In a private letter to a friend, written in 1896, the late Mr. Charles Dudley Warner remarked: "I am just reading _Children of the Soil_, which I got in London before I sailed. It confirms me in my very high opinion of him. I said the other day that I think him at the head of living novelists, both in range, grasp of a historical situation, intuition and knowledge of human nature. Comparisons are always dangerous, but I know no historical novelist who is his superior, or who is more successful in creating characters. His canvas is very large, and in the beginning of his historical romances the reader needs patience, but the picture finally comes out vividly, and the episodes in the grand story are perfectly enthralling. Of his novels of modern life I cannot speak too highly. The subtlety of his analysis is wonderful, and the shades of character are delineated by slight but always telling strokes. There is the same reality in them that is in his romances. As to the secret of his power, who can say? It is genius (I still believe in that word) but re-enforced by very hard labour and study, by much reading, and by acute observation." This letter may serve as an excellent summary of the opinions of many intelligent American critics concerning a writer whose name was unknown to us in 1890, and of whom the whole world was talking in 1895.[5] One reason--apart from their intrinsic excellence--for the Byronic suddenness of the fame of the Polish Trilogy, was the psychological opportuneness of its appearance. In England and in America the recent Romantic Revival was at its flood; we were all reading historical romances, and were hungry for more. Sienkiewicz satisfied us by providing exactly what we were looking for. In his own country he was idolised, for his single pen had done more than many years of tumultuous discussion, to put Poland back on the map of Europe. At the exercises commemorating the five hundredth anniversary of the University of Cracow, the late President Gilman, who had the well-deserved honour of speaking for the universities of America, said: "America thanks Poland for three great names: Copernicus, to whom all the world is indebted; Kosciuszko, who spilled his blood for American independence; and Sienkiewicz, whose name is a household word in thousands of American homes, and who has introduced Poland to the American people."[6] [5] His name does not appear in standard English biographical dictionaries or literary reference books for 1893 or 1894. [6] See an interesting article in the _Outlook_ for 3 August, 1901, _A Visit to Sienkiewicz_, by L. E. Van Norman.