It seems to have something to do with the Celtic genius.  One can always understand a Scottish Celt better by comparing him with an Irish one or a Welsh; and it will certainly prove illuminative in the present case to remember Mr. W.B.  Yeats while one is thinking of Fiona Macleod.  To the present writer it seems that the woman-soul is apparent in both, and that she is singing the same tune; the only difference being, as it were, in the quality of the voice, Fiona Macleod singing in high soprano, and Mr. Yeats in deep and most heart-searching contralto.

The Fiona Macleod side of Sharp never throve well in London.  Hers was the fate of those who in this busy world have retained the faculty and the need for dreaming.  So Sharp had to get away from London—­driven of the spirit into the wilderness—­that his other self might live and breathe.  One feels the power of this second self especially in certain words that recur over and over again, until the reader is almost hypnotised by their lilting, and finds himself in a kind of sleep.  That dreaming personality, with eyes half closed and poppy-decorated hair, could never live in the bondage of the city cage.  The spirit must get free, and the longing for such freedom has been well called “a barbaric passion, a nostalgia for the life of the moor and windy sea.”

There are two ways of loving and understanding nature.  Meredith speaks of those who only see nature by looking at it along the barrel of a gun.  The phrase describes that large company of people who feel the call of the wild indeed, and long for the country at certain seasons, but must always be doing something with nature—­either hunting, or camping out, or peradventure going upon a journey like Baal in the Old Testament.  But there is another way, to which Carlyle calls attention as characteristic of Robert Burns, and which he pronounces the test of a true poet.  The test is, whether he can wander the whole day beside a burn “and no’ think lang.”  Such was Fiona’s way with nature.  She needed nothing to interest her but the green earth itself, and its winds and its waters.  It was surely the Fiona side of Sharp that made him kiss the grassy turf and then scatter it to the east and west and north and south; or lie down at night upon the ground that he might see the intricate patterns of the moonlight, filtering through the branches of the trees.

In all this, it is needless to say, Mr. Yeats offers a close parallel.  He understands so perfectly the wild life, that one knows at once that it is in him, like a fire in his blood.  Take this for instance—­

     “They found a man running there;
     He had ragged long grass-coloured hair;
     He had knees that stuck out of his hose;
     He had puddle water in his shoes;
     He had half a cloak to keep him dry,
     Although he had a squirrel’s eye.”

Such perfect observation is possible only to the detached spirit, which is indeed doing nothing to nature, but only letting nature do her work.  In the sharp outline of this imagery, and in the mind that saw and the heart that felt it, there is something of the keenness of the squirrel’s eye for nature.