Of such certainly is a living writer, now beginning to be acclaimed as he deserves, the writer Conrad.  In some ways this noble novelist might stand as the special representative of modern feeling.  A Pole by birth and more than half an Englishman by sympathy, his view of life is as wide as it is profound and grave.  It has all the sternness of temper of which I have spoken, the determination to look facts in the face whatever the consequences.  Conrad would echo Sartor’s noble cry for Truth—­’Truth! though the Heavens crush me for following her;—­no Falsehood! though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of Apostasy!’ This determination is fierce enough to be taken for cynicism, but Conrad is far too tender ever to be a cynic.  So also does his pitifulness prevent him from ever falling into the errors of a Nietzsche, but none the less he has all Nietzsche’s ardour for heroism.  That to him is the core of life:—­’to face it.’  ‘Keep on facing it,’ so the old skipper tells the young mate in Typhoon.  And facing the mysterious universe, peering into the Darkness with steady alert eyes, Conrad has at once an endless wistfulness and, or so it seems to me, a secret unquenchable hope.  Doubt certainly he has in plenty.  The sea of which he is always dreaming is terrible and cruel in his eyes as well as august and ennobling.

But he is sure of one thing:  it is through the struggle with it and such as it that man alone can become Man.  It is through facing the horrors of a dead calm, with a sick crew on board and no medicine, that the young master of the sailing-vessel in the Pacific crosses successfully the Shadow Line that divides youth from manhood.  And it is through facing the unleashed fury of the tornado that the old captain of the ‘full-powered steam-ship’ in Typhoon shows what he has in him, compassion and kindness as well as shrewd knowledge of men, expert seamanship, and indomitable heroism.  The whole thing is driven home with a power, an incisiveness, and a delicate irradiating humour which I should despair of conveying by mere criticism.  The book must be read for itself, and read again and again.  It is told, in one way, simply as a sailor’s yarn, but it awakes in us the feeling that the struggle is a symbol of man’s life.

Threatened by the advancing cyclone, Captain MacWhirr, ‘the stupid man’ of no imagination, decides, almost instinctively, that the only thing to be done is to keep up steam and face the wind.  By sheer force of personality he holds the crew together and carries the ship through.  And in the desperate struggle, every nerve on the strain for hours that seem unending, MacWhirr finds time to care for the miserable pack of terrified coolies on board, who have given way to panic and are fighting madly in the hold.  MacWhirr stops this, brings about order and a chance for the Chinese, when the rest of his men, fine men as most of them are, can think of nothing but the safety of the ship.  ’Had to do what’s