CHAPTER XXI
THE DIVINE ADVENTURE
Celtic
In the early summer of 1900 the volume entitled The Divine Adventure: Iona: By Sundown Shores, with a dedication to me, was published by Messrs. Chapman & Hall.
Various titles had been discarded, among others “The Reddening of the West,” also “The Sun-Treader” intended for a story, projected but never written, to form a sequel to “The Herdsman.” The titular essays had previously appeared in various periodicals; the two first in The Fortnightly. As the author explained in a letter to Mr. Macleay, Fiona’s Highland champion:
... There is a sudden departure from fiction ancient or modern in something of mine that is coming out in the November and December issues of The Fortnightly Review.
“The Divine Adventure” it is called—though this spiritual essay is more ‘remote,’ i. e. unconventional, and in a sense more ‘mystical,’ than anything I have done. But it is out of my inward life. It is an essential part of a forthcoming book of spiritual and critical essays or studies in the spiritual history of the Gael, to be called The Reddening of the West....
A book I look forward to with singular interest is Mr. Arthur Symon’s announced Symbolist Movement in Literature.