And there is a strong resemblance to Thomas Hardy in at least one of the paragraphs narrating Paul Grande's race with death toward the Anderson farm--the paragraph dealing with the idle things that then incongruously concerned the hero:
"Things idle as these: I see a dew-wet fir-top catch the moonlight for an instant and flash to whiteness, an up-thrust lance of silver; I see the shadow of a dead, gnarled branch cast upon a mossy open in startling semblance to a crucifix--so clear, I cannot but stoop and touch it reverently as I pass; I see, at the edge of a grassy glade, a company of tall buttercups, their stems invisible, their petals seeming to float toward me, a squadron of small, light wings; I hear the smooth swish of branches thrust apart; I hear the protesting, unresonant creak of the green underbrush as we tread it down, and the sharp crackle of dry twigs as we thread the aisles of older forest; I hear, from the face of a moonlit bluff upon our left, the long, mournful _Whóo-hu-hu--Hóo-oo_ of the brown owl. I smell the savour of juniper, of bruised snakeroot, and of old, slow-rotting wood; with once a fairy breath of unseen _linoea_; and once at the fringed brink of a rivulet, the pungent fragrance of wild mint. I feel the frequent wet slappings of branches on my face; I feel the strong prickles of the fir, the cool, flat frondage of the spruce and hemlock, the unresisting, feathery spines of the young hackmatack trees; I feel, once, a gluey web upon my face, and the abhorrence with which I dash off the fat spider that clings to my chin; I feel the noisome slump of my foot as I tread upon a humped and swollen gathering of toad-stools."
More than one judicious critic has remarked that few men of his years have achieved--and deservedly!--the literary renown which Professor Roberts's published works warrant. These works are as follows: "Orion and Other Poems" (1880), "In Divers Tones" (1887), "The Canadians of Old" (a translation from the French of de Gaspé, 1889), Appleton's "Canadian Guide Book" (1890), "Ave, An Ode for the Shelley Centenary" (1892), "Songs of the Common Day" (1893), "The Raid of Beauséjour" (1894), "Reub Dare's Shad Boat" (1895), "Around the Camp Fire" (1896), "Earth's Enigmas" (1896), "A History of Canada" (1897), "The Forge in the Forest" (1897), "The Book of the Native" (1897), "New York Nocturnes" (1898), "A Sister to Evangeline" (1898), "By the Marshes of Minas" (1900), "The Heart of the Ancient Wood" (1900).