“Not beauty alone, but that element of strangeness in beauty which
Mr. Pater rightly discerned as the inmost spirit of romantic art--it
is this which gives to Miss Macleod’s work its peculiar æsthetic
charm.”--_Mr. Ashcroft Noble._
* * * * *
“Miss Macleod is a poet. Her prose _is_ prose--it is a poet’s prose....
She excels in the very quality most Celtic literature so signally
wants--namely, _form_.... But more than a sense of form is evident in
her stories. She has the seeing eye, the hearing ear, the attentive
spirit, the brooding mind. She has caught and construed into sweet
words all the magical beauty of the themes, nor has she shrunk from
their horror; and in almost all one is conscious of that unknown
something that ‘moves in the shadow of life.’ ‘It is Destiny,’ she
tells us, ‘that is the Protagonist in the Celtic drama.’”--_To-day._
* * * * *
“Miss Macleod’s genius has long been recognised as representing
most completely the revival of the Celtic spirit in modern English
literature.”--_The Manchester Guardian._
* * * * *
“Miss Macleod is a Celt of the Celts; her theme is the ancient trouble
of her race.... She appeals to a little clan of her own, to whom the
wild bees of the spirit come, as secret wings in the dark, with the
sound and breath of forgotten things. To that clan _The Winged Destiny_
will be more than welcome. It shows in abundance all the writer’s usual
qualities of charm and manner.... Criticism bends before the magic
glamour of the north, where the sea foam is white and the skies are
dark with cloud and wind. The land of the Gael is something rare and
apart; and rare and apart, judge it as you will, is the art of Fiona
Macleod.”--_The Glasgow Herald._
* * * * *
“What I admire in the work of Miss Fiona Macleod is her infinite
sympathy for all that is beautiful, either in what we usually call
inanimate nature, or in the deeds and words of men. She too--and
this is no mean compliment--respects her own gift, and bestows it
royally.”--_Country Life._
* * * * *
“‘There is no mystery in them, or anywhere, except the eternal mystery
of beauty’--and Miss Macleod certainly possesses the master key to the
heart of that mystery.”--_The Daily Chronicle._
* * * * *
“Miss Macleod persuades one more than ever that she is the possessor of
that rare and precious thing, genius.... Her work has energy, passion,
beauty, and sweetness.”--_The National Observer._
* * * * *
“‘J’avais le sentiment de l’infini et de l’éternel et de là mes
sourires pour les choses qui passent. Mais l’Esprit ne passe point.’
Cette belle phrase de Renan s’applique assez exactment à l’auteur de
_The Winged Destiny_, Miss Fiona Macleod. Ce livre qui s’est ‘dressé
comme un fantôme hors des bois hautés’ a le charme indicible des
précédents œuvres de cet auteur. Miss Macleod a quelque chose de
visionnaire et d’indéfini, d’étrangement mélancolique, de profondément
émouvant.... Tout cela, c’est bien ‘le rêve de la vie vue en beauté,’
et voir les choses dans leur beauté c’est les voir dans leur vérité,
comme l’a dit Matthew Arnold.”--_Le Mercure de France._