SOURCE: "Theodore Roosevelt as a Man of Letters," in The Tocsin of Revolt and Other Essays, edited by Brander Matthews, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1919, pp. 229-50.

An American critic, playwright, novelist, and educator, Matthews wrote extensively on world drama. In the following essay, originally published in 1919, he examines Roosevelt's multifaceted character as expressed in his writings.

I

The more closely we scrutinize Theodore Roosevelt's life and the more carefully we consider his many ventures in many totally different fields of human activity, the less likely we are to challenge the assertion that his was the most interesting career ever vouchsafed to any American,—more interesting even than Benjamin Franklin's, fuller, richer and more varied. Like Franklin, Roosevelt enjoyed life intensely. He was frank in declaring that he had been happy beyond the common lot of man; and we cannot doubt that Franklin had the same feeling. The most obvious...