For many years, however, Runciman had systematically overworked, and in other ways abused, his magnificent constitution.  The seeds of consumption were gradually developed.  But the crash came suddenly.  Early in the summer of 1891, he broke down altogether.  He was sent to a hydropathic establishment at Matlock; but the doctors discovered he was already in a most critical condition, and four weeks later advised his wife to take him back to his own home at Kingston.  His splendid physique seemed to run down with a rush, and when a month was over, he died, on July —­th, a victim to his own devouring energy—­perhaps, too, to the hardships of a life of journalism.

“This was a man,” said his friendly biographer, whom I have already quoted.  No sentence could more justly sum up the feeling of all who knew James Runciman.  “Bare power and tenderness, and such sadly human weakness”—­that is the verdict of one who well knew him.  I cannot claim to have known him well myself; but it is an honour to be permitted to add a memorial stone to the lonely cairn of a fellow-worker for humanity.

G.A.

AN INTRODUCTORY WORD ABOUT THE BOOK.

BY W.T.  STEAD.

James Runciman was a remarkably gifted man who died just about the time when he ought to have been getting into harness for his life’s work.  He had in him, more than most men, the materials out of which an English Zola might have been made.  And as we badly need an English Zola, and have very few men out of whom such a genius could be fashioned, I have not ceased to regret the death of the author of this volume.  For Zola is the supreme type in our day of the novelist-journalist, the man who begins by getting up his facts at first-hand with the care and the exhaustiveness of a first-rate journalist, and who then works them up with the dramatic and literary skill of a great novelist.  Charles Reade was something of the kind in his day; but he has left no successor.

James Runciman might have been such an one, if he had lived.  He had the tireless industry, the iron constitution, the journalist’s keen eye for facts, the novelist’s inexhaustible fund of human sympathy.  He was a literary artist who could use his pen as a brush with brilliant effect, and he had an amazing facility in turning out “copy.”  He had lived to suffer, and felt all that he wrote.  There was a marvellous range in his interests.  He had read much, he improvised magnificently, and there was hardly anything that he could not have done if only—­but, alas! it is idle mooning in the land of Might-Have-Beens!