doubt about what he could do. Yet it often seemed to me that he was but
half aware of the 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 artistic vision? 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