It would almost seem that the approach to reality drove Highland atmosphere from the stories. In "The Sin-Eater," one of the best of his writings that might be classed as a short story, the sin-eater and his confidant are Highlanders, but the description of the scene of his misfortune, the steading of the Blairs, might well have been that nearest to "Silence Farm." It is faithfully described, the scenes about the little home, whose owner lies dead, having the very smack of realism. In the latter part of the story the scene shifts to the coast and the tang of the story turns Gaelic and unreal. Was it thus, I wonder, always to the imagination of William Sharp, Lowland life real, Highland life mystical?
Sharp was handicapped, of course, in coming to the subject material he could best handle late in life, "Pharais" (1894) and "The Mountain Lovers" (1895), the first books published as by "F.M.," being just as definitely 'prenticework in their kind as was "Children of To-morrow" (1890) in its kind. Of the long stories other than "Children of To-morrow" published in his own name, "A Fellowe and his Wife" (1892) and "Wives in Exile" (1896) have no very serious intention, though both are well done after their kind, records of imaginings, respectively of experiences of art life in Rome, and of yachting experiences in the Irish Sea. It was not until "Silence Farm" (1899), as I have said, that, as William Sharp, he found himself.
"The Gypsy Christ" (1896), which might well have been developed into a full-fledged romance, is less original than any of his longer writings. It is, like "The Weird of Michael Scott" and "A Northern Night," closely allied to essays of his other rôle, that of "F.M.," to catch and express "the tempestuous loveliness of terror," such as the catastrophe of "The Mountain Lovers," "The Barbaric Tales," and those short stories in which Gloom Achanna is hero-villain. It is in such work that Sharp shows his affinities to Poe, affinities which are not elsewhere as obvious as his affinities to De Quincey. Narrative was not native to De Quincey any more than it was to Sharp, though Sharp was led toward it by his interest in character, an interest that was not in any large measure given to De Quincey, who, when he turned to narrative other than that which relates what had happened to him or what he had dreamed had happened to him, makes the reader feel he did so as a concession to the public. Another interest that was Sharp's, an interest amounting to a passion,--out-of-doors,--De Quincey had not at all, for all his devotion to Wordsworth and to Wordsworth's interests. Like De Quincey, on the other hand, Sharp delights in "fine writing," in both senses of the phrase, in the "highfalutin" that is objectionable, and in the ornately beautiful that is one fitting expression of romantic thought. Both men preferred the mouth-filling word to the simple one, the Latinical adjective to the Saxon; both had rather see visions and dream dreams than write about the "common light of common hours"; both goad their imaginations until they run riot and so confuse their possessors, who should control them, that they are unable to distinguish between what is fact and what is fancy. You could carry the analogy further, to events of their lives--the runnings-away in boyhood; the devoted friendships to poets in youth; the incredible amount of hard work achieved in manhood despite of often recurring illnesses.