had also been published lately. I was truly pleased to hear this.
On my next visit to town we met at a lunch. I saw a young man of

medium stature and slender build, with very steady, penetrating
blue eyes, the eyes of a being who not only sees visions but can

brood over them to some purpose.
He had indeed a wonderful power of vision, which he applied to the

things of this earth and of our mortalhumanity with a penetrating
force that seemed to reach, within life's appearances and forms,

the very spirit of life's truth. His ignorance of the world at
large--he had seen very little of it--did not stand in the way of

his imaginative grasp of facts, events, and picturesque men.
His manner was very quiet, his personality at first sight

interesting, and he talked slowly with an intonation which on some
people, mainly Americans, had, I believe, a jarring effect. But

not on me. Whatever he said had a personal note, and he expressed
himself with a graphicsimplicity which was extremely engaging. He

knew little of literature, either of his own country or of any
other, but he was himself a wonderful artist in words whenever he

took a pen into his hand. Then his gift came out--and it was seen
then to be much more than mere felicity of language. His

impressionism of phrase went really deeper than the surface. In
his writing he was very sure of his effects. I don't think he was

ever in doubt about what he could do. Yet it often seemed to me
that he was but half aware of the exceptional" target="_blank" title="a.异常的，特别的">exceptional quality of his

achievement.
This achievement was curtailed by his early death. It was a great

loss to his friends, but perhaps not so much to literature. I
think that he had given his measure fully in the few books he had

the time to write. Let me not be misunderstood: the loss was
great, but it was the loss of the delight his art could give, not

the loss of any further possible revelation. As to himself, who
can say how much he gained or lost by quitting so early this world

of the living, which he knew how to set before us in the terms of
his own artisticvision? Perhaps he did not lose a great deal.

The recognition he was accorded was rather languid and given him
grudgingly. The worthiest welcome he secured for his tales in this

country was from Mr. W. Henley in the NEW REVIEW and later, towards
the end of his life, from the late Mr. William Blackwood in his

magazine. For the rest I must say that during his sojourn in
England he had the misfortune to be, as the French say, MAL

ENTOURE. He was beset by people who understood not the quality of
his genius and were antagonistic to the deeper fineness of his

nature. Some of them have died since, but dead or alive they are
not worth speaking about now. I don't think he had any illusions

about them himself: yet there was a strain of good-nature and
perhaps of weakness in his character which prevented him from

shaking himself free from their worthless and patronising
attentions, which in those days caused me much secret irritation

whenever I stayed with him in either of his English homes. My wife
and I like best to remember him riding to meet us at the gate of

the Park at Brede. Born master of his sincere impressions, he was
also a born horseman. He never appeared so happy or so much to

advantage as on the back of a horse. He had formed the project of
teaching my eldest boy to ride, and meantime, when the child was

about two years old, presented him with his first dog.
I saw Stephen Crane a few days after his arrival in London. I saw

him for the last time on his last day in England. It was in Dover,
in a big hotel, in a bedroom with a large window looking on to the

sea. He had been very ill and Mrs. Crane was taking him to some
place in Germany, but one glance at that wasted face was enough to

tell me that it was the most forlorn of all hopes. The last words
he breathed out to me were: "I am tired. Give my love to your

wife and child." When I stopped at the door for another look I saw
that he had turned his head on the pillow and was staring wistfully

out of the window at the sails of a cutter yacht that glided slowly
across the frame, like a dim shadow against the grey sky.

Those who have read his little tale, "Horses," and the story, "The
Open Boat," in the volume of that name, know with what fine

understanding he loved horses and the sea. And his passage on this
earth was like that of a horseman riding swiftly in the dawn of a

day fated to be short and without sunshine.
TALES OF THE SEA--1898

It is by his irresistible power to reach the adventurous side in
the character, not only of his own, but of all nations, that

Marryat is largely human. He is the enslaver of youth, not by the
literary artifices of presentation, but by the natural glamour of

his own temperament. To his young heroes the beginning of life is
a splendid and warlike lark, ending at last in inheritance and

marriage. His novels are not the outcome of his art, but of his
character, like the deeds that make up his record of naval service.

To the artist his work is interesting as a completely successful
expression of an unartistic nature. It is absolutelyamazing to

us, as the disclosure of the spirit animating the stirring time
when the nineteenth century was young. There is an air of fable

about it. Its loss would be irreparable, like the curtailment of
national story or the loss of an historicaldocument. It is the

beginning and the embodiment of an inspiring tradition.
To this writer of the sea the sea was not an element. It was a

stage, where was displayed an exhibition of valour, and of such
achievement as the world had never seen before. The greatness of

that achievement cannot be pronouncedimaginary, since its reality
has affected the destinies of nations; nevertheless, in its

grandeur it has all the remoteness of an ideal. History preserves
the skeleton of facts and, here and there, a figure or a name; but

it is in Marryat's novels that we find the mass of the nameless,
that we see them in the flesh, that we obtain a glimpse of the

everyday life and an insight into the spirit animating the crowd of
obscure men who knew how to build for their country such a shining

monument of memories.
Marryat is really a writer of the Service. What sets him apart is

his fidelity. His pen serves his country as well as did his
professional skill and his renowned courage. His figures move

about between water and sky, and the water and the sky are there
only to frame the deeds of the Service. His novels, like