Two other classes of writings make up Roosevelt's astonishing
output. He gathered his essays and addresses into half a dozen
volumes, remarkable alike for the wide variety of their subjects,
and for the vigor with which he seized on each subject as if it
was the one above all others which most absorbed him. Finally,
skim the collection of his official messages, as Commissioner, as
Governor, or as President, and you will discover that he had the
gift of infusing life and color into the usually drab and
cheerless wastes of official documents.
I am not concerned to make a literary appraisal of Theodore
Roosevelt's manifold works, but I am struck by the fact that our
professional critics ignore him entirely in their summaries or
histories of recent American literature. As I re-read, after
twenty years, and in some cases after thirty years, books of his
which made a stir on their appearance, I am impressed, not only
by the excellence of their writing, but by their lasting quality.
If he had not done so many other things of greater importance,
and done them supremely, he would have secured lasting fame by
his books on hunting, ranching, and exploration.
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