praise
of action, the thing that makes the world go round; of force,
however misspent, which is the sum of life as distinguished from the
inertia of death. In the forty-odd years of his life he wrote almost
as many pages as Balzac, most of it mere newspaper copy, it is true,
read and forgotten, but all of it vigorous and with the stamp of a
strong man upon it. And he played just as hard as he worked--alas,
it was the play that killed him! The young artist who illustrated
the story gave to the pictures of "Joel Thorpe" very much the look
of Harold Frederic himself, and they might almost stand for his
portraits. I fancy the young man did not select his model
carelessly. In this big, burly adventurer who took fortune and women
by storm, who bluffed the world by his prowess and fought his way to
the front with battle-ax blows, there is a great deal of Harold
Frederic, the soldier of fortune, the Utica milk boy who fought his
way from the petty slavery of a provincial newspaper to the foremost
ranks of the journalists of the world and on into literature, into
literature worth the writing. The man won his place in England much
as his hero won his, by defiance, by strong shoulder blows, by his
self-sufficiency and inexhaustible strength, and when he finished
his book he did not know that his end would be so much less glorious
than his hero's, that it would be his portion not to fall manfully
in the thick of the combat and the press of battle, but to die
poisoned in the tent of Chryseis. For who could foresee a tragedy so
needless, so blind, so brutal in its lack of dignity, or know that
such strength could perish through such insidious weakness, that so
great a man could be stung to death by a mania born in little minds?

In point of execution and literary excellence, both "The Market
Place" and "Gloria Mundi" are vastly inferior to "The Damnation of
Theron Ware," or that exquisite London idyl, "March Hares." The
first 200 pages of "Theron Ware" are as good as anything in American
fiction, much better than most of it. They are not so much the work
of a literary artist as of a vigorous thinker, a man of strong
opinions and an intimate and comprehensive knowledge of men. The
whole work, despite its irregularities and indifference to form, is
full of brain s