Amenomori,—whom he called “the finest type of the Japanese man,”—writing of him after his death, said: “Like a lotus the man was in his heart ... a poet, a thinker, loving husband and father, and sincere friend.... Within that man there burned something pure as the vestal fire, and in that flame dwelt a mind that called forth life and poetry out of the dust, and grasped the highest themes of human thought.”
Yone Noguchi wrote: “Surely we could lose two or three battleships at Port Arthur rather than Lafcadio Hearn.”
After his death were issued a few of his last studies of Japan under the title of “A Romance of the Milky Way,” and these, with his autobiographical fragments included in this volume, conclude his work. The last of these fragments, three small pages, is named “Illusion”:—
“An old, old sea-wall, stretching between two boundless levels, green and blue;—on the right only rice-fields, reaching to the sky-line;—on the left only summer-silent sea, where fishing-craft of curious shapes are riding. Everything is steeped in white sun; and I am standing on the wall. Along its broad and grass-grown top a boy is running towards me,—running in sandals of wood,—the sea-breeze blowing aside the long sleeves of his robe as he runs, and baring his slender legs to the knee. Very fast he runs, springing upon his sandals;—and he has in his hands something to show me: a black dragonfly, which he is holding carefully by the wings, lest it should hurt itself struggling.... With what sudden incommunicable pang do I watch the gracious little figure leaping in the light,—between those summer silences of field and sea!... A delicate boy, with the blended charm of two races.... And how softly vivid all things under this milky radiance,—the smiling child-face with lips apart,—the twinkle of the light quick feet,—the shadows of grasses and of little stones!...
“But, quickly as he runs, the child will come no nearer to me,—the slim brown hand will never cling to mine. For this light is the light of a Japanese sun that set long years ago.... Never, dearest!—never shall we meet,—not even when the stars are dead!
“And yet,—can it be possible that I shall not remember?—that I shall not still see, in other million summers, the same sea-wall under the same white noon,—the same shadows of grasses and of little stones,—the running of the same little sandalled feet that will never, never reach my side?”
The compression found necessary in order to yield room for the letters, which I think will bear comparison with the most famous letters in literature, has forced me to content myself with depicting the man merely in profile and giving a bare outline of his work as an artist. It has obliged me to abandon all temptation to dwell upon his more human side, his humour, tenderness, sympathy, eccentricity, and the thousand queer, charming qualities that made up his many-faceted nature. These omissions are in great part supplied by the letters themselves, where he turns different sides of his mind to each correspondent, and where one sees in consequence a shadow of the writers themselves reflected in his own mental attitude.
In the turbid, shallow flood of the ephemeral books of our time Lafcadio Hearn’s contribution to English letters has been partially obscured. But day by day, as these sink unfruitfully into the sands of time, more clearly emerge the stern and exquisite outlines of his patient work. While still a boy he said playfully, in answer to an appeal to concede something to the vulgarer taste for the sake of popularity: “I shall stick to my pedestal of faith in literary possibilities like an Egyptian Colossus with a broken nose, seated solemnly in the gloom of my own originality.”
To that creed he held through all the bitter permutations of life, and at the end it may be fitly said of him that “despite perishing principles and decaying conventions, despite false teaching, false triumphs, and false taste, there were yet those who strove for the immemorial grandeur of their calling, who pandered to no temptation from without or from within, who followed none of the great world-voices, were dazzled by none of the great world-lights, and used their gift as stepping-stone to no meaner life; but clear-eyed and patient, neither elated nor cast down, still lifted the lamp as high as their powers allowed, still pursued art singly for her own immortal sake.”