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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!
The collected essays included in this volume were contributed by Mr.
Runciman to the pages of The Family Herald. In the superfine circles
of the Sniffy, this fact is sufficient to condemn them unread. For of all
fools the most incorrigible is surely the conventional critic who judges
literary wares not by their intrinsic merit or demerit, but by the
periodical in which they first saw the light. The same author may write
in the same day two articles, putting his best work and thought into
each, but if he sends one to The Saturday Review and the other to The
Family Herald, those who relish and admire his writing in-the former
would regard it as little less than a betise to suggest that the companion
article in The Family Herald could be anything but miserable
commonplace, which no one with any reputation to lose in "literary
circles" would venture to read. The same arrogance of ignorance is
observable in the supercilious way in which many men speak of the
articles appearing in other penny miscellanies of popular literature.
They richly deserve the punishment which Mr. Runciman reminds us
Sir Walter Scott inflicted upon some blatant snobs who were praising
Coleridge's poetry in Coleridge's presence. "One gentleman had been
extravagantly extolling Coleridge, until many present felt a little
uncomfortable. Scott said, 'Well, I have lately read in a provincial paper
some verses which I think better than most of their sort.' He then
recited the lines 'Fire, Famine, and Slaughter' which are now so famous.
The eulogist of Coleridge refused to allow the verses any merit. To

Scott he addressed a series of questions--'Surely you must own that this
is bad?' 'Surely you cannot call this anything but poor?' At length
Coleridge quietly broke in, 'For Heaven's sake, leave Mr. Scott alone! I
wrote the poem'" (p. 39).
Such lessons are more needed now than ever. Only by stripes can the
vulgar pseudo-cultured be taught their folly.
The post of father-confessor and general director to the readers of The
Family Herald which Mr. Runciman filled in succession to Mr. Grant
Allen is one which any student of human nature might envy. There is
no dissecting-room of the soul like the Confessional, where the priest is
quite impalpable and impersonal and the penitent secure