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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/333-h.zip b/333-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..2cceb04 --- /dev/null +++ b/333-h.zip diff --git a/333-h/333-h.htm b/333-h/333-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6240547 --- /dev/null +++ b/333-h/333-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1602 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Robert Louis Stevenson</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + TD { vertical-align: top; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Robert Louis Stevenson, by Walter Raleigh</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Robert Louis Stevenson, by Walter Raleigh + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Robert Louis Stevenson + + +Author: Walter Raleigh + + + +Release Date: January 17, 2007 [eBook #333] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1906 Edward Arnold edition by David +Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON</h1> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">by</span><br /> +WALTER RALEIGH</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">professor of +english literature in the university of oxford</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">author of</span><br /> +‘<span class="smcap">style</span>,’ ‘<span +class="smcap">milton</span>,’ ‘<span +class="smcap">wordsworth</span>,’ <span +class="smcap">etc.</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap"><i>fourth +impression</i></span></p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span +class="smcap">london</span><br /> +EDWARD ARNOLD<br /> +<span class="smcap">41 & 43 maddox street</span>, <span +class="smcap">bond street</span>, <span +class="smcap">w.</span><br /> +1906</p> +<p style="text-align: center">THE GREATER PART OF THIS<br /> +ESSAY WAS GIVEN AS A LECTURE<br /> +AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION<br /> +ON THE 17TH OF MAY<br /> +1895</p> +<h2>ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON</h2> +<p>When a popular writer dies, the question it has become the +fashion with a nervous generation to ask is the question, +‘Will he live?’ There was no idler question, +none more hopelessly impossible and unprofitable to answer. +It is one of the many vanities of criticism to promise +immortality to the authors that it praises, to patronise a writer +with the assurance that our great-grandchildren, whose time and +tastes are thus frivolously mortgaged, will read his works with +delight. But ‘there is no antidote against the opium +of time, which temporally considereth all things: our fathers +find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we +may be buried in our survivors.’ Let us make sure +that our sons will care for Homer before we pledge a more distant +generation to a newer cult.</p> +<p>Nevertheless, without handling the prickly question of +literary immortality, it is easy to recognise that the literary +reputation of Robert Louis Stevenson is made of good stuff. +His fame has spread, as lasting fame is wont to do, from the few +to the many. Fifteen years ago his essays and fanciful +books of travel were treasured by a small and discerning company +of admirers; long before he chanced to fell the British public +with <i>Treasure Island</i> and <i>Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i> he +had shown himself a delicate marksman. And although large +editions are nothing, standard editions, richly furnished and +complete, are worthy of remark. Stevenson is one of the +very few authors in our literary history who have been honoured +during their lifetime by the appearance of such an edition; the +best of his public, it would seem, do not only wish to read his +works, but to possess them, and all of them, at the cost of many +pounds, in library form. It would be easy to mention more +voluminous and more popular authors than Stevenson whose +publishers could not find five subscribers for an adventure like +this. He has made a brave beginning in that race against +Time which all must lose.</p> +<p>It is not in the least necessary, after all, to fortify +ourselves with the presumed consent of our poor descendants, who +may have a world of other business to attend to, in order to +establish Stevenson in the position of a great writer. Let +us leave that foolish trick to the politicians, who never claim +that they are right—merely that they will win at the next +elections. Literary criticism has standards other than the +suffrage; it is possible enough to say something of the literary +quality of a work that appeared yesterday. Stevenson +himself was singularly free from the vanity of fame; ‘the +best artist,’ he says truly, ‘is not the man who +fixes his eye on posterity, but the one who loves the practice of +his art.’ He loved, if ever man did, the practice of +his art; and those who find meat and drink in the delight of +watching and appreciating the skilful practice of the literary +art, will abandon themselves to the enjoyment of his +masterstrokes without teasing their unborn and possibly +illiterate posterity to answer solemn questions. Will a +book live? Will a cricket match live? Perhaps not, +and yet both be fine achievements.</p> +<p>It is not easy to estimate the loss to letters by his early +death. In the dedication of <i>Prince Otto</i> he says, +‘Well, we will not give in that we are finally beaten. . . +. I still mean to get my health again; I still purpose, by hook +or crook, this book or the next, to launch a +masterpiece.’ It would be a churlish or a very dainty +critic who should deny that he has launched masterpieces, but +whether he ever launched his masterpiece is an open +question. Of the story that he was writing just before his +death he is reported to have said that ‘the goodness of it +frightened him.’ A goodness that frightened him will +surely not be visible, like Banquo’s ghost, to only one +pair of eyes. His greatest was perhaps yet to come. +Had Dryden died at his age, we should have had none of the great +satires; had Scott died at his age, we should have had no +Waverley Novels. Dying at the height of his power, and in +the full tide of thought and activity, he seems almost to have +fulfilled the aspiration and unconscious prophecy of one of the +early essays:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Does not life go down with a better grace +foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling +to an end in sandy deltas?</p> +<p>‘When the Greeks made their fine saying that those whom +the gods love die young, I cannot help believing that they had +this sort of death also in their eye. For surely, at +whatever age it overtake the man, this is to die young. +Death has not been suffered to take so much as an illusion from +his heart. In the hot-fit of life, a-tiptoe on the highest +point of being, he passes at a bound on to the other side. +The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the +trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds +of glory, this happy starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the +spiritual land.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>But we on this side are the poorer—by how much we can +never know. What strengthens the conviction that he might +yet have surpassed himself and dwarfed his own best work is, +certainly no immaturity, for the flavour of wisdom and old +experience hangs about his earliest writings, but a vague sense +awakened by that brilliant series of books, so diverse in theme, +so slight often in structure and occasions so gaily executed, +that here was a finished literary craftsman, who had served his +period of apprenticeship and was playing with his tools. +The pleasure of wielding the graven tool, the itch of +craftsmanship, was strong upon him, and many of the works he has +left are the overflow of a laughing energy, arabesques carved on +the rock in the artist’s painless hours.</p> +<p>All art, it is true, is play of a sort; the +‘sport-impulse’ (to translate a German phrase) is +deep at the root of the artist’s power; Sophocles, +Shakespeare, Molière, and Goethe, in a very profound +sense, make game of life. But to make game of life was to +each of these the very loftiest and most imperative employ to be +found for him on this planet; to hold the mirror up to Nature so +that for the first time she may see herself; to ‘be a +candle-holder and look on’ at the pageantry which, but for +the candle-holder, would huddle along in the undistinguishable +blackness, filled them with the pride of place. Stevenson +had the sport-impulse at the depths of his nature, but he also +had, perhaps he had inherited, an instinct for work in more +blockish material, for lighthouse-building and +iron-founding. In a ‘Letter to a Young Artist,’ +contributed to a magazine years ago, he compares the artist in +paint or in words to the keeper of a booth at the world’s +fair, dependent for his bread on his success in amusing +others. In his volume of poems he almost apologises for his +excellence in literature:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Say not of me, that weakly I declined<br /> +The labours of my sires, and fled the sea,<br /> +The towers we founded, and the lamps we lit,<br /> +To play at home with paper like a child;<br /> +But rather say: <i>In the afternoon of time</i><br /> +<i>A strenuous family dusted from its hands</i><br /> +<i>The sand of granite</i>, <i>and beholding far</i><br /> +<i>Along the sounding coasts its pyramids</i><br /> +<i>And tall memorials catch the dying sun</i>,<br /> +<i>Smiled well-content</i>, <i>and to this childish task</i><br +/> +<i>Around the fire addressed its evening hours</i>.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Some of his works are, no doubt, best described as +paper-games. In <i>The Wrong Box</i>, for instance, there +is something very like the card-game commonly called ‘Old +Maid’; the odd card is a superfluous corpse, and each +dismayed recipient in turn assumes a disguise and a pseudonym and +bravely passes on that uncomfortable inheritance. It is an +admirable farce, hardly touched with grimness, unshaken by the +breath of reality, full of fantastic character; the strange +funeral procession is attended by shouts of glee at each of its +stages, and finally melts into space.</p> +<p>But, when all is said, it is not with work of this kind that +Olympus is stormed; art must be brought closer into relation with +life, these airy and delightful freaks of fancy must be subdued +to a serious scheme if they are to serve as credentials for a +seat among the immortals. The decorative painter, whose +pencil runs so freely in limning these half-human processions of +outlined fauns and wood-nymphs, is asked at last to paint an +easel picture.</p> +<p>Stevenson is best where he shows most restraint, and his +peculiarly rich fancy, which ran riot at the suggestion of every +passing whim, gave him, what many a modern writer sadly lacks, +plenty to restrain, an exuberant field for self-denial. +Here was an opportunity for art and labour; the luxuriance of the +virgin forests of the West may be clipped and pruned for a +lifetime with no fear of reducing them to the trim similitude of +a Dutch garden. His bountiful and generous nature could +profit by a spell of training that would emaciate a poorer +stock. From the first, his delight in earth and the +earth-born was keen and multiform; his zest in life</p> +<blockquote><p> ‘put a spirit of youth in +everything,<br /> +That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with +him;’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>and his fancy, light and quick as a child’s, made of the +world around him an enchanted pleasance. The realism, as it +is called, that deals only with the banalities and squalors of +life, and weaves into the mesh of its story no character but +would make you yawn if you passed ten minutes with him in a +railway-carriage, might well take a lesson from this man, if it +had the brains. Picture to yourself (it is not hard) an +average suburb of London. The long rows of identical +bilious brick houses, with the inevitable lace curtains, a symbol +merely of the will and power to wash; the awful nondescript +object, generally under glass, in the front window—the +shrine of the unknown god of art; the sombre invariable citizen, +whose garb gives no suggestion of his occupation or his +tastes—a person, it would seem, only by courtesy; the +piano-organ the music of the day, and the hideous voice of the +vendor of half-penny papers the music of the night; could +anything be less promising than such a row of houses for the +theatre of romance? Set a realist to walk down one of these +streets: he will inquire about milk-bills and servants’ +wages, latch-keys and Sunday avocations, and come back with a +tale of small meannesses and petty respectabilities, written in +the approved modern fashion. Yet Stevenson, it seems +likely, could not pass along such a line of brick bandboxes +without having his pulses set a-throbbing by the imaginative +possibilities of the place. Of his own Lieutenant +Brackenbury Rich he says:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The succession of faces in the lamplight +stirred the lieutenant’s imagination; and it seemed to him +as if he could walk for ever in that stimulating city atmosphere +and surrounded by the mystery of four million private +lives. He glanced at the houses and marvelled what was +passing behind those warmly lighted windows; he looked into face +after face, and saw them each intent upon some unknown interest, +criminal or kindly.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It was that same evening that Prince Florizel’s friend, +under the name of Mr. Morris, was giving a party in one of the +houses of West Kensington. In one at least of the houses of +that brick wilderness human spirits were being tested as on an +anvil, and most of them tossed aside. So also, in, <i>The +Rajah’s Diamond</i>, it was a quiet suburban garden that +witnessed the sudden apparition of Mr. Harry Hartley and his +treasures precipitated over the wall; it was in the same garden +that the Rev. Simon Rolles suddenly, to his own surprise, became +a thief. A monotony of bad building is no doubt a bad +thing, but it cannot paralyse the activities or frustrate the +agonies of the mind of man.</p> +<p>To a man with Stevenson’s live and searching +imagination, every work of human hands became vocal with possible +associations. Buildings positively chattered to him; the +little inn at Queensferry, which even for Scott had meant only +mutton and currant jelly, with cranberries ‘vera weel +preserved,’ gave him the cardinal incident of +<i>Kidnapped</i>. How should the world ever seem dull or +sordid to one whom a railway-station would take into its +confidence, to whom the very flagstones of the pavement told +their story, in whose mind ‘the effect of night, of any +flowing water, of lighted cities, of the peep of day, of ships, +of the open ocean,’ called up ‘an army of anonymous +desires and pleasures’? To have the +‘golden-tongued Romance with serene lute’ for a +mistress and familiar is to be fortified against the assaults of +tedium.</p> +<p>His attitude towards the surprising and momentous gifts of +life was one prolonged passion of praise and joy. There is +none of his books that reads like the meditations of an +invalid. He has the readiest sympathy for all exhibitions +of impulsive energy; his heart goes out to a sailor, and leaps +into ecstasy over a generous adventurer or buccaneer. Of +one of his earlier books he says: ‘From the negative point +of view I flatter myself this volume has a certain stamp. +Although it runs to considerably upwards of two hundred pages, it +contains not a single reference to the imbecility of God’s +universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made a +better one myself.’ And this was an omission that he +never remedied in his later works. Indeed, his zest in +life, whether lived in the back gardens of a town or on the high +seas, was so great that it seems probable the writer would have +been lost had the man been dowered with better health.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Whereas my birth and spirit rather took<br +/> + The way that takes the town,<br /> +Thou didst betray me to a ling’ring book,<br /> + And wrap me in a gown,’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>says George Herbert, who, in his earlier ambitions, would fain +have ruffled it with the best at the court of King James. +But from Stevenson, although not only the town, but oceans and +continents, beckoned him to deeds, no such wail escaped. +His indomitable cheerfulness was never embarked in the cock-boat +of his own prosperity. A high and simple courage shines +through all his writings. It is supposed to be a normal +human feeling for those who are hale to sympathize with others +who are in pain. Stevenson reversed the position, and there +is no braver spectacle in literature than to see him not asking +others to lower their voices in his sick-room, but raising his +own voice that he may make them feel at ease and avoid imposing +his misfortunes on their notice. ‘Once when I was +groaning aloud with physical pain,’ he says in the essay on +<i>Child’s Play</i>, ‘a young gentleman came into the +room and nonchalantly inquired if I had seen his bow and +arrow. He made no account of my groans, which he accepted, +as he had to accept so much else, as a piece of the inexplicable +conduct of his elders; and, like a wise young gentleman, he would +waste no wonder on the subject.’ Was there ever a +passage like this? The sympathy of the writer is wholly +with the child, and the child’s absolute indifference to +his own sufferings. It might have been safely predicted +that this man, should he ever attain to pathos, would be free +from the facile, maudlin pathos of the hired sentimentalist.</p> +<p>And so also with what Dr. Johnson has called +‘metaphysical distresses.’ It is striking +enough to observe how differently the quiet monasteries of the +Carthusian and Trappist brotherhoods affected Matthew Arnold and +Robert Louis Stevenson. In his well-known elegiac stanzas +Matthew Arnold likens his own state to that of the monks:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Wandering between two worlds, one dead,<br +/> +The other powerless to be born,<br /> +With nowhere yet to rest my head,<br /> +Like these on earth I wait forlorn.<br /> +Their faith, my tears, the world deride—<br /> +I come to shed them at their side.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>To Stevenson, on the other hand, our Lady of the Snows is a +mistaken divinity, and the place a monument of chilly +error,—for once in a way he takes it on himself to be a +preacher, his temperament gives voice in a creed:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘And ye, O brethren, what if God,<br /> +When from Heaven’s top He spies abroad,<br /> +And sees on this tormented stage<br /> +The noble war of mankind rage,<br /> +What if His vivifying eye,<br /> +O monks, should pass your corner by?<br /> +For still the Lord is Lord of might;<br /> +In deeds, in deeds, He takes delight;<br /> +The plough, the spear, the laden barks,<br /> +The field, the founded city, marks;<br /> +He marks the smiler of the streets,<br /> +The singer upon garden seats;<br /> +He sees the climber in the rocks;<br /> +To Him, the shepherd folds his flocks;<br /> +For those He loves that underprop<br /> +With daily virtues Heaven’s top,<br /> +And bear the falling sky with ease,<br /> +Unfrowning Caryatides.<br /> +Those He approves that ply the trade,<br /> +That rock the child, that wed the maid,<br /> +That with weak virtues, weaker hands,<br /> +Sow gladness on the peopled lands,<br /> +And still with laughter, song, and shout<br /> +Spin the great wheel of earth about.</p> +<p>But ye?—O ye who linger still<br /> +Here in your fortress on the hill,<br /> +With placid face, with tranquil breath,<br /> +The unsought volunteers of death,<br /> +Our cheerful General on high<br /> +With careless looks may pass you by!’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>And the fact of death, which has damped and darkened the +writings of so many minor poets, does not cast a pallor on his +conviction. Life is of value only because it can be spent, +or given; and the love of God coveted the position, and assumed +mortality. If a man treasure and hug his life, one thing +only is certain, that he will be robbed some day, and cut the +pitiable and futile figure of one who has been saving candle-ends +in a house that is on fire. Better than this to have a +foolish spendthrift blaze and the loving cup going round. +Stevenson speaks almost with a personal envy of the conduct of +the four marines of the <i>Wager</i>. There was no room for +them in the boat, and they were left on a desert island to a +certain death. ‘They were soldiers, they said, and +knew well enough it was their business to die; and as their +comrades pulled away, they stood upon the beach, gave three +cheers, and cried, “God bless the King!” Now, +one or two of those who were in the boat escaped, against all +likelihood, to tell the story. That was a great thing for +us’—even when life is extorted it may be given nobly, +with ceremony and courtesy. So strong was Stevenson’s +admiration for heroic graces like these that in the requiem that +appears in his poems he speaks of an ordinary death as of a +hearty exploit, and draws his figures from lives of adventure and +toil:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Under the wide and starry sky<br /> +Dig the grave and let me lie.<br /> +Glad did I live and gladly die,<br /> + And I laid me down with a will.<br /> +This be the verse you grave for me:<br /> +<i>Here he lies where he longed to be</i>,<br /> +<i>Home is the sailor</i>, <i>home from the sea</i>,<br /> + <i>And the hunter home from the hill</i>.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This man should surely have been honoured with the pomp and +colour and music of a soldier’s funeral.</p> +<p>The most remarkable feature of the work he has left is its +singular combination of style and romance. It has so +happened, and the accident has gained almost the strength of a +tradition, that the most assiduous followers of romance have been +careless stylists. They have trusted to the efficacy of +their situation and incident, and have too often cared little +about the manner of its presentation. By an odd piece of +irony style has been left to the cultivation of those who have +little or nothing to tell. Sir Walter Scott himself, with +all his splendid romantic and tragic gifts, often, in +Stevenson’s perfectly just phrase, ‘fobs us off with +languid and inarticulate twaddle.’ He wrote +carelessly and genially, and then breakfasted, and began the +business of the day. But Stevenson, who had romance +tingling in every vein of his body, set himself laboriously and +patiently to train his other faculty, the faculty of style.</p> +<p>I. <span class="smcap">Style</span>.—Let no one +say that ‘reading and writing comes by nature,’ +unless he is prepared to be classed with the foolish burgess who +said it first. A poet is born, not made,—so is every +man,—but he is born raw. Stevenson’s life was a +grave devotion to the education of himself in the art of +writing,</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The lyf so short, the craft so long to +lerne,<br /> +Thassay so hard, so sharp the conquering.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Those who deny the necessity, or decry the utility, of such an +education, are generally deficient in a sense of what makes good +literature—they are ‘word-deaf,’ as others are +colour-blind. All writing is a kind of word-weaving; a +skilful writer will make a splendid tissue out of the diverse +fibres of words. But to care for words, to select them +judiciously and lovingly, is not in the least essential to all +writing, all speaking; for the sad fact is this, that most of us +do our thinking, our writing, and our speaking in phrases, not in +words. The work of a feeble writer is always a patchwork of +phrases, some of them borrowed from the imperial texture of +Shakespeare and Milton, others picked up from the rags in the +street. We make our very kettle-holders of pieces of a +king’s carpet. How many overworn quotations from +Shakespeare suddenly leap into meaning and brightness when they +are seen in their context! ‘The cry is still, +“They come!”’—‘More honoured in the +breach than the observance,’—the sight of these +phrases in the splendour of their dramatic context in +<i>Macbeth</i> and <i>Hamlet</i> casts shame upon their daily +degraded employments. But the man of affairs has neither +the time to fashion his speech, nor the knowledge to choose his +words, so he borrows his sentences ready-made, and applies them +in rough haste to purposes that they do not exactly fit. +Such a man inevitably repeats, like the cuckoo, monotonous +catchwords, and lays his eggs of thought in the material that has +been woven into consistency by others. It is a matter of +natural taste, developed and strengthened by continual practice, +to avoid being the unwitting slave of phrases.</p> +<p>The artist in words, on the other hand, although he is a lover +of fine phrases, in his word-weaving experiments uses no shoddy, +but cultivates his senses of touch and sight until he can combine +the raw fibres in novel and bewitching patterns. To this +end he must have two things: a fine sense, in the first place, of +the sound, value, meaning, and associations of individual words, +and next, a sense of harmony, proportion, and effect in their +combination. It is amazing what nobility a mere truism is +often found to possess when it is clad with a garment thus +woven.</p> +<p>Stevenson had both these sensitive capabilities in a very high +decree. His careful choice of epithet and name have even +been criticised as lending to some of his narrative-writing an +excessive air of deliberation. His daintiness of diction is +best seen in his earlier work; thereafter his writing became more +vigorous and direct, fitter for its later uses, but never +unillumined by felicities that cause a thrill of pleasure to the +reader. Of the value of words he had the acutest +appreciation. <i>Virginibus Puerisque</i>, his first book +of essays, is crowded with happy hits and subtle implications +conveyed in a single word. ‘We have all heard,’ +he says in one of these, ‘of cities in South America built +upon the side of fiery mountains, and how, even in this +tremendous neighbourhood, the inhabitants are not a jot more +impressed by the solemnity of mortal conditions than if they were +delving gardens in the greenest corner of England.’ +You can feel the ground shake and see the volcano tower above you +at that word ‘<i>tremendous</i> neighbourhood.’ +Something of the same double reference to the original and +acquired meanings of a word is to be found in such a phrase as +‘sedate electrician,’ for one who in a back office +wields all the lights of a city; or in that description of one +drawing near to death, who is spoken of as groping already with +his hands ‘on the face of the <i>impassable</i>.’</p> +<p>The likeness of this last word to a very different word, +‘<i>impassive</i>,’ is made to do good literary +service in suggesting the sphinx-like image of death. +Sometimes, as here, this subtle sense of double meanings almost +leads to punning. In <i>Across the Plains</i> Stevenson +narrates how a bet was transacted at a railway-station, and +subsequently, he supposes, ‘<i>liquidated</i> at the +bar.’ This is perhaps an instance of the excess of a +virtue, but it is an excess to be found plentifully in the works +of Milton.</p> +<p>His loving regard for words bears good fruit in his later and +more stirring works. He has a quick ear and appreciation +for live phrases on the lips of tramps, beach-combers, or +Americans. In <i>The Beach of Falesá</i> the +sea-captain who introduces the new trader to the South Pacific +island where the scene of the story is laid, gives a brief +description of the fate of the last dealer in copra. It may +serve as a single illustration of volumes of racy, humorous, and +imaginative slang;</p> +<blockquote><p>‘“Do you catch a bit of white there to +the east’ard?” the captain continued. +“That’s your house. . . . When old Adams saw it, he +took and shook me by the hand. ‘I’ve dropped +into a soft thing here,’ says he. ‘So you +have,’ says I. . . . Poor Johnny! I never saw him +again but the once . . . and the next time we came round there he +was dead and buried. I took and put up a bit of stick to +him: ‘John Adams, <i>obit</i> eighteen and +sixty-eight. Go thou and do likewise.’ I missed +that man. I never could see much harm in Johnny.”</p> +<p>‘“What did he die of?” I inquired.</p> +<p>‘“Some kind of sickness,” says the +captain. “It appears it took him sudden. Seems +he got up in the night, and filled up on Pain-Killer and +Kennedy’s Discovery. No go—he was booked beyond +Kennedy. Then he had tried to open a case of gin. No +go again: not strong enough. . . . Poor John!”’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>There is a world of abrupt, homely talk like this to be found +in the speech of Captain Nares and of Jim Pinkerton in <i>The +Wrecker</i>; and a wealth of Scottish dialect, similar in effect, +in <i>Kidnapped</i>, <i>Catriona</i>, and many other +stories. It was a delicate ear and a sense trained by +practice that picked up these vivid turns of speech, some of them +perhaps heard only once, and a mind given to dwell on words, that +remembered them for years, and brought them out when occasion +arose.</p> +<p>But the praise of Stevenson’s style cannot be exhausted +in a description of his use of individual words or his memory of +individual phrases. His mastery of syntax, the orderly and +emphatic arrangement of words in sentences, a branch of art so +seldom mastered, was even greater. And here he could owe no +great debt to his romantic predecessors in prose. Dumas, it +is true, is a master of narrative, but he wrote in French, and a +style will hardly bear expatriation. Scott’s +sentences are, many of them, shambling, knock-kneed giants. +Stevenson harked further back for his models, and fed his style +on the most vigorous of the prose writers of the seventeenth and +early eighteenth centuries, the golden age of English +prose. ‘What English those fellows wrote!’ says +Fitzgerald in one of his letters; ‘I cannot read the modern +mechanique after them.’ And he quotes a passage from +Harrington’s <i>Oceana</i>:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘This free-born Nation lives not upon the +dole or Bounty of One Man, but distributing her Annual +Magistracies and Honours with her own hand, is herself King +People.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>It was from writers of Harrington’s time and later that +Stevenson learned something of his craft. Bunyan and Defoe +should be particularly mentioned, and that later excellent +worthy, Captain Charles Johnson, who compiled the ever-memorable +<i>Lives of Pirates and Highwaymen</i>. Mr. George Meredith +is the chief of those very few modern writers whose influence may +be detected in his style.</p> +<p>However it was made, and whencesoever the material or +suggestion borrowed, he came by a very admirable instrument for +the telling of stories. Those touches of archaism that are +so frequent with him, the slightly unusual phrasing, or +unexpected inversion of the order of words, show a mind alert in +its expression, and give the sting of novelty even to the +commonplaces of narrative or conversation. A nimble +literary tact will work its will on the phrases of current +small-talk, remoulding them nearer to the heart’s desire, +transforming them to its own stamp. This was what Stevenson +did, and the very conversations that pass between his characters +have an air of distinction that is all his own. His books +are full of brilliant talk—talk real and convincing enough +in its purport and setting, but purged of the languors and +fatuities of actual commonplace conversation. It is an +enjoyment like that to be obtained from a brilliant exhibition of +fencing, clean and dexterous, to assist at the talking bouts of +David Balfour and Miss Grant, Captain Nares and Mr. Dodd, +Alexander Mackellar and the Master of Ballantrae, Prince Otto and +Sir John Crabtree, or those wholly admirable pieces of special +pleading to be found in <i>A Lodging for the Night</i> and <i>The +Sire de Malétroit’s Door</i>. But people do +not talk like this in actual life—‘’tis true, +’tis pity; and pity ’tis, ’tis +true.’ They do not; in actual life conversation is +generally so smeared and blurred with stupidities, so invaded and +dominated by the spirit of dulness, so liable to swoon into +meaninglessness, that to turn to Stevenson’s books is like +an escape into mountain air from the stagnant vapours of a +morass. The exact reproduction of conversation as it occurs +in life can only be undertaken by one whose natural dulness feels +itself incommoded by wit and fancy as by a grit in the eye. +Conversation is often no more than a nervous habit of body, like +twiddling the thumbs, and to record each particular remark is as +much as to describe each particular twiddle. Or in its more +intellectual uses, when speech is employed, for instance, to +conceal our thoughts, how often is it a world too wide for the +shrunken nudity of the thought it is meant to veil, and thrown +over it, formless, flabby, and black—like a +tarpaulin! It is pleasant to see thought and feeling +dressed for once in the trim, bright raiment Stevenson devises +for them.</p> +<p>There is an indescribable air of distinction, which is, and is +not, one and the same thing with style, breathing from all his +works. Even when he is least inspired, his bearing and gait +could never be mistaken for another man’s. All that +he writes is removed by the width of the spheres from the +possibility of commonplace, and he avoids most of the snares and +pitfalls of genius with noble and unconscious skill.</p> +<p>If he ever fell into one of these—which may perhaps be +doubted—it was through too implicit a confidence in the +powers of style. His open letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde in +vindication of Father Damien is perhaps his only literary +mistake. It is a matchless piece of scorn and invective, +not inferior in skill to anything he ever wrote. But that +it was well done is no proof that it should have been done at +all. ‘I remember Uzzah and am afraid,’ said the +wise Erasmus, when he was urged to undertake the defence of Holy +Church; ‘it is not every one who is permitted to support +the Ark of the Covenant.’ And the only disquietude +suggested by Stevenson’s letter is a doubt whether he +really has a claim to be Father Damien’s defender, whether +Father Damien had need of the assistance of a literary +freelance. The Saint who was bitten in the hand by a +serpent shook it off into the fire and stood unharmed. As +it was in the Mediterranean so it was also in the Pacific, and +there is something officious in the intrusion of a spectator, +something irrelevant in the plentiful pronouns of the first +person singular to be found sprinkled over Stevenson’s +letter. The curse spoken in Eden, ‘Upon thy belly +shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy +life,’ surely covered by anticipation the case of the Rev. +Dr. Hyde.</p> +<p>II. <span class="smcap">Romance</span>.—The +faculty of romance, the greatest of the gifts showered on +Stevenson’s cradle by the fairies, will suffer no course of +development; the most that can be done with it is to preserve it +on from childhood unblemished and undiminished. It is of a +piece with Stevenson’s romantic ability that his own +childhood never ended; he could pass back into that airy world +without an effort. In his stories his imagination worked on +the old lines, but it became conscious of its working. And +the highest note of these stories is not drama, nor character, +but romance. In one of his essays he defines the highest +achievement of romance to be the embodiment of ‘character, +thought, or emotion in some act or attitude that shall be +remarkably striking to the mind’s eye.’ His +essay on Victor Hugo shows how keenly conscious he was that +narrative romance can catch and embody emotions and effects that +are for ever out of the reach of the drama proper, and of the +essay or homily, just as they are out of the reach of sculpture +and painting. Now, it is precisely in these effects that +the chief excellence of romance resides; it was the discovery of +a world of these effects, insusceptible of treatment by the +drama, neglected entirely by the character-novel, which +constituted the Romantic revival of the end of last +century. ‘The artistic result of a romance,’ +says Stevenson, ‘what is left upon the memory by any +powerful and artistic novel, is something so complicated and +refined that it is difficult to put a name upon it, and yet +something as simple as nature. . . . The fact is, that art +is working far ahead of language as well as of science, realizing +for us, by all manner of suggestions and exaggerations, effects +for which as yet we have no direct name, for the reason that +these effects do not enter very largely into the necessities of +life. Hence alone is that suspicion of vagueness that often +hangs about the purpose of a romance; it is clear enough to us in +thought, but we are not used to consider anything clear until we +are able to formulate it in words, and analytical language has +not been sufficiently shaped to that end.’ He goes on +to point out that there is an epical value about every great +romance, an underlying idea, not presentable always in abstract +or critical terms, in the stories of such masters of pure romance +as Victor Hugo and Nathaniel Hawthorne.</p> +<p>The progress of romance in the present century has consisted +chiefly in the discovery of new exercises of imagination and new +subtle effects in story. Fielding, as Stevenson says, did +not understand that the nature of a landscape or the spirit of +the times could count for anything in a story; all his actions +consist of a few simple personal elements. With Scott vague +influences that qualify a man’s personality begin to make a +large claim; ‘the individual characters begin to occupy a +comparatively small proportion of that canvas on which armies +manoeuvre and great hills pile themselves upon each other’s +shoulders.’ And the achievements of the great masters +since Scott—Hugo, Dumas, Hawthorne, to name only those in +Stevenson’s direct line of ancestry—have added new +realms to the domain of romance.</p> +<p>What are the indescribable effects that romance, casting far +beyond problems of character and conduct, seeks to realise? +What is the nature of the great informing, underlying idea that +animates a truly great romance—<i>The Bride of +Lammermoor</i>, <i>Monte Cristo</i>, <i>Les +Misérables</i>, <i>The Scarlet Letter</i>, <i>The Master +of Ballantrae</i>? These questions can only be answered by +de-forming the impression given by each of these works to present +it in the chop-logic language of philosophy. But an +approach to an answer may be made by illustration.</p> +<p>In his <i>American Notebooks</i> Nathaniel Hawthorne used to +jot down subjects for stories as they struck him. His +successive entries are like the souls of stories awaiting +embodiment, which many of them never received; they bring us very +near to the workings of the mind of a great master. Here +are some of them:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘A sketch to be given of a modern reformer, +a type of the extreme doctrines on the subject of slaves, cold +water, and the like. He goes about the streets haranguing +most eloquently, and is on the point of making many converts, +when his labours are suddenly interrupted by the appearance of +the keeper of a madhouse whence he has escaped. Much may be +made of this idea.’</p> +<p>‘The scene of a story or sketch to be laid within the +light of a street lantern; the time when the lamp is near going +out; and the catastrophe to be simultaneous with the last +flickering gleam.’</p> +<p>‘A person to be writing a tale and to find it shapes +itself against his intentions; that the characters act otherwise +than he thought, and a catastrophe comes which he strives in vain +to avert. It might shadow forth his own fate—he +having made himself one of the personages.’</p> +<p>‘Two persons to be expecting some occurrence and +watching for the two principal actors in it, and to find that the +occurrence is even then passing, and that they themselves are the +two actors.’</p> +<p>‘A satire on ambition and fame from a statue of +snow.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Hawthorne used this idea in one of his sketches.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘A moral philosopher to buy a slave, or +otherwise get possession of a human being, and to use him for the +sake of experiment by trying the operation of a certain vice on +him.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>M. Bourget, the French romancer, has made use of this idea in +his novel called <i>Le Disciple</i>. Only it is not a slave, but +a young girl whom he pretends to love, that is the subject of the +moral philosopher’s experiment; and a noisy war has been +waged round the book in France. Hawthorne would plainly +have seized the romantic essence of the idea and would have +avoided the boneyard of ‘problem morality.’</p> +<blockquote><p>‘A story the principal personage of which +shall seem always on the point of entering on the scene, but +shall never appear.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This is the device that gives fascination to the figures of +Richelieu in <i>Marion Delorme</i>, and of Captain Flint in +<i>Treasure Island</i>.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The majesty of death to be exemplified in a +beggar, who, after being seen humble and cringing in the streets +of a city for many years, at length by some means or other gets +admittance into a rich man’s mansion, and there +dies—assuming state, and striking awe into the breasts of +those who had looked down upon him.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>These are all excellent instances of the sort of idea that +gives life to a romance—of acts or attitudes that stamp +themselves upon the mind’s eye. Some of them appeal +chiefly to the mind’s eye, others are of value chiefly as +symbols. But, for the most part, the romantic kernel of a +story is neither pure picture nor pure allegory, it can neither +be painted nor moralised. It makes its most irresistible +appeal neither to the eye that searches for form and colour, nor +to the reason that seeks for abstract truth, but to the blood, to +all that dim instinct of danger, mystery, and sympathy in things +that is man’s oldest inheritance—to the superstitions +of the heart. Romance vindicates the supernatural against +science and rescues it from the palsied tutelage of morality.</p> +<p>Stevenson’s work is a gallery of romantic effects that +haunt the memory. Some of these are directly pictorial: the +fight in the round-house on board the brig <i>Covenant</i>; the +duel between the two brothers of Ballantrae in the island of +light thrown up by the candles from that abyss of windless night; +the flight of the Princess Seraphina through the dark mazes of +the wood,—all these, although they carry with them +subtleties beyond the painter’s art, yet have something of +picture in them. But others make entrance to the corridors +of the mind by blind and secret ways, and there awaken the echoes +of primæval fear. The cry of the +parrot—‘Pieces of eight’—the tapping of +the stick of the blind pirate Pew as he draws near the +inn-parlour, and the similar effects of inexplicable terror +wrought by the introduction of the blind catechist in +<i>Kidnapped</i>, and of the disguise of a blind leper in <i>The +Black Arrow</i>, are beyond the reach of any but the literary +form of romantic art. The last appearance of Pew, in the +play of <i>Admiral Guinea</i>, written in collaboration with Mr. +W. E. Henley, is perhaps the masterpiece of all the scenes of +terror. The blind ruffian’s scream of panic fear, +when he puts his groping hand into the burning flame of the +candle in the room where he believed that he was unseen, and so +realises that his every movement is being silently watched, is +indeed ‘the horrors come alive.’</p> +<p>The animating principle or idea of Stevenson’s longer +stories is never to be found in their plot, which is generally +built carelessly and disjointedly enough around the central +romantic situation or conception. The main situation in +<i>The Wrecker</i> is a splendid product of romantic aspiration, +but the structure of the story is incoherent and ineffective, so +that some of the best passages in the book—the scenes in +Paris, for instance—have no business there at all. +The story in <i>Kidnapped</i> and <i>Catriona</i> wanders on in a +single thread, like the pageant of a dream, and the reader feels +and sympathises with the author’s obvious difficulty in +leading it back to the scene of the trial and execution of James +Stewart. <i>The Master of Ballantrae</i> is stamped with a +magnificent unity of conception, but the story illuminates that +conception by a series of scattered episodes.</p> +<p>That lurid embodiment of fascinating evil, part vampire, part +Mephistopheles, whose grand manner and heroic abilities might +have made him a great and good man but for ‘the malady of +not wanting,’ is the light and meaning of the whole +book. Innocent and benevolent lives are thrown in his way +that he may mock or distort or shatter them. Stevenson +never came nearer than in this character to the sublime of +power.</p> +<p>But an informing principle of unity is more readily to be +apprehended in the shorter stories, and it is a unity not so much +of plot as of impression and atmosphere. His islands, +whether situated in the Pacific or off the coast of Scotland, +have each of them a climate of its own, and the character of the +place seems to impose itself on the incidents that occur, +dictating subordination or contrast. The events that happen +within the limits of one of these magic isles could in every case +be cut off from the rest of the story and framed as a separate +work of art. The long starvation of David Balfour on the +island of Earraid, the sharks of crime and monsters of blasphemy +that break the peace of the shining tropical lagoons in +<i>Treasure Island</i> and <i>The Ebb Tide</i>, the captivity on +the Bass Rock in <i>Catriona</i>, the supernatural terrors that +hover and mutter over the island of <i>The Merry +Men</i>—these imaginations are plainly generated by the +scenery against which they are thrown; each is in some sort the +genius of the place it inhabits.</p> +<p>In his search for the treasures of romance, Stevenson +adventured freely enough into the realm of the supernatural.</p> +<p>When he is handling the superstitions of the Scottish people, +he allows his humorous enjoyment of their extravagance to peep +out from behind the solemn dialect in which they are +dressed. The brief tale of <i>Thrawn Janet</i>, and Black +Andy’s story of Tod Lapraik in <i>Catriona</i>, are +grotesque imaginations of the school of <i>Tam o’ +Shanter</i> rather than of the school of Shakespeare, who deals +in no comedy ghosts. They are turnip-lanterns swayed by a +laughing urchin, proud of the fears he can awaken. Even +<i>The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i> and the story +of <i>The Bottle Imp</i> are manufactured bogeys, that work on +the nerves and not on the heart, whatever may be said by those +who insist on seeing allegory in what is only +dream-fantasy. The supernatural must be rooted deeper than +these in life and experience if it is to reach an imposing +stature: the true ghost is the shadow of a man. And +Stevenson shows a sense of this in two of his very finest +stories, the exquisite idyll of <i>Will o’ the Mill</i> and +the grim history of <i>Markheim</i>. Each of these stories +is the work of a poet, by no means of a goblin-fancier. The +personification of Death is as old as poetry; it is wrought with +moving gentleness in that last scene in the arbour of +Will’s inn. The wafted scent of the heliotropes, +which had never been planted in the garden since Marjory’s +death, the light in the room that had been hers, prelude the +arrival at the gate of the stranger’s carriage, with the +black pine tops standing above it like plumes. And Will +o’ the Mill makes the acquaintance of his physician and +friend, and goes at last upon his travels. In the other +story, Markheim meets with his own double in the house of the +dealer in curiosities, whom he has murdered. It is not such +a double as Rossetti prayed for to the god of Sleep:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘Ah! might I, by thy good grace,<br /> + Groping in the windy stair<br /> +(Darkness and the breath of space<br /> + Like loud waters everywhere),<br /> +Meeting mine own image there<br /> + Face to face,<br /> +Send it from that place to her!’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>but a clear-eyed critic of the murderer, not unfriendly, who +lays bare before him his motives and history. At the close +of that wonderful conversation, one of the most brilliant of its +author’s achievements, Markheim gives himself into the +hands of the police. These two stories, when compared with +the others, serve to show how Stevenson’s imagination +quickened and strengthened when it played full upon life. +For his best romantic effects, like all great romance, are +illuminative of life, and no mere idle games.</p> +<p>III. <span class="smcap">Morality</span>.—His +genius, like the genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne, was doubly rich +in the spirit of romance and in a wise and beautiful +morality. But the irresponsible caprices of his narrative +fancy prevented his tales from being the appropriate vehicles of +his morality. He has left no work—unless the two +short stories mentioned above be regarded as exceptions—in +which romance and morality are welded into a single perfect +whole, nothing that can be put beside <i>The Scarlet Letter</i> +or <i>The Marble Faun</i> for deep insight and magic fancy joined +in one. Hence his essays, containing as they do the gist of +his reflective wisdom, are ranked by some critics above his +stories.</p> +<p>A novel cannot, of course, be moral as an action is moral; +there is no question in art of police regulations or conformity +to established codes, but rather of insight both deep and +wide. Polygamy and monogamy, suttee, thuggism, and +cannibalism, are all acceptable to the romancer, whose business +is with the heart of a man in all times and places. He is +not bound to display allegiance to particular moral laws of the +kind that can be broken; he is bound to show his consciousness of +that wider moral order which can no more be broken by crime than +the law of gravitation can be broken by the fall of +china—the morality without which life would be impossible; +the relations, namely, of human beings to each other, the +feelings, habits, and thoughts that are the web of society. +For the appreciation of morality in this wider sense high gifts +of imagination are necessary. Shakespeare could never have +drawn Macbeth, and thereby made apparent the awfulness of murder, +without some sympathy for the murderer—the sympathy of +intelligence. These gifts of imagination and sympathy +belong to Stevenson in a very high degree; in all his romances +there are gleams from time to time of wise and subtle reflection +upon life, from the eternal side of things, which shine the more +luminously that they spring from the events and situations with +no suspicion of homily. In <i>The Black Arrow</i>, Dick +Shelton begs from the Duke of Gloucester the life of the old +shipmaster Arblaster, whose ship he had taken and accidentally +wrecked earlier in the story. The Duke of Gloucester, who, +in his own words, ‘loves not mercy nor +mercy-mongers,’ yields the favour reluctantly. Then +Dick turns to Arblaster.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘“Come,” said Dick, “a +life is a life, old shrew, and it is more than ships or +liquor. Say you forgive me, for if your life is worth +nothing to you, it hath cost me the beginnings of my +fortune. Come, I have paid for it dearly, be not so +churlish.”</p> +<p>‘“An I had my ship,” said Arblaster, +“I would ’a’ been forth and safe on the high +seas—I and my man Tom. But ye took my ship, gossip, +and I’m a beggar; and for my man Tom, a knave fellow in +russet shot him down, ‘Murrain,’ quoth he, and spake +never again. ‘Murrain’ was the last of his +words, and the poor spirit of him passed. ’A will +never sail no more, will my Tom.”</p> +<p>‘Dick was seized with unavailing penitence and pity; he +sought to take the skipper’s hand, but Arblaster avoided +his touch.</p> +<p>‘“Nay,” said he, “let be. +Y’ have played the devil with me, and let that content +you.”</p> +<p>‘The words died in Richard’s throat. He saw, +through tears, the poor old man, bemused with liquor and sorrow, +go shambling away, with bowed head, across the snow, and the +unnoticed dog whimpering at his heels; and for the first time +began to understand the desperate game that we play in life, and +how a thing once done is not to be changed or remedied by any +penitence.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>A similar wisdom that goes to the heart of things is found on +the lips of the spiritual visitant in Markheim.</p> +<blockquote><p>‘“Murder is to me no special +category,” replied the other. “All sins are +murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like +starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of +famine, and feeding on each other’s lives. I follow +sins beyond the moment of their acting; I find in all that the +last consequence is death; and to my eyes the pretty maid, who +thwarts her mother with such taking graces on a question of a +ball, drips no less visibly with human gore than such a murderer +as yourself.”’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The wide outlook on humanity that expresses itself in passages +like these is combined in Stevenson with a vivid interest in, and +quick appreciation of, character. The variety of the +characters that he has essayed to draw is enormous, and his +successes, for the purposes of his stories, are many. Yet +with all this, the number of lifelike portraits, true to a hair, +that are to be found in his works is very small indeed. In +the golden glow of romance, character is always subject to be +idealised; it is the effect of character seen at particular +angles and in special lights, natural or artificial, that +Stevenson paints; he does not attempt to analyse the complexity +of its elements, but boldly projects into it certain principles, +and works from those. It has often been said of Scott that +he could not draw a lady who was young and beautiful; the glamour +of chivalry blinded him, he lowered his eyes and described his +emotions and aspirations. Something of the same disability +afflicted Stevenson in the presence of a ruffian. He loved +heroic vice only less than he loved heroic virtue, and was always +ready to idealise his villains, to make of them men who, like the +Master of Ballantrae, ‘lived for an idea.’ Even +the low and lesser villainy of Israel Hands, in the great scene +where he climbs the mast to murder the hero of <i>Treasure +Island</i>, breathes out its soul in a creed:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘“For thirty years,” he said, +“I’ve sailed the seas, and seen good and bad, better +and worse, provisions running out, knives going, and what +not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o’ +goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men +don’t bite; them’s my views—Amen, so be +it.”’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>John Silver, that memorable pirate, with a face like a ham and +an eye like a fragment of glass stuck into it, leads a career of +wholehearted crime that can only be described as sparkling. +His unalloyed maleficence is adorned with a thousand graces of +manner. Into the dark and fetid marsh that is an evil +heart, where low forms of sentiency are hardly distinguishable +from the all-pervading mud, Stevenson never peered, unless it +were in the study of Huish in <i>The Ebb Tide</i>.</p> +<p>Of his women, let women speak. They are traditionally +accredited with an intuition of one another’s hearts, +although why, if woman was created for man, as the Scriptures +assure us, the impression that she makes on him should not count +for as much as the impression she makes on some other woman, is a +question that cries for solution. Perhaps the answer is +that disinterested curiosity, which is one means of approach to +the knowledge of character, although only one, is a rare attitude +for man to assume towards the other sex. Stevenson’s +curiosity was late in awaking; the heroine of <i>The Black +Arrow</i> is dressed in boy’s clothes throughout the course +of the story, and the novelist thus saved the trouble of +describing the demeanour of a girl. Mrs. Henry, in <i>The +Master of Ballantrae</i>, is a charming veiled figure, drawn in +the shadow; Miss Barbara Grant and Catriona in the continuation +of <i>Kidnapped</i> are real enough to have made many suitors for +their respective hands among male readers of the book;—but +that is nothing, reply the critics of the other party: a walking +doll will find suitors. The question must stand over until +some definite principles of criticism have been discovered to +guide us among these perilous passes.</p> +<p>One character must never be passed over in an estimate of +Stevenson’s work. The hero of his longest work is not +David Balfour, in whom the pawky Lowland lad, proud and precise, +but ‘a very pretty gentleman,’ is transfigured at +times by traits that he catches, as narrator of the story, from +its author himself. But Alan Breek Stewart is a greater +creation, and a fine instance of that wider morality that can +seize by sympathy the soul of a wild Highland clansman. +‘Impetuous, insolent, unquenchable,’ a condoner of +murder (for ‘them that havenae dipped their hands in any +little difficulty should be very mindful of the case of them that +have’), a confirmed gambler, as quarrel-some as a +turkey-cock, and as vain and sensitive as a child, Alan Breek is +one of the most lovable characters in all literature; and his +penetration—a great part of which he learned, to take his +own account of it, by driving cattle ‘through a throng +lowland country with the black soldiers at his +tail’—blossoms into the most delightful reflections +upon men and things.</p> +<p>The highest ambitions of a novelist are not easily +attainable. To combine incident, character, and romance in +a uniform whole, to alternate telling dramatic situation with +effects of poetry and suggestion, to breathe into the entire +conception a profound wisdom, construct it with absolute unity, +and express it in perfect style,—this thing has never yet +been done. A great part of Stevenson’s subtle wisdom +of life finds its readiest outlet in his essays. In these, +whatever their occasion, he shows himself the clearest-eyed +critic of human life, never the dupe of the phrases and +pretences, the theories and conventions, that distort the vision +of most writers and thinkers. He has an unerring instinct +for realities, and brushes aside all else with rapid grace. +In his lately published <i>Amateur Emigrant</i> he describes one +of his fellow-passengers to America:</p> +<blockquote><p>‘In truth it was not whisky that had ruined +him; he was ruined long before for all good human purposes but +conversation. His eyes were sealed by a cheap school-book +materialism. He could see nothing in the world but money +and steam engines. He did not know what you meant by the +word happiness. He had forgotten the simple emotions of +childhood, and perhaps never encountered the delights of +youth. He believed in production, that useful figment of +economy, as if it had been real, like laughter; and production, +without prejudice to liquor, was his god and guide.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>This sense of the realities of the world,—laughter, +happiness, the simple emotions of childhood, and +others,—makes Stevenson an admirable critic of those social +pretences that ape the native qualities of the heart. The +criticism on organised philanthropy contained in the essay on +<i>Beggars</i> is not exhaustive, it is expressed paradoxically, +but is it untrue?</p> +<blockquote><p>‘We should wipe two words from our +vocabulary: gratitude and charity. In real life, help is +given out of friendship, or it is not valued; it is received from +the hand of friendship, or it is resented. We are all too +proud to take a naked gift; we must seem to pay it, if in nothing +else, then with the delights of our society. Here, then, is +the pitiful fix of the rich man; here is that needle’s eye +in which he stuck already in the days of Christ, and still sticks +to-day, firmer, if possible, than ever; that he has the money, +and lacks the love which should make his money acceptable. +Here and now, just as of old in Palestine, he has the rich to +dinner, it is with the rich that he takes his pleasure: and when +his turn comes to be charitable, he looks in vain for a +recipient. His friends are not poor, they do not want; the +poor are not his friends, they will not take. To whom is he +to give? Where to find—note this phrase—the +Deserving Poor? Charity is (what they call) centralised; +offices are hired; societies founded, with secretaries paid or +unpaid: the hunt of the Deserving Poor goes merrily +forward. I think it will take a more than merely human +secretary to disinter that character. What! a class that is +to be in want from no fault of its own, and yet greedily eager to +receive from strangers; and to be quite respectable, and at the +same time quite devoid of self-respect; and play the most +delicate part of friendship, and yet never be seen; and wear the +form of man, and yet fly in the face of all the laws of human +nature:—and all this, in the hope of getting a belly-god +burgess through a needle’s eye! Oh, let him stick, by +all means; and let his polity tumble in the dust; and let his +epitaph and all his literature (of which my own works begin to +form no inconsiderable part) be abolished even from the history +of man! For a fool of this monstrosity of dulness there can +be no salvation; and the fool who looked for the elixir of life +was an angel of reason to the fool who looks for the Deserving +Poor.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>An equal sense of the realities of life and death gives the +force of a natural law to the pathos of <i>Old Mortality</i>, +that essay in which Stevenson pays passionate tribute to the +memory of his early friend, who ‘had gone to ruin with a +kingly abandon, like one who condescended; but once ruined, with +the lights all out, he fought as for a kingdom.’ The +whole description, down to the marvellous quotation from Bunyan +that closes it, is one of the sovereign passages of modern +literature; the pathos of it is pure and elemental, like the rush +of a cleansing wind, or the onset of the legions commanded by</p> +<blockquote><p>‘The mighty Mahmud, Allah-breathing Lord,<br +/> +That all the misbelieving and black Horde<br /> + Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul<br /> +Scatters before him with his whirlwind Sword.’</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Lastly, to bring to an end this imperfect review of the works +of a writer who has left none greater behind him, Stevenson +excels at what is perhaps the most delicate of literary tasks and +the utmost test, where it is successfully encountered, of +nobility,—the practice, namely, of self-revelation and +self-delineation. To talk much about oneself with detail, +composure, and ease, with no shadow of hypocrisy and no whiff or +taint of indecent familiarity, no puling and no posing,—the +shores of the sea of literature are strewn with the wrecks and +forlorn properties of those who have adventured on this dangerous +attempt. But a criticism of Stevenson is happy in this, +that from the writer it can pass with perfect trust and perfect +fluency to the man. He shares with Goldsmith and Montaigne, +his own favourite, the happy privilege of making lovers among his +readers. ‘To be the most beloved of English +writers—what a title that is for a man!’ says +Thackeray of Goldsmith. In such matters, a dispute for +pre-eminence in the captivation of hearts would be unseemly; it +is enough to say that Stevenson too has his lovers among those +who have accompanied him on his <i>Inland Voyage</i>, or through +the fastnesses of the Cevennes in the wake of Modestine. He +is loved by those that never saw his face; and one who has sealed +that dizzy height of ambition may well be content, without the +impertinent assurance that, when the Japanese have taken London +and revised the contents of the British Museum, the yellow +scribes whom they shall set to produce a new edition of the +<i>Biographie Universelle</i> will include in their entries the +following item:—‘<i>Stevenson</i>, <i>R. L.</i> +<i>A prolific writer of stories among the aborigines</i>. +<i>Flourished before the Coming of the Japanese</i>. <i>His works +are lost</i>.’</p> +<p style="text-align: center">THE END</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">billing and +sons</span>, <span class="smcap">ltd.</span>, <span +class="smcap">printers</span>, <span +class="smcap">guildford</span></p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 333-h.htm or 333-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/3/333 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Robert Louis Stevenson + + +Author: Walter Raleigh + + + +Release Date: January 17, 2007 [eBook #333] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON*** + + + + +Transcribed from the 1906 Edward Arnold edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + +ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON + + +BY +WALTER RALEIGH + +PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD +AUTHOR OF +'STYLE,' 'MILTON,' 'WORDSWORTH,' ETC. + +_FOURTH IMPRESSION_ + +LONDON +EDWARD ARNOLD +41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, BOND STREET, W. +1906 + +THE GREATER PART OF THIS +ESSAY WAS GIVEN AS A LECTURE +AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION +ON THE 17TH OF MAY +1895 + + + + +ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON + + +When a popular writer dies, the question it has become the fashion with a +nervous generation to ask is the question, 'Will he live?' There was no +idler question, none more hopelessly impossible and unprofitable to +answer. It is one of the many vanities of criticism to promise +immortality to the authors that it praises, to patronise a writer with +the assurance that our great-grandchildren, whose time and tastes are +thus frivolously mortgaged, will read his works with delight. But 'there +is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth +all things: our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and +sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors.' Let us make sure +that our sons will care for Homer before we pledge a more distant +generation to a newer cult. + +Nevertheless, without handling the prickly question of literary +immortality, it is easy to recognise that the literary reputation of +Robert Louis Stevenson is made of good stuff. His fame has spread, as +lasting fame is wont to do, from the few to the many. Fifteen years ago +his essays and fanciful books of travel were treasured by a small and +discerning company of admirers; long before he chanced to fell the +British public with _Treasure Island_ and _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ he +had shown himself a delicate marksman. And although large editions are +nothing, standard editions, richly furnished and complete, are worthy of +remark. Stevenson is one of the very few authors in our literary history +who have been honoured during their lifetime by the appearance of such an +edition; the best of his public, it would seem, do not only wish to read +his works, but to possess them, and all of them, at the cost of many +pounds, in library form. It would be easy to mention more voluminous and +more popular authors than Stevenson whose publishers could not find five +subscribers for an adventure like this. He has made a brave beginning in +that race against Time which all must lose. + +It is not in the least necessary, after all, to fortify ourselves with +the presumed consent of our poor descendants, who may have a world of +other business to attend to, in order to establish Stevenson in the +position of a great writer. Let us leave that foolish trick to the +politicians, who never claim that they are right--merely that they will +win at the next elections. Literary criticism has standards other than +the suffrage; it is possible enough to say something of the literary +quality of a work that appeared yesterday. Stevenson himself was +singularly free from the vanity of fame; 'the best artist,' he says +truly, 'is not the man who fixes his eye on posterity, but the one who +loves the practice of his art.' He loved, if ever man did, the practice +of his art; and those who find meat and drink in the delight of watching +and appreciating the skilful practice of the literary art, will abandon +themselves to the enjoyment of his masterstrokes without teasing their +unborn and possibly illiterate posterity to answer solemn questions. Will +a book live? Will a cricket match live? Perhaps not, and yet both be +fine achievements. + +It is not easy to estimate the loss to letters by his early death. In +the dedication of _Prince Otto_ he says, 'Well, we will not give in that +we are finally beaten. . . . I still mean to get my health again; I still +purpose, by hook or crook, this book or the next, to launch a +masterpiece.' It would be a churlish or a very dainty critic who should +deny that he has launched masterpieces, but whether he ever launched his +masterpiece is an open question. Of the story that he was writing just +before his death he is reported to have said that 'the goodness of it +frightened him.' A goodness that frightened him will surely not be +visible, like Banquo's ghost, to only one pair of eyes. His greatest was +perhaps yet to come. Had Dryden died at his age, we should have had none +of the great satires; had Scott died at his age, we should have had no +Waverley Novels. Dying at the height of his power, and in the full tide +of thought and activity, he seems almost to have fulfilled the aspiration +and unconscious prophecy of one of the early essays: + + 'Does not life go down with a better grace foaming in full body over a + precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas? + + 'When the Greeks made their fine saying that those whom the gods love + die young, I cannot help believing that they had this sort of death + also in their eye. For surely, at whatever age it overtake the man, + this is to die young. Death has not been suffered to take so much as + an illusion from his heart. In the hot-fit of life, a-tiptoe on the + highest point of being, he passes at a bound on to the other side. The + noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the trumpets are + hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of glory, this + happy starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the spiritual land.' + +But we on this side are the poorer--by how much we can never know. What +strengthens the conviction that he might yet have surpassed himself and +dwarfed his own best work is, certainly no immaturity, for the flavour of +wisdom and old experience hangs about his earliest writings, but a vague +sense awakened by that brilliant series of books, so diverse in theme, so +slight often in structure and occasions so gaily executed, that here was +a finished literary craftsman, who had served his period of +apprenticeship and was playing with his tools. The pleasure of wielding +the graven tool, the itch of craftsmanship, was strong upon him, and many +of the works he has left are the overflow of a laughing energy, +arabesques carved on the rock in the artist's painless hours. + +All art, it is true, is play of a sort; the 'sport-impulse' (to translate +a German phrase) is deep at the root of the artist's power; Sophocles, +Shakespeare, Moliere, and Goethe, in a very profound sense, make game of +life. But to make game of life was to each of these the very loftiest +and most imperative employ to be found for him on this planet; to hold +the mirror up to Nature so that for the first time she may see herself; +to 'be a candle-holder and look on' at the pageantry which, but for the +candle-holder, would huddle along in the undistinguishable blackness, +filled them with the pride of place. Stevenson had the sport-impulse at +the depths of his nature, but he also had, perhaps he had inherited, an +instinct for work in more blockish material, for lighthouse-building and +iron-founding. In a 'Letter to a Young Artist,' contributed to a +magazine years ago, he compares the artist in paint or in words to the +keeper of a booth at the world's fair, dependent for his bread on his +success in amusing others. In his volume of poems he almost apologises +for his excellence in literature: + + 'Say not of me, that weakly I declined + The labours of my sires, and fled the sea, + The towers we founded, and the lamps we lit, + To play at home with paper like a child; + But rather say: _In the afternoon of time_ + _A strenuous family dusted from its hands_ + _The sand of granite_, _and beholding far_ + _Along the sounding coasts its pyramids_ + _And tall memorials catch the dying sun_, + _Smiled well-content_, _and to this childish task_ + _Around the fire addressed its evening hours_.' + +Some of his works are, no doubt, best described as paper-games. In _The +Wrong Box_, for instance, there is something very like the card-game +commonly called 'Old Maid'; the odd card is a superfluous corpse, and +each dismayed recipient in turn assumes a disguise and a pseudonym and +bravely passes on that uncomfortable inheritance. It is an admirable +farce, hardly touched with grimness, unshaken by the breath of reality, +full of fantastic character; the strange funeral procession is attended +by shouts of glee at each of its stages, and finally melts into space. + +But, when all is said, it is not with work of this kind that Olympus is +stormed; art must be brought closer into relation with life, these airy +and delightful freaks of fancy must be subdued to a serious scheme if +they are to serve as credentials for a seat among the immortals. The +decorative painter, whose pencil runs so freely in limning these half- +human processions of outlined fauns and wood-nymphs, is asked at last to +paint an easel picture. + +Stevenson is best where he shows most restraint, and his peculiarly rich +fancy, which ran riot at the suggestion of every passing whim, gave him, +what many a modern writer sadly lacks, plenty to restrain, an exuberant +field for self-denial. Here was an opportunity for art and labour; the +luxuriance of the virgin forests of the West may be clipped and pruned +for a lifetime with no fear of reducing them to the trim similitude of a +Dutch garden. His bountiful and generous nature could profit by a spell +of training that would emaciate a poorer stock. From the first, his +delight in earth and the earth-born was keen and multiform; his zest in +life + + 'put a spirit of youth in everything, + That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him;' + +and his fancy, light and quick as a child's, made of the world around him +an enchanted pleasance. The realism, as it is called, that deals only +with the banalities and squalors of life, and weaves into the mesh of its +story no character but would make you yawn if you passed ten minutes with +him in a railway-carriage, might well take a lesson from this man, if it +had the brains. Picture to yourself (it is not hard) an average suburb +of London. The long rows of identical bilious brick houses, with the +inevitable lace curtains, a symbol merely of the will and power to wash; +the awful nondescript object, generally under glass, in the front +window--the shrine of the unknown god of art; the sombre invariable +citizen, whose garb gives no suggestion of his occupation or his tastes--a +person, it would seem, only by courtesy; the piano-organ the music of the +day, and the hideous voice of the vendor of half-penny papers the music +of the night; could anything be less promising than such a row of houses +for the theatre of romance? Set a realist to walk down one of these +streets: he will inquire about milk-bills and servants' wages, latch-keys +and Sunday avocations, and come back with a tale of small meannesses and +petty respectabilities, written in the approved modern fashion. Yet +Stevenson, it seems likely, could not pass along such a line of brick +bandboxes without having his pulses set a-throbbing by the imaginative +possibilities of the place. Of his own Lieutenant Brackenbury Rich he +says: + + 'The succession of faces in the lamplight stirred the lieutenant's + imagination; and it seemed to him as if he could walk for ever in that + stimulating city atmosphere and surrounded by the mystery of four + million private lives. He glanced at the houses and marvelled what + was passing behind those warmly lighted windows; he looked into face + after face, and saw them each intent upon some unknown interest, + criminal or kindly.' + +It was that same evening that Prince Florizel's friend, under the name of +Mr. Morris, was giving a party in one of the houses of West Kensington. +In one at least of the houses of that brick wilderness human spirits were +being tested as on an anvil, and most of them tossed aside. So also, in, +_The Rajah's Diamond_, it was a quiet suburban garden that witnessed the +sudden apparition of Mr. Harry Hartley and his treasures precipitated +over the wall; it was in the same garden that the Rev. Simon Rolles +suddenly, to his own surprise, became a thief. A monotony of bad +building is no doubt a bad thing, but it cannot paralyse the activities +or frustrate the agonies of the mind of man. + +To a man with Stevenson's live and searching imagination, every work of +human hands became vocal with possible associations. Buildings +positively chattered to him; the little inn at Queensferry, which even +for Scott had meant only mutton and currant jelly, with cranberries 'vera +weel preserved,' gave him the cardinal incident of _Kidnapped_. How +should the world ever seem dull or sordid to one whom a railway-station +would take into its confidence, to whom the very flagstones of the +pavement told their story, in whose mind 'the effect of night, of any +flowing water, of lighted cities, of the peep of day, of ships, of the +open ocean,' called up 'an army of anonymous desires and pleasures'? To +have the 'golden-tongued Romance with serene lute' for a mistress and +familiar is to be fortified against the assaults of tedium. + +His attitude towards the surprising and momentous gifts of life was one +prolonged passion of praise and joy. There is none of his books that +reads like the meditations of an invalid. He has the readiest sympathy +for all exhibitions of impulsive energy; his heart goes out to a sailor, +and leaps into ecstasy over a generous adventurer or buccaneer. Of one +of his earlier books he says: 'From the negative point of view I flatter +myself this volume has a certain stamp. Although it runs to considerably +upwards of two hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to the +imbecility of God's universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could +have made a better one myself.' And this was an omission that he never +remedied in his later works. Indeed, his zest in life, whether lived in +the back gardens of a town or on the high seas, was so great that it +seems probable the writer would have been lost had the man been dowered +with better health. + + 'Whereas my birth and spirit rather took + The way that takes the town, + Thou didst betray me to a ling'ring book, + And wrap me in a gown,' + +says George Herbert, who, in his earlier ambitions, would fain have +ruffled it with the best at the court of King James. But from Stevenson, +although not only the town, but oceans and continents, beckoned him to +deeds, no such wail escaped. His indomitable cheerfulness was never +embarked in the cock-boat of his own prosperity. A high and simple +courage shines through all his writings. It is supposed to be a normal +human feeling for those who are hale to sympathize with others who are in +pain. Stevenson reversed the position, and there is no braver spectacle +in literature than to see him not asking others to lower their voices in +his sick-room, but raising his own voice that he may make them feel at +ease and avoid imposing his misfortunes on their notice. 'Once when I +was groaning aloud with physical pain,' he says in the essay on _Child's +Play_, 'a young gentleman came into the room and nonchalantly inquired if +I had seen his bow and arrow. He made no account of my groans, which he +accepted, as he had to accept so much else, as a piece of the +inexplicable conduct of his elders; and, like a wise young gentleman, he +would waste no wonder on the subject.' Was there ever a passage like +this? The sympathy of the writer is wholly with the child, and the +child's absolute indifference to his own sufferings. It might have been +safely predicted that this man, should he ever attain to pathos, would be +free from the facile, maudlin pathos of the hired sentimentalist. + +And so also with what Dr. Johnson has called 'metaphysical distresses.' +It is striking enough to observe how differently the quiet monasteries of +the Carthusian and Trappist brotherhoods affected Matthew Arnold and +Robert Louis Stevenson. In his well-known elegiac stanzas Matthew Arnold +likens his own state to that of the monks: + + 'Wandering between two worlds, one dead, + The other powerless to be born, + With nowhere yet to rest my head, + Like these on earth I wait forlorn. + Their faith, my tears, the world deride-- + I come to shed them at their side.' + +To Stevenson, on the other hand, our Lady of the Snows is a mistaken +divinity, and the place a monument of chilly error,--for once in a way he +takes it on himself to be a preacher, his temperament gives voice in a +creed: + + 'And ye, O brethren, what if God, + When from Heaven's top He spies abroad, + And sees on this tormented stage + The noble war of mankind rage, + What if His vivifying eye, + O monks, should pass your corner by? + For still the Lord is Lord of might; + In deeds, in deeds, He takes delight; + The plough, the spear, the laden barks, + The field, the founded city, marks; + He marks the smiler of the streets, + The singer upon garden seats; + He sees the climber in the rocks; + To Him, the shepherd folds his flocks; + For those He loves that underprop + With daily virtues Heaven's top, + And bear the falling sky with ease, + Unfrowning Caryatides. + Those He approves that ply the trade, + That rock the child, that wed the maid, + That with weak virtues, weaker hands, + Sow gladness on the peopled lands, + And still with laughter, song, and shout + Spin the great wheel of earth about. + + But ye?--O ye who linger still + Here in your fortress on the hill, + With placid face, with tranquil breath, + The unsought volunteers of death, + Our cheerful General on high + With careless looks may pass you by!' + +And the fact of death, which has damped and darkened the writings of so +many minor poets, does not cast a pallor on his conviction. Life is of +value only because it can be spent, or given; and the love of God coveted +the position, and assumed mortality. If a man treasure and hug his life, +one thing only is certain, that he will be robbed some day, and cut the +pitiable and futile figure of one who has been saving candle-ends in a +house that is on fire. Better than this to have a foolish spendthrift +blaze and the loving cup going round. Stevenson speaks almost with a +personal envy of the conduct of the four marines of the _Wager_. There +was no room for them in the boat, and they were left on a desert island +to a certain death. 'They were soldiers, they said, and knew well enough +it was their business to die; and as their comrades pulled away, they +stood upon the beach, gave three cheers, and cried, "God bless the King!" +Now, one or two of those who were in the boat escaped, against all +likelihood, to tell the story. That was a great thing for us'--even when +life is extorted it may be given nobly, with ceremony and courtesy. So +strong was Stevenson's admiration for heroic graces like these that in +the requiem that appears in his poems he speaks of an ordinary death as +of a hearty exploit, and draws his figures from lives of adventure and +toil: + + 'Under the wide and starry sky + Dig the grave and let me lie. + Glad did I live and gladly die, + And I laid me down with a will. + This be the verse you grave for me: + _Here he lies where he longed to be_, + _Home is the sailor_, _home from the sea_, + _And the hunter home from the hill_.' + +This man should surely have been honoured with the pomp and colour and +music of a soldier's funeral. + +The most remarkable feature of the work he has left is its singular +combination of style and romance. It has so happened, and the accident +has gained almost the strength of a tradition, that the most assiduous +followers of romance have been careless stylists. They have trusted to +the efficacy of their situation and incident, and have too often cared +little about the manner of its presentation. By an odd piece of irony +style has been left to the cultivation of those who have little or +nothing to tell. Sir Walter Scott himself, with all his splendid +romantic and tragic gifts, often, in Stevenson's perfectly just phrase, +'fobs us off with languid and inarticulate twaddle.' He wrote carelessly +and genially, and then breakfasted, and began the business of the day. +But Stevenson, who had romance tingling in every vein of his body, set +himself laboriously and patiently to train his other faculty, the faculty +of style. + +I. STYLE.--Let no one say that 'reading and writing comes by nature,' +unless he is prepared to be classed with the foolish burgess who said it +first. A poet is born, not made,--so is every man,--but he is born raw. +Stevenson's life was a grave devotion to the education of himself in the +art of writing, + + 'The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne, + Thassay so hard, so sharp the conquering.' + +Those who deny the necessity, or decry the utility, of such an education, +are generally deficient in a sense of what makes good literature--they +are 'word-deaf,' as others are colour-blind. All writing is a kind of +word-weaving; a skilful writer will make a splendid tissue out of the +diverse fibres of words. But to care for words, to select them +judiciously and lovingly, is not in the least essential to all writing, +all speaking; for the sad fact is this, that most of us do our thinking, +our writing, and our speaking in phrases, not in words. The work of a +feeble writer is always a patchwork of phrases, some of them borrowed +from the imperial texture of Shakespeare and Milton, others picked up +from the rags in the street. We make our very kettle-holders of pieces +of a king's carpet. How many overworn quotations from Shakespeare +suddenly leap into meaning and brightness when they are seen in their +context! 'The cry is still, "They come!"'--'More honoured in the breach +than the observance,'--the sight of these phrases in the splendour of +their dramatic context in _Macbeth_ and _Hamlet_ casts shame upon their +daily degraded employments. But the man of affairs has neither the time +to fashion his speech, nor the knowledge to choose his words, so he +borrows his sentences ready-made, and applies them in rough haste to +purposes that they do not exactly fit. Such a man inevitably repeats, +like the cuckoo, monotonous catchwords, and lays his eggs of thought in +the material that has been woven into consistency by others. It is a +matter of natural taste, developed and strengthened by continual +practice, to avoid being the unwitting slave of phrases. + +The artist in words, on the other hand, although he is a lover of fine +phrases, in his word-weaving experiments uses no shoddy, but cultivates +his senses of touch and sight until he can combine the raw fibres in +novel and bewitching patterns. To this end he must have two things: a +fine sense, in the first place, of the sound, value, meaning, and +associations of individual words, and next, a sense of harmony, +proportion, and effect in their combination. It is amazing what nobility +a mere truism is often found to possess when it is clad with a garment +thus woven. + +Stevenson had both these sensitive capabilities in a very high decree. +His careful choice of epithet and name have even been criticised as +lending to some of his narrative-writing an excessive air of +deliberation. His daintiness of diction is best seen in his earlier +work; thereafter his writing became more vigorous and direct, fitter for +its later uses, but never unillumined by felicities that cause a thrill +of pleasure to the reader. Of the value of words he had the acutest +appreciation. _Virginibus Puerisque_, his first book of essays, is +crowded with happy hits and subtle implications conveyed in a single +word. 'We have all heard,' he says in one of these, 'of cities in South +America built upon the side of fiery mountains, and how, even in this +tremendous neighbourhood, the inhabitants are not a jot more impressed by +the solemnity of mortal conditions than if they were delving gardens in +the greenest corner of England.' You can feel the ground shake and see +the volcano tower above you at that word '_tremendous_ neighbourhood.' +Something of the same double reference to the original and acquired +meanings of a word is to be found in such a phrase as 'sedate +electrician,' for one who in a back office wields all the lights of a +city; or in that description of one drawing near to death, who is spoken +of as groping already with his hands 'on the face of the _impassable_.' + +The likeness of this last word to a very different word, '_impassive_,' +is made to do good literary service in suggesting the sphinx-like image +of death. Sometimes, as here, this subtle sense of double meanings +almost leads to punning. In _Across the Plains_ Stevenson narrates how a +bet was transacted at a railway-station, and subsequently, he supposes, +'_liquidated_ at the bar.' This is perhaps an instance of the excess of +a virtue, but it is an excess to be found plentifully in the works of +Milton. + +His loving regard for words bears good fruit in his later and more +stirring works. He has a quick ear and appreciation for live phrases on +the lips of tramps, beach-combers, or Americans. In _The Beach of +Falesa_ the sea-captain who introduces the new trader to the South +Pacific island where the scene of the story is laid, gives a brief +description of the fate of the last dealer in copra. It may serve as a +single illustration of volumes of racy, humorous, and imaginative slang; + + '"Do you catch a bit of white there to the east'ard?" the captain + continued. "That's your house. . . . When old Adams saw it, he took + and shook me by the hand. 'I've dropped into a soft thing here,' says + he. 'So you have,' says I. . . . Poor Johnny! I never saw him again + but the once . . . and the next time we came round there he was dead + and buried. I took and put up a bit of stick to him: 'John Adams, + _obit_ eighteen and sixty-eight. Go thou and do likewise.' I missed + that man. I never could see much harm in Johnny." + + '"What did he die of?" I inquired. + + '"Some kind of sickness," says the captain. "It appears it took him + sudden. Seems he got up in the night, and filled up on Pain-Killer + and Kennedy's Discovery. No go--he was booked beyond Kennedy. Then + he had tried to open a case of gin. No go again: not strong enough. . + . . Poor John!"' + +There is a world of abrupt, homely talk like this to be found in the +speech of Captain Nares and of Jim Pinkerton in _The Wrecker_; and a +wealth of Scottish dialect, similar in effect, in _Kidnapped_, +_Catriona_, and many other stories. It was a delicate ear and a sense +trained by practice that picked up these vivid turns of speech, some of +them perhaps heard only once, and a mind given to dwell on words, that +remembered them for years, and brought them out when occasion arose. + +But the praise of Stevenson's style cannot be exhausted in a description +of his use of individual words or his memory of individual phrases. His +mastery of syntax, the orderly and emphatic arrangement of words in +sentences, a branch of art so seldom mastered, was even greater. And +here he could owe no great debt to his romantic predecessors in prose. +Dumas, it is true, is a master of narrative, but he wrote in French, and +a style will hardly bear expatriation. Scott's sentences are, many of +them, shambling, knock-kneed giants. Stevenson harked further back for +his models, and fed his style on the most vigorous of the prose writers +of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the golden age of +English prose. 'What English those fellows wrote!' says Fitzgerald in +one of his letters; 'I cannot read the modern mechanique after them.' And +he quotes a passage from Harrington's _Oceana_: + + 'This free-born Nation lives not upon the dole or Bounty of One Man, + but distributing her Annual Magistracies and Honours with her own + hand, is herself King People.' + +It was from writers of Harrington's time and later that Stevenson learned +something of his craft. Bunyan and Defoe should be particularly +mentioned, and that later excellent worthy, Captain Charles Johnson, who +compiled the ever-memorable _Lives of Pirates and Highwaymen_. Mr. +George Meredith is the chief of those very few modern writers whose +influence may be detected in his style. + +However it was made, and whencesoever the material or suggestion +borrowed, he came by a very admirable instrument for the telling of +stories. Those touches of archaism that are so frequent with him, the +slightly unusual phrasing, or unexpected inversion of the order of words, +show a mind alert in its expression, and give the sting of novelty even +to the commonplaces of narrative or conversation. A nimble literary tact +will work its will on the phrases of current small-talk, remoulding them +nearer to the heart's desire, transforming them to its own stamp. This +was what Stevenson did, and the very conversations that pass between his +characters have an air of distinction that is all his own. His books are +full of brilliant talk--talk real and convincing enough in its purport +and setting, but purged of the languors and fatuities of actual +commonplace conversation. It is an enjoyment like that to be obtained +from a brilliant exhibition of fencing, clean and dexterous, to assist at +the talking bouts of David Balfour and Miss Grant, Captain Nares and Mr. +Dodd, Alexander Mackellar and the Master of Ballantrae, Prince Otto and +Sir John Crabtree, or those wholly admirable pieces of special pleading +to be found in _A Lodging for the Night_ and _The Sire de Maletroit's +Door_. But people do not talk like this in actual life--''tis true, 'tis +pity; and pity 'tis, 'tis true.' They do not; in actual life +conversation is generally so smeared and blurred with stupidities, so +invaded and dominated by the spirit of dulness, so liable to swoon into +meaninglessness, that to turn to Stevenson's books is like an escape into +mountain air from the stagnant vapours of a morass. The exact +reproduction of conversation as it occurs in life can only be undertaken +by one whose natural dulness feels itself incommoded by wit and fancy as +by a grit in the eye. Conversation is often no more than a nervous habit +of body, like twiddling the thumbs, and to record each particular remark +is as much as to describe each particular twiddle. Or in its more +intellectual uses, when speech is employed, for instance, to conceal our +thoughts, how often is it a world too wide for the shrunken nudity of the +thought it is meant to veil, and thrown over it, formless, flabby, and +black--like a tarpaulin! It is pleasant to see thought and feeling +dressed for once in the trim, bright raiment Stevenson devises for them. + +There is an indescribable air of distinction, which is, and is not, one +and the same thing with style, breathing from all his works. Even when +he is least inspired, his bearing and gait could never be mistaken for +another man's. All that he writes is removed by the width of the spheres +from the possibility of commonplace, and he avoids most of the snares and +pitfalls of genius with noble and unconscious skill. + +If he ever fell into one of these--which may perhaps be doubted--it was +through too implicit a confidence in the powers of style. His open +letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde in vindication of Father Damien is perhaps +his only literary mistake. It is a matchless piece of scorn and +invective, not inferior in skill to anything he ever wrote. But that it +was well done is no proof that it should have been done at all. 'I +remember Uzzah and am afraid,' said the wise Erasmus, when he was urged +to undertake the defence of Holy Church; 'it is not every one who is +permitted to support the Ark of the Covenant.' And the only disquietude +suggested by Stevenson's letter is a doubt whether he really has a claim +to be Father Damien's defender, whether Father Damien had need of the +assistance of a literary freelance. The Saint who was bitten in the hand +by a serpent shook it off into the fire and stood unharmed. As it was in +the Mediterranean so it was also in the Pacific, and there is something +officious in the intrusion of a spectator, something irrelevant in the +plentiful pronouns of the first person singular to be found sprinkled +over Stevenson's letter. The curse spoken in Eden, 'Upon thy belly shalt +thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life,' surely +covered by anticipation the case of the Rev. Dr. Hyde. + +II. ROMANCE.--The faculty of romance, the greatest of the gifts showered +on Stevenson's cradle by the fairies, will suffer no course of +development; the most that can be done with it is to preserve it on from +childhood unblemished and undiminished. It is of a piece with +Stevenson's romantic ability that his own childhood never ended; he could +pass back into that airy world without an effort. In his stories his +imagination worked on the old lines, but it became conscious of its +working. And the highest note of these stories is not drama, nor +character, but romance. In one of his essays he defines the highest +achievement of romance to be the embodiment of 'character, thought, or +emotion in some act or attitude that shall be remarkably striking to the +mind's eye.' His essay on Victor Hugo shows how keenly conscious he was +that narrative romance can catch and embody emotions and effects that are +for ever out of the reach of the drama proper, and of the essay or +homily, just as they are out of the reach of sculpture and painting. Now, +it is precisely in these effects that the chief excellence of romance +resides; it was the discovery of a world of these effects, insusceptible +of treatment by the drama, neglected entirely by the character-novel, +which constituted the Romantic revival of the end of last century. 'The +artistic result of a romance,' says Stevenson, 'what is left upon the +memory by any powerful and artistic novel, is something so complicated +and refined that it is difficult to put a name upon it, and yet something +as simple as nature. . . . The fact is, that art is working far ahead of +language as well as of science, realizing for us, by all manner of +suggestions and exaggerations, effects for which as yet we have no direct +name, for the reason that these effects do not enter very largely into +the necessities of life. Hence alone is that suspicion of vagueness that +often hangs about the purpose of a romance; it is clear enough to us in +thought, but we are not used to consider anything clear until we are able +to formulate it in words, and analytical language has not been +sufficiently shaped to that end.' He goes on to point out that there is +an epical value about every great romance, an underlying idea, not +presentable always in abstract or critical terms, in the stories of such +masters of pure romance as Victor Hugo and Nathaniel Hawthorne. + +The progress of romance in the present century has consisted chiefly in +the discovery of new exercises of imagination and new subtle effects in +story. Fielding, as Stevenson says, did not understand that the nature +of a landscape or the spirit of the times could count for anything in a +story; all his actions consist of a few simple personal elements. With +Scott vague influences that qualify a man's personality begin to make a +large claim; 'the individual characters begin to occupy a comparatively +small proportion of that canvas on which armies manoeuvre and great hills +pile themselves upon each other's shoulders.' And the achievements of +the great masters since Scott--Hugo, Dumas, Hawthorne, to name only those +in Stevenson's direct line of ancestry--have added new realms to the +domain of romance. + +What are the indescribable effects that romance, casting far beyond +problems of character and conduct, seeks to realise? What is the nature +of the great informing, underlying idea that animates a truly great +romance--_The Bride of Lammermoor_, _Monte Cristo_, _Les Miserables_, +_The Scarlet Letter_, _The Master of Ballantrae_? These questions can +only be answered by de-forming the impression given by each of these +works to present it in the chop-logic language of philosophy. But an +approach to an answer may be made by illustration. + +In his _American Notebooks_ Nathaniel Hawthorne used to jot down subjects +for stories as they struck him. His successive entries are like the +souls of stories awaiting embodiment, which many of them never received; +they bring us very near to the workings of the mind of a great master. +Here are some of them: + + 'A sketch to be given of a modern reformer, a type of the extreme + doctrines on the subject of slaves, cold water, and the like. He goes + about the streets haranguing most eloquently, and is on the point of + making many converts, when his labours are suddenly interrupted by the + appearance of the keeper of a madhouse whence he has escaped. Much + may be made of this idea.' + + 'The scene of a story or sketch to be laid within the light of a + street lantern; the time when the lamp is near going out; and the + catastrophe to be simultaneous with the last flickering gleam.' + + 'A person to be writing a tale and to find it shapes itself against + his intentions; that the characters act otherwise than he thought, and + a catastrophe comes which he strives in vain to avert. It might + shadow forth his own fate--he having made himself one of the + personages.' + + 'Two persons to be expecting some occurrence and watching for the two + principal actors in it, and to find that the occurrence is even then + passing, and that they themselves are the two actors.' + + 'A satire on ambition and fame from a statue of snow.' + +Hawthorne used this idea in one of his sketches. + + 'A moral philosopher to buy a slave, or otherwise get possession of a + human being, and to use him for the sake of experiment by trying the + operation of a certain vice on him.' + +M. Bourget, the French romancer, has made use of this idea in his novel +called _Le Disciple_. Only it is not a slave, but a young girl whom he +pretends to love, that is the subject of the moral philosopher's +experiment; and a noisy war has been waged round the book in France. +Hawthorne would plainly have seized the romantic essence of the idea and +would have avoided the boneyard of 'problem morality.' + + 'A story the principal personage of which shall seem always on the + point of entering on the scene, but shall never appear.' + +This is the device that gives fascination to the figures of Richelieu in +_Marion Delorme_, and of Captain Flint in _Treasure Island_. + + 'The majesty of death to be exemplified in a beggar, who, after being + seen humble and cringing in the streets of a city for many years, at + length by some means or other gets admittance into a rich man's + mansion, and there dies--assuming state, and striking awe into the + breasts of those who had looked down upon him.' + +These are all excellent instances of the sort of idea that gives life to +a romance--of acts or attitudes that stamp themselves upon the mind's +eye. Some of them appeal chiefly to the mind's eye, others are of value +chiefly as symbols. But, for the most part, the romantic kernel of a +story is neither pure picture nor pure allegory, it can neither be +painted nor moralised. It makes its most irresistible appeal neither to +the eye that searches for form and colour, nor to the reason that seeks +for abstract truth, but to the blood, to all that dim instinct of danger, +mystery, and sympathy in things that is man's oldest inheritance--to the +superstitions of the heart. Romance vindicates the supernatural against +science and rescues it from the palsied tutelage of morality. + +Stevenson's work is a gallery of romantic effects that haunt the memory. +Some of these are directly pictorial: the fight in the round-house on +board the brig _Covenant_; the duel between the two brothers of +Ballantrae in the island of light thrown up by the candles from that +abyss of windless night; the flight of the Princess Seraphina through the +dark mazes of the wood,--all these, although they carry with them +subtleties beyond the painter's art, yet have something of picture in +them. But others make entrance to the corridors of the mind by blind and +secret ways, and there awaken the echoes of primaeval fear. The cry of +the parrot--'Pieces of eight'--the tapping of the stick of the blind +pirate Pew as he draws near the inn-parlour, and the similar effects of +inexplicable terror wrought by the introduction of the blind catechist in +_Kidnapped_, and of the disguise of a blind leper in _The Black Arrow_, +are beyond the reach of any but the literary form of romantic art. The +last appearance of Pew, in the play of _Admiral Guinea_, written in +collaboration with Mr. W. E. Henley, is perhaps the masterpiece of all +the scenes of terror. The blind ruffian's scream of panic fear, when he +puts his groping hand into the burning flame of the candle in the room +where he believed that he was unseen, and so realises that his every +movement is being silently watched, is indeed 'the horrors come alive.' + +The animating principle or idea of Stevenson's longer stories is never to +be found in their plot, which is generally built carelessly and +disjointedly enough around the central romantic situation or conception. +The main situation in _The Wrecker_ is a splendid product of romantic +aspiration, but the structure of the story is incoherent and ineffective, +so that some of the best passages in the book--the scenes in Paris, for +instance--have no business there at all. The story in _Kidnapped_ and +_Catriona_ wanders on in a single thread, like the pageant of a dream, +and the reader feels and sympathises with the author's obvious difficulty +in leading it back to the scene of the trial and execution of James +Stewart. _The Master of Ballantrae_ is stamped with a magnificent unity +of conception, but the story illuminates that conception by a series of +scattered episodes. + +That lurid embodiment of fascinating evil, part vampire, part +Mephistopheles, whose grand manner and heroic abilities might have made +him a great and good man but for 'the malady of not wanting,' is the +light and meaning of the whole book. Innocent and benevolent lives are +thrown in his way that he may mock or distort or shatter them. Stevenson +never came nearer than in this character to the sublime of power. + +But an informing principle of unity is more readily to be apprehended in +the shorter stories, and it is a unity not so much of plot as of +impression and atmosphere. His islands, whether situated in the Pacific +or off the coast of Scotland, have each of them a climate of its own, and +the character of the place seems to impose itself on the incidents that +occur, dictating subordination or contrast. The events that happen +within the limits of one of these magic isles could in every case be cut +off from the rest of the story and framed as a separate work of art. The +long starvation of David Balfour on the island of Earraid, the sharks of +crime and monsters of blasphemy that break the peace of the shining +tropical lagoons in _Treasure Island_ and _The Ebb Tide_, the captivity +on the Bass Rock in _Catriona_, the supernatural terrors that hover and +mutter over the island of _The Merry Men_--these imaginations are plainly +generated by the scenery against which they are thrown; each is in some +sort the genius of the place it inhabits. + +In his search for the treasures of romance, Stevenson adventured freely +enough into the realm of the supernatural. + +When he is handling the superstitions of the Scottish people, he allows +his humorous enjoyment of their extravagance to peep out from behind the +solemn dialect in which they are dressed. The brief tale of _Thrawn +Janet_, and Black Andy's story of Tod Lapraik in _Catriona_, are +grotesque imaginations of the school of _Tam o' Shanter_ rather than of +the school of Shakespeare, who deals in no comedy ghosts. They are +turnip-lanterns swayed by a laughing urchin, proud of the fears he can +awaken. Even _The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ and the story +of _The Bottle Imp_ are manufactured bogeys, that work on the nerves and +not on the heart, whatever may be said by those who insist on seeing +allegory in what is only dream-fantasy. The supernatural must be rooted +deeper than these in life and experience if it is to reach an imposing +stature: the true ghost is the shadow of a man. And Stevenson shows a +sense of this in two of his very finest stories, the exquisite idyll of +_Will o' the Mill_ and the grim history of _Markheim_. Each of these +stories is the work of a poet, by no means of a goblin-fancier. The +personification of Death is as old as poetry; it is wrought with moving +gentleness in that last scene in the arbour of Will's inn. The wafted +scent of the heliotropes, which had never been planted in the garden +since Marjory's death, the light in the room that had been hers, prelude +the arrival at the gate of the stranger's carriage, with the black pine +tops standing above it like plumes. And Will o' the Mill makes the +acquaintance of his physician and friend, and goes at last upon his +travels. In the other story, Markheim meets with his own double in the +house of the dealer in curiosities, whom he has murdered. It is not such +a double as Rossetti prayed for to the god of Sleep: + + 'Ah! might I, by thy good grace, + Groping in the windy stair + (Darkness and the breath of space + Like loud waters everywhere), + Meeting mine own image there + Face to face, + Send it from that place to her!' + +but a clear-eyed critic of the murderer, not unfriendly, who lays bare +before him his motives and history. At the close of that wonderful +conversation, one of the most brilliant of its author's achievements, +Markheim gives himself into the hands of the police. These two stories, +when compared with the others, serve to show how Stevenson's imagination +quickened and strengthened when it played full upon life. For his best +romantic effects, like all great romance, are illuminative of life, and +no mere idle games. + +III. MORALITY.--His genius, like the genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne, was +doubly rich in the spirit of romance and in a wise and beautiful +morality. But the irresponsible caprices of his narrative fancy +prevented his tales from being the appropriate vehicles of his morality. +He has left no work--unless the two short stories mentioned above be +regarded as exceptions--in which romance and morality are welded into a +single perfect whole, nothing that can be put beside _The Scarlet Letter_ +or _The Marble Faun_ for deep insight and magic fancy joined in one. +Hence his essays, containing as they do the gist of his reflective +wisdom, are ranked by some critics above his stories. + +A novel cannot, of course, be moral as an action is moral; there is no +question in art of police regulations or conformity to established codes, +but rather of insight both deep and wide. Polygamy and monogamy, suttee, +thuggism, and cannibalism, are all acceptable to the romancer, whose +business is with the heart of a man in all times and places. He is not +bound to display allegiance to particular moral laws of the kind that can +be broken; he is bound to show his consciousness of that wider moral +order which can no more be broken by crime than the law of gravitation +can be broken by the fall of china--the morality without which life would +be impossible; the relations, namely, of human beings to each other, the +feelings, habits, and thoughts that are the web of society. For the +appreciation of morality in this wider sense high gifts of imagination +are necessary. Shakespeare could never have drawn Macbeth, and thereby +made apparent the awfulness of murder, without some sympathy for the +murderer--the sympathy of intelligence. These gifts of imagination and +sympathy belong to Stevenson in a very high degree; in all his romances +there are gleams from time to time of wise and subtle reflection upon +life, from the eternal side of things, which shine the more luminously +that they spring from the events and situations with no suspicion of +homily. In _The Black Arrow_, Dick Shelton begs from the Duke of +Gloucester the life of the old shipmaster Arblaster, whose ship he had +taken and accidentally wrecked earlier in the story. The Duke of +Gloucester, who, in his own words, 'loves not mercy nor mercy-mongers,' +yields the favour reluctantly. Then Dick turns to Arblaster. + + '"Come," said Dick, "a life is a life, old shrew, and it is more than + ships or liquor. Say you forgive me, for if your life is worth + nothing to you, it hath cost me the beginnings of my fortune. Come, I + have paid for it dearly, be not so churlish." + + '"An I had my ship," said Arblaster, "I would 'a' been forth and safe + on the high seas--I and my man Tom. But ye took my ship, gossip, and + I'm a beggar; and for my man Tom, a knave fellow in russet shot him + down, 'Murrain,' quoth he, and spake never again. 'Murrain' was the + last of his words, and the poor spirit of him passed. 'A will never + sail no more, will my Tom." + + 'Dick was seized with unavailing penitence and pity; he sought to take + the skipper's hand, but Arblaster avoided his touch. + + '"Nay," said he, "let be. Y' have played the devil with me, and let + that content you." + + 'The words died in Richard's throat. He saw, through tears, the poor + old man, bemused with liquor and sorrow, go shambling away, with bowed + head, across the snow, and the unnoticed dog whimpering at his heels; + and for the first time began to understand the desperate game that we + play in life, and how a thing once done is not to be changed or + remedied by any penitence.' + +A similar wisdom that goes to the heart of things is found on the lips of +the spiritual visitant in Markheim. + + '"Murder is to me no special category," replied the other. "All sins + are murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like + starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of + famine, and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the + moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence is + death; and to my eyes the pretty maid, who thwarts her mother with + such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with + human gore than such a murderer as yourself."' + +The wide outlook on humanity that expresses itself in passages like these +is combined in Stevenson with a vivid interest in, and quick appreciation +of, character. The variety of the characters that he has essayed to draw +is enormous, and his successes, for the purposes of his stories, are +many. Yet with all this, the number of lifelike portraits, true to a +hair, that are to be found in his works is very small indeed. In the +golden glow of romance, character is always subject to be idealised; it +is the effect of character seen at particular angles and in special +lights, natural or artificial, that Stevenson paints; he does not attempt +to analyse the complexity of its elements, but boldly projects into it +certain principles, and works from those. It has often been said of +Scott that he could not draw a lady who was young and beautiful; the +glamour of chivalry blinded him, he lowered his eyes and described his +emotions and aspirations. Something of the same disability afflicted +Stevenson in the presence of a ruffian. He loved heroic vice only less +than he loved heroic virtue, and was always ready to idealise his +villains, to make of them men who, like the Master of Ballantrae, 'lived +for an idea.' Even the low and lesser villainy of Israel Hands, in the +great scene where he climbs the mast to murder the hero of _Treasure +Island_, breathes out its soul in a creed: + + '"For thirty years," he said, "I've sailed the seas, and seen good and + bad, better and worse, provisions running out, knives going, and what + not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o' goodness yet. + Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don't bite; them's my + views--Amen, so be it."' + +John Silver, that memorable pirate, with a face like a ham and an eye +like a fragment of glass stuck into it, leads a career of wholehearted +crime that can only be described as sparkling. His unalloyed maleficence +is adorned with a thousand graces of manner. Into the dark and fetid +marsh that is an evil heart, where low forms of sentiency are hardly +distinguishable from the all-pervading mud, Stevenson never peered, +unless it were in the study of Huish in _The Ebb Tide_. + +Of his women, let women speak. They are traditionally accredited with an +intuition of one another's hearts, although why, if woman was created for +man, as the Scriptures assure us, the impression that she makes on him +should not count for as much as the impression she makes on some other +woman, is a question that cries for solution. Perhaps the answer is that +disinterested curiosity, which is one means of approach to the knowledge +of character, although only one, is a rare attitude for man to assume +towards the other sex. Stevenson's curiosity was late in awaking; the +heroine of _The Black Arrow_ is dressed in boy's clothes throughout the +course of the story, and the novelist thus saved the trouble of +describing the demeanour of a girl. Mrs. Henry, in _The Master of +Ballantrae_, is a charming veiled figure, drawn in the shadow; Miss +Barbara Grant and Catriona in the continuation of _Kidnapped_ are real +enough to have made many suitors for their respective hands among male +readers of the book;--but that is nothing, reply the critics of the other +party: a walking doll will find suitors. The question must stand over +until some definite principles of criticism have been discovered to guide +us among these perilous passes. + +One character must never be passed over in an estimate of Stevenson's +work. The hero of his longest work is not David Balfour, in whom the +pawky Lowland lad, proud and precise, but 'a very pretty gentleman,' is +transfigured at times by traits that he catches, as narrator of the +story, from its author himself. But Alan Breek Stewart is a greater +creation, and a fine instance of that wider morality that can seize by +sympathy the soul of a wild Highland clansman. 'Impetuous, insolent, +unquenchable,' a condoner of murder (for 'them that havenae dipped their +hands in any little difficulty should be very mindful of the case of them +that have'), a confirmed gambler, as quarrel-some as a turkey-cock, and +as vain and sensitive as a child, Alan Breek is one of the most lovable +characters in all literature; and his penetration--a great part of which +he learned, to take his own account of it, by driving cattle 'through a +throng lowland country with the black soldiers at his tail'--blossoms +into the most delightful reflections upon men and things. + +The highest ambitions of a novelist are not easily attainable. To +combine incident, character, and romance in a uniform whole, to alternate +telling dramatic situation with effects of poetry and suggestion, to +breathe into the entire conception a profound wisdom, construct it with +absolute unity, and express it in perfect style,--this thing has never +yet been done. A great part of Stevenson's subtle wisdom of life finds +its readiest outlet in his essays. In these, whatever their occasion, he +shows himself the clearest-eyed critic of human life, never the dupe of +the phrases and pretences, the theories and conventions, that distort the +vision of most writers and thinkers. He has an unerring instinct for +realities, and brushes aside all else with rapid grace. In his lately +published _Amateur Emigrant_ he describes one of his fellow-passengers to +America: + + 'In truth it was not whisky that had ruined him; he was ruined long + before for all good human purposes but conversation. His eyes were + sealed by a cheap school-book materialism. He could see nothing in + the world but money and steam engines. He did not know what you meant + by the word happiness. He had forgotten the simple emotions of + childhood, and perhaps never encountered the delights of youth. He + believed in production, that useful figment of economy, as if it had + been real, like laughter; and production, without prejudice to liquor, + was his god and guide.' + +This sense of the realities of the world,--laughter, happiness, the +simple emotions of childhood, and others,--makes Stevenson an admirable +critic of those social pretences that ape the native qualities of the +heart. The criticism on organised philanthropy contained in the essay on +_Beggars_ is not exhaustive, it is expressed paradoxically, but is it +untrue? + + 'We should wipe two words from our vocabulary: gratitude and charity. + In real life, help is given out of friendship, or it is not valued; it + is received from the hand of friendship, or it is resented. We are + all too proud to take a naked gift; we must seem to pay it, if in + nothing else, then with the delights of our society. Here, then, is + the pitiful fix of the rich man; here is that needle's eye in which he + stuck already in the days of Christ, and still sticks to-day, firmer, + if possible, than ever; that he has the money, and lacks the love + which should make his money acceptable. Here and now, just as of old + in Palestine, he has the rich to dinner, it is with the rich that he + takes his pleasure: and when his turn comes to be charitable, he looks + in vain for a recipient. His friends are not poor, they do not want; + the poor are not his friends, they will not take. To whom is he to + give? Where to find--note this phrase--the Deserving Poor? Charity + is (what they call) centralised; offices are hired; societies founded, + with secretaries paid or unpaid: the hunt of the Deserving Poor goes + merrily forward. I think it will take a more than merely human + secretary to disinter that character. What! a class that is to be in + want from no fault of its own, and yet greedily eager to receive from + strangers; and to be quite respectable, and at the same time quite + devoid of self-respect; and play the most delicate part of friendship, + and yet never be seen; and wear the form of man, and yet fly in the + face of all the laws of human nature:--and all this, in the hope of + getting a belly-god burgess through a needle's eye! Oh, let him + stick, by all means; and let his polity tumble in the dust; and let + his epitaph and all his literature (of which my own works begin to + form no inconsiderable part) be abolished even from the history of + man! For a fool of this monstrosity of dulness there can be no + salvation; and the fool who looked for the elixir of life was an angel + of reason to the fool who looks for the Deserving Poor.' + +An equal sense of the realities of life and death gives the force of a +natural law to the pathos of _Old Mortality_, that essay in which +Stevenson pays passionate tribute to the memory of his early friend, who +'had gone to ruin with a kingly abandon, like one who condescended; but +once ruined, with the lights all out, he fought as for a kingdom.' The +whole description, down to the marvellous quotation from Bunyan that +closes it, is one of the sovereign passages of modern literature; the +pathos of it is pure and elemental, like the rush of a cleansing wind, or +the onset of the legions commanded by + + 'The mighty Mahmud, Allah-breathing Lord, + That all the misbelieving and black Horde + Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul + Scatters before him with his whirlwind Sword.' + +Lastly, to bring to an end this imperfect review of the works of a writer +who has left none greater behind him, Stevenson excels at what is perhaps +the most delicate of literary tasks and the utmost test, where it is +successfully encountered, of nobility,--the practice, namely, of self- +revelation and self-delineation. To talk much about oneself with detail, +composure, and ease, with no shadow of hypocrisy and no whiff or taint of +indecent familiarity, no puling and no posing,--the shores of the sea of +literature are strewn with the wrecks and forlorn properties of those who +have adventured on this dangerous attempt. But a criticism of Stevenson +is happy in this, that from the writer it can pass with perfect trust and +perfect fluency to the man. He shares with Goldsmith and Montaigne, his +own favourite, the happy privilege of making lovers among his readers. +'To be the most beloved of English writers--what a title that is for a +man!' says Thackeray of Goldsmith. In such matters, a dispute for pre- +eminence in the captivation of hearts would be unseemly; it is enough to +say that Stevenson too has his lovers among those who have accompanied +him on his _Inland Voyage_, or through the fastnesses of the Cevennes in +the wake of Modestine. He is loved by those that never saw his face; and +one who has sealed that dizzy height of ambition may well be content, +without the impertinent assurance that, when the Japanese have taken +London and revised the contents of the British Museum, the yellow scribes +whom they shall set to produce a new edition of the _Biographie +Universelle_ will include in their entries the following +item:--'_Stevenson_, _R. L._ _A prolific writer of stories among the +aborigines_. _Flourished before the Coming of the Japanese_. _His works +are lost_.' + +THE END + +BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON*** + + +******* This file should be named 333.txt or 333.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/3/333 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + +Robert Louis Stevenson by Walter Raleigh. 1906 edition. +Scanned and proofed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + +WHEN a popular writer dies, the question it has become the fashion +with a nervous generation to ask is the question, 'Will he live?' +There was no idler question, none more hopelessly impossible and +unprofitable to answer. It is one of the many vanities of +criticism to promise immortality to the authors that it praises, to +patronise a writer with the assurance that our great-grandchildren, +whose time and tastes are thus frivolously mortgaged, will read his +works with delight. But 'there is no antidote against the opium of +time, which temporally considereth all things: our fathers find +their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be +buried in our survivors.' Let us make sure that our sons will care +for Homer before we pledge a more distant generation to a newer +cult. + +Nevertheless, without handling the prickly question of literary +immortality, it is easy to recognise that the literary reputation +of Robert Louis Stevenson is made of good stuff. His fame has +spread, as lasting fame is wont to do, from the few to the many. +Fifteen years ago his essays and fanciful books of travel were +treasured by a small and discerning company of admirers; long +before he chanced to fell the British public with TREASURE ISLAND +and DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE he had shown himself a delicate +marksman. And although large editions are nothing, standard +editions, richly furnished and complete, are worthy of remark. +Stevenson is one of the very few authors in our literary history +who have been honoured during their lifetime by the appearance of +such an edition; the best of his public, it would seem, do not only +wish to read his works, but to possess them, and all of them, at +the cost of many pounds, in library form. It would be easy to +mention more voluminous and more popular authors than Stevenson +whose publishers could not find five subscribers for an adventure +like this. He has made a brave beginning in that race against Time +which all must lose. + +It is not in the least necessary, after all, to fortify ourselves +with the presumed consent of our poor descendants, who may have a +world of other business to attend to, in order to establish +Stevenson in the position of a great writer. Let us leave that +foolish trick to the politicians, who never claim that they are +right - merely that they will win at the next elections. Literary +criticism has standards other than the suffrage; it is possible +enough to say something of the literary quality of a work that +appeared yesterday. Stevenson himself was singularly free from the +vanity of fame; 'the best artist,' he says truly, 'is not the man +who fixes his eye on posterity, but the one who loves the practice +of his art.' He loved, if ever man did, the practice of his art; +and those who find meat and drink in the delight of watching and +appreciating the skilful practice of the literary art, will abandon +themselves to the enjoyment of his masterstrokes without teasing +their unborn and possibly illiterate posterity to answer solemn +questions. Will a book live? Will a cricket match live? Perhaps +not, and yet both be fine achievements. + +It is not easy to estimate the loss to letters by his early death. +In the dedication of PRINCE OTTO he says, 'Well, we will not give +in that we are finally beaten. . . . I still mean to get my health +again; I still purpose, by hook or crook, this book or the next, to +launch a masterpiece.' It would be a churlish or a very dainty +critic who should deny that he has launched masterpieces, but +whether he ever launched his masterpiece is an open question. Of +the story that he was writing just before his death he is reported +to have said that 'the goodness of it frightened him.' A goodness +that frightened him will surely not be visible, like Banquo's +ghost, to only one pair of eyes. His greatest was perhaps yet to +come. Had Dryden died at his age, we should have had none of the +great satires; had Scott died at his age, we should have had no +Waverley Novels. Dying at the height of his power, and in the full +tide of thought and activity, he seems almost to have fulfilled the +aspiration and unconscious prophecy of one of the early essays: + + + +'Does not life go down with a better grace foaming in full body +over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy +deltas? + +'When the Greeks made their fine saying that those whom the gods +love die young, I cannot help believing that they had this sort of +death also in their eye. For surely, at whatever age it overtake +the man, this is to die young. Death has not been suffered to take +so much as an illusion from his heart. In the hot-fit of life, a- +tiptoe on the highest point of being, he passes at a bound on to +the other side. The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely +quenched, the trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with +him clouds of glory, this happy starred, full-blooded spirit shoots +into the spiritual land.' + + +But we on this side are the poorer - by how much we can never know. +What strengthens the conviction that he might yet have surpassed +himself and dwarfed his own best work is, certainly no immaturity, +for the flavour of wisdom and old experience hangs about his +earliest writings, but a vague sense awakened by that brilliant +series of books, so diverse in theme, so slight often in structure +and occasions so gaily executed, that here was a finished literary +craftsman, who had served his period of apprenticeship and was +playing with his tools. The pleasure of wielding the graven tool, +the itch of craftsmanship, was strong upon him, and many of the +works he has left are the overflow of a laughing energy, arabesques +carved on the rock in the artist's painless hours. + +All art, it is true, is play of a sort; the 'sport-impulse' (to +translate a German phrase) is deep at the root of the artist's +power; Sophocles, Shakespeare, Moliere, and Goethe, in a very +profound sense, make game of life. But to make game of life was to +each of these the very loftiest and most imperative employ to be +found for him on this planet; to hold the mirror up to Nature so +that for the first time she may see herself; to 'be a candle-holder +and look on' at the pageantry which, but for the candle-holder, +would huddle along in the undistinguishable blackness, filled them +with the pride of place. Stevenson had the sport-impulse at the +depths of his nature, but he also had, perhaps he had inherited, an +instinct for work in more blockish material, for lighthouse- +building and iron-founding. In a 'Letter to a Young Artist,' +contributed to a magazine years ago, he compares the artist in +paint or in words to the keeper of a booth at the world's fair, +dependent for his bread on his success in amusing others. In his +volume of poems he almost apologises for his excellence in +literature: + + + +'Say not of me, that weakly I declined +The labours of my sires, and fled the sea, +The towers we founded, and the lamps we lit, +To play at home with paper like a child; +But rather say: IN THE AFTERNOON OF TIME +A STRENUOUS FAMILY DUSTED FROM ITS HANDS +THE SAND OF GRANITE, AND BEHOLDING FAR +ALONG THE SOUNDING COASTS ITS PYRAMIDS +AND TALL MEMORIALS CATCH THE DYING SUN, +SMILED WELL-CONTENT, AND TO THIS CHILDISH TASK +AROUND THE FIRE ADDRESSED ITS EVENING HOURS.' + + +Some of his works are, no doubt, best described as paper-games. In +THE WRONG BOX, for instance, there is something very like the card- +game commonly called 'Old Maid'; the odd card is a superfluous +corpse, and each dismayed recipient in turn assumes a disguise and +a pseudonym and bravely passes on that uncomfortable inheritance. +It is an admirable farce, hardly touched with grimness, unshaken by +the breath of reality, full of fantastic character; the strange +funeral procession is attended by shouts of glee at each of its +stages, and finally melts into space. + +But, when all is said, it is not with work of this kind that +Olympus is stormed; art must be brought closer into relation with +life, these airy and delightful freaks of fancy must be subdued to +a serious scheme if they are to serve as credentials for a seat +among the immortals. The decorative painter, whose pencil runs so +freely in limning these half-human processions of outlined fauns +and wood-nymphs, is asked at last to paint an easel picture. + +Stevenson is best where he shows most restraint, and his peculiarly +rich fancy, which ran riot at the suggestion of every passing whim, +gave him, what many a modern writer sadly lacks, plenty to +restrain, an exuberant field for self-denial. Here was an +opportunity for art and labour; the luxuriance of the virgin +forests of the West may be clipped and pruned for a lifetime with +no fear of reducing them to the trim similitude of a Dutch garden. +His bountiful and generous nature could profit by a spell of +training that would emaciate a poorer stock. From the first, his +delight in earth and the earth-born was keen and multiform; his +zest in life + + +'put a spirit of youth in everything, +That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him;' + + +and his fancy, light and quick as a child's, made of the world +around him an enchanted pleasance. The realism, as it is called, +that deals only with the banalities and squalors of life, and +weaves into the mesh of its story no character but would make you +yawn if you passed ten minutes with him in a railway-carriage, +might well take a lesson from this man, if it had the brains. +Picture to yourself (it is not hard) an average suburb of London. +The long rows of identical bilious brick houses, with the +inevitable lace curtains, a symbol merely of the will and power to +wash; the awful nondescript object, generally under glass, in the +front window - the shrine of the unknown god of art; the sombre +invariable citizen, whose garb gives no suggestion of his +occupation or his tastes - a person, it would seem, only by +courtesy; the piano-organ the music of the day, and the hideous +voice of the vendor of half-penny papers the music of the night; +could anything be less promising than such a row of houses for the +theatre of romance? Set a realist to walk down one of these +streets: he will inquire about milk-bills and servants' wages, +latch-keys and Sunday avocations, and come back with a tale of +small meannesses and petty respectabilities, written in the +approved modern fashion. Yet Stevenson, it seems likely, could not +pass along such a line of brick bandboxes without having his pulses +set a-throbbing by the imaginative possibilities of the place. Of +his own Lieutenant Brackenbury Rich he says: + + + +'The succession of faces in the lamplight stirred the lieutenant's +imagination; and it seemed to him as if he could walk for ever in +that stimulating city atmosphere and surrounded by the mystery of +four million private lives. He glanced at the houses and marvelled +what was passing behind those warmly lighted windows; he looked +into face after face, and saw them each intent upon some unknown +interest, criminal or kindly.' + + +It was that same evening that Prince Florizel's friend, under the +name of Mr. Morris, was giving a party in one of the houses of West +Kensington. In one at least of the houses of that brick wilderness +human spirits were being tested as on an anvil, and most of them +tossed aside. So also, in, THE RAJAH'S DIAMOND, it was a quiet +suburban garden that witnessed the sudden apparition of Mr. Harry +Hartley and his treasures precipitated over the wall; it was in the +same garden that the Rev. Simon Rolles suddenly, to his own +surprise, became a thief. A monotony of bad building is no doubt a +bad thing, but it cannot paralyse the activities or frustrate the +agonies of the mind of man. + +To a man with Stevenson's live and searching imagination, every +work of human hands became vocal with possible associations. +Buildings positively chattered to him; the little inn at +Queensferry, which even for Scott had meant only mutton and currant +jelly, with cranberries 'vera weel preserved,' gave him the +cardinal incident of KIDNAPPED. How should the world ever seem +dull or sordid to one whom a railway-station would take into its +confidence, to whom the very flagstones of the pavement told their +story, in whose mind 'the effect of night, of any flowing water, of +lighted cities, of the peep of day, of ships, of the open ocean,' +called up 'an army of anonymous desires and pleasures'? To have +the 'golden-tongued Romance with serene lute' for a mistress and +familiar is to be fortified against the assaults of tedium. + +His attitude towards the surprising and momentous gifts of life was +one prolonged passion of praise and joy. There is none of his +books that reads like the meditations of an invalid. He has the +readiest sympathy for all exhibitions of impulsive energy; his +heart goes out to a sailor, and leaps into ecstasy over a generous +adventurer or buccaneer. Of one of his earlier books he says: +'From the negative point of view I flatter myself this volume has a +certain stamp. Although it runs to considerably upwards of two +hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility +of God's universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have +made a better one myself.' And this was an omission that he never +remedied in his later works. Indeed, his zest in life, whether +lived in the back gardens of a town or on the high seas, was so +great that it seems probable the writer would have been lost had +the man been dowered with better health. + + +'Whereas my birth and spirit rather took +The way that takes the town, +Thou didst betray me to a ling'ring book, +And wrap me in a gown,' + + +says George Herbert, who, in his earlier ambitions, would fain have +ruffled it with the best at the court of King James. But from +Stevenson, although not only the town, but oceans and continents, +beckoned him to deeds, no such wail escaped. His indomitable +cheerfulness was never embarked in the cock-boat of his own +prosperity. A high and simple courage shines through all his +writings. It is supposed to be a normal human feeling for those +who are hale to sympathize with others who are in pain. Stevenson +reversed the position, and there is no braver spectacle in +literature than to see him not asking others to lower their voices +in his sick-room, but raising his own voice that he may make them +feel at ease and avoid imposing his misfortunes on their notice. +'Once when I was groaning aloud with physical pain,' he says in the +essay on CHILD'S PLAY, 'a young gentleman came into the room and +nonchalantly inquired if I had seen his bow and arrow. He made no +account of my groans, which he accepted, as he had to accept so +much else, as a piece of the inexplicable conduct of his elders; +and, like a wise young gentleman, he would waste no wonder on the +subject.' Was there ever a passage like this? The sympathy of the +writer is wholly with the child, and the child's absolute +indifference to his own sufferings. It might have been safely +predicted that this man, should he ever attain to pathos, would be +free from the facile, maudlin pathos of the hired sentimentalist. + +And so also with what Dr. Johnson has called 'metaphysical +distresses.' It is striking enough to observe how differently the +quiet monasteries of the Carthusian and Trappist brotherhoods +affected Matthew Arnold and Robert Louis Stevenson. In his well- +known elegiac stanzas Matthew Arnold likens his own state to that +of the monks: + + +'Wandering between two worlds, one dead, +The other powerless to be born, +With nowhere yet to rest my head, +Like these on earth I wait forlorn. +Their faith, my tears, the world deride - +I come to shed them at their side.' + + + +To Stevenson, on the other hand, our Lady of the Snows is a +mistaken divinity, and the place a monument of chilly error, - for +once in a way he takes it on himself to be a preacher, his +temperament gives voice in a creed: + + +'And ye, O brethren, what if God, +When from Heaven's top He spies abroad, +And sees on this tormented stage +The noble war of mankind rage, +What if His vivifying eye, +O monks, should pass your corner by? +For still the Lord is Lord of might; +In deeds, in deeds, He takes delight; +The plough, the spear, the laden barks, +The field, the founded city, marks; +He marks the smiler of the streets, +The singer upon garden seats; +He sees the climber in the rocks; +To Him, the shepherd folds his flocks; +For those He loves that underprop +With daily virtues Heaven's top, +And bear the falling sky with ease, +Unfrowning Caryatides. +Those He approves that ply the trade, +That rock the child, that wed the maid, +That with weak virtues, weaker hands, +Sow gladness on the peopled lands, +And still with laughter, song, and shout +Spin the great wheel of earth about. + +But ye? - O ye who linger still +Here in your fortress on the hill, +With placid face, with tranquil breath, +The unsought volunteers of death, +Our cheerful General on high +With careless looks may pass you by!' + + +And the fact of death, which has damped and darkened the writings +of so many minor poets, does not cast a pallor on his conviction. +Life is of value only because it can be spent, or given; and the +love of God coveted the position, and assumed mortality. If a man +treasure and hug his life, one thing only is certain, that he will +be robbed some day, and cut the pitiable and futile figure of one +who has been saving candle-ends in a house that is on fire. Better +than this to have a foolish spendthrift blaze and the loving cup +going round. Stevenson speaks almost with a personal envy of the +conduct of the four marines of the WAGER. There was no room for +them in the boat, and they were left on a desert island to a +certain death. 'They were soldiers, they said, and knew well +enough it was their business to die; and as their comrades pulled +away, they stood upon the beach, gave three cheers, and cried, "God +bless the King!" Now, one or two of those who were in the boat +escaped, against all likelihood, to tell the story. That was a +great thing for us' - even when life is extorted it may be given +nobly, with ceremony and courtesy. So strong was Stevenson's +admiration for heroic graces like these that in the requiem that +appears in his poems he speaks of an ordinary death as of a hearty +exploit, and draws his figures from lives of adventure and toil: + + +'Under the wide and starry sky +Dig the grave and let me lie. +Glad did I live and gladly die, +And I laid me down with a will. +This be the verse you grave for me: +HERE HE LIES WHERE HE LONGED TO BE, +HOME IS THE SAILOR, HOME FROM THE SEA, +AND THE HUNTER HOME FROM THE HILL.' + + +This man should surely have been honoured with the pomp and colour +and music of a soldier's funeral. + +The most remarkable feature of the work he has left is its singular +combination of style and romance. It has so happened, and the +accident has gained almost the strength of a tradition, that the +most assiduous followers of romance have been careless stylists. +They have trusted to the efficacy of their situation and incident, +and have too often cared little about the manner of its +presentation. By an odd piece of irony style has been left to the +cultivation of those who have little or nothing to tell. Sir +Walter Scott himself, with all his splendid romantic and tragic +gifts, often, in Stevenson's perfectly just phrase, 'fobs us off +with languid and inarticulate twaddle.' He wrote carelessly and +genially, and then breakfasted, and began the business of the day. +But Stevenson, who had romance tingling in every vein of his body, +set himself laboriously and patiently to train his other faculty, +the faculty of style. + + +I. STYLE. - Let no one say that 'reading and writing comes by +nature,' unless he is prepared to be classed with the foolish +burgess who said it first. A poet is born, not made, - so is every +man, - but he is born raw. Stevenson's life was a grave devotion +to the education of himself in the art of writing, + + +'The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne, +Thassay so hard, so sharp the conquering.' + + +Those who deny the necessity, or decry the utility, of such an +education, are generally deficient in a sense of what makes good +literature - they are 'word-deaf,' as others are colour-blind. All +writing is a kind of word-weaving; a skilful writer will make a +splendid tissue out of the diverse fibres of words. But to care +for words, to select them judiciously and lovingly, is not in the +least essential to all writing, all speaking; for the sad fact is +this, that most of us do our thinking, our writing, and our +speaking in phrases, not in words. The work of a feeble writer is +always a patchwork of phrases, some of them borrowed from the +imperial texture of Shakespeare and Milton, others picked up from +the rags in the street. We make our very kettle-holders of pieces +of a king's carpet. How many overworn quotations from Shakespeare +suddenly leap into meaning and brightness when they are seen in +their context! 'The cry is still, "They come!" ' - 'More honoured +in the breach than the observance,' - the sight of these phrases in +the splendour of their dramatic context in MACBETH and HAMLET casts +shame upon their daily degraded employments. But the man of +affairs has neither the time to fashion his speech, nor the +knowledge to choose his words, so he borrows his sentences ready- +made, and applies them in rough haste to purposes that they do not +exactly fit. Such a man inevitably repeats, like the cuckoo, +monotonous catchwords, and lays his eggs of thought in the material +that has been woven into consistency by others. It is a matter of +natural taste, developed and strengthened by continual practice, to +avoid being the unwitting slave of phrases. + +The artist in words, on the other hand, although he is a lover of +fine phrases, in his word-weaving experiments uses no shoddy, but +cultivates his senses of touch and sight until he can combine the +raw fibres in novel and bewitching patterns. To this end he must +have two things: a fine sense, in the first place, of the sound, +value, meaning, and associations of individual words, and next, a +sense of harmony, proportion, and effect in their combination. It +is amazing what nobility a mere truism is often found to possess +when it is clad with a garment thus woven. + +Stevenson had both these sensitive capabilities in a very high +decree. His careful choice of epithet and name have even been +criticised as lending to some of his narrative-writing an excessive +air of deliberation. His daintiness of diction is best seen in his +earlier work; thereafter his writing became more vigorous and +direct, fitter for its later uses, but never unillumined by +felicities that cause a thrill of pleasure to the reader. Of the +value of words he had the acutest appreciation. VIRGINIBUS +PUERISQUE, his first book of essays, is crowded with happy hits and +subtle implications conveyed in a single word. 'We have all +heard,' he says in one of these, 'of cities in South America built +upon the side of fiery mountains, and how, even in this tremendous +neighbourhood, the inhabitants are not a jot more impressed by the +solemnity of mortal conditions than if they were delving gardens in +the greenest corner of England.' You can feel the ground shake and +see the volcano tower above you at that word 'TREMENDOUS +neighbourhood.' Something of the same double reference to the +original and acquired meanings of a word is to be found in such a +phrase as 'sedate electrician,' for one who in a back office wields +all the lights of a city; or in that description of one drawing +near to death, who is spoken of as groping already with his hands +'on the face of the IMPASSABLE.' + +The likeness of this last word to a very different word, +'IMPASSIVE,' is made to do good literary service in suggesting the +sphinx-like image of death. Sometimes, as here, this subtle sense +of double meanings almost leads to punning. In ACROSS THE PLAINS +Stevenson narrates how a bet was transacted at a railway-station, +and subsequently, he supposes, 'LIQUIDATED at the bar.' This is +perhaps an instance of the excess of a virtue, but it is an excess +to be found plentifully in the works of Milton. + +His loving regard for words bears good fruit in his later and more +stirring works. He has a quick ear and appreciation for live +phrases on the lips of tramps, beach-combers, or Americans. In THE +BEACH OF FALESA the sea-captain who introduces the new trader to +the South Pacific island where the scene of the story is laid, +gives a brief description of the fate of the last dealer in copra. +It may serve as a single illustration of volumes of racy, humorous, +and imaginative slang; + + +' "Do you catch a bit of white there to the east'ard?" the captain +continued. "That's your house. . . . When old Adams saw it, he +took and shook me by the hand. 'I've dropped into a soft thing +here,' says he. 'So you have,' says I. . . . Poor Johnny! I never +saw him again but the once . . . and the next time we came round +there he was dead and buried. I took and put up a bit of stick to +him: 'John Adams, OBIT eighteen and sixty-eight. Go thou and do +likewise.' I missed that man. I never could see much harm in +Johnny." + +' "What did he die of ?" I inquired. + +' "Some kind of sickness," says the captain. "It appears it took +him sudden. Seems he got up in the night, and filled up on Pain- +Killer and Kennedy's Discovery. No go - he was booked beyond +Kennedy. Then he had tried to open a case of gin. No go again: +not strong enough. . . . Poor John!" ' + + +There is a world of abrupt, homely talk like this to be found in +the speech of Captain Nares and of Jim Pinkerton in THE WRECKER; +and a wealth of Scottish dialect, similar in effect, in KIDNAPPED, +CATRIONA, and many other stories. It was a delicate ear and a +sense trained by practice that picked up these vivid turns of +speech, some of them perhaps heard only once, and a mind given to +dwell on words, that remembered them for years, and brought them +out when occasion arose. + +But the praise of Stevenson's style cannot be exhausted in a +description of his use of individual words or his memory of +individual phrases. His mastery of syntax, the orderly and +emphatic arrangement of words in sentences, a branch of art so +seldom mastered, was even greater. And here he could owe no great +debt to his romantic predecessors in prose. Dumas, it is true, is +a master of narrative, but he wrote in French, and a style will +hardly bear expatriation. Scott's sentences are, many of them, +shambling, knock-kneed giants. Stevenson harked further back for +his models, and fed his style on the most vigorous of the prose +writers of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the +golden age of English prose. 'What English those fellows wrote!' +says Fitzgerald in one of his letters; 'I cannot read the modern +mechanique after them.' And he quotes a passage from Harrington's +OCEANA: + + +'This free-born Nation lives not upon the dole or Bounty of One +Man, but distributing her Annual Magistracies and Honours with her +own hand, is herself King People.' + + +It was from writers of Harrington's time and later that Stevenson +learned something of his craft. Bunyan and Defoe should be +particularly mentioned, and that later excellent worthy, Captain +Charles Johnson, who compiled the ever-memorable LIVES OF PIRATES +AND HIGHWAYMEN. Mr. George Meredith is the chief of those very few +modern writers whose influence may be detected in his style. + +However it was made, and whencesoever the material or suggestion +borrowed, he came by a very admirable instrument for the telling of +stories. Those touches of archaism that are so frequent with him, +the slightly unusual phrasing, or unexpected inversion of the order +of words, show a mind alert in its expression, and give the sting +of novelty even to the commonplaces of narrative or conversation. +A nimble literary tact will work its will on the phrases of current +small-talk, remoulding them nearer to the heart's desire, +transforming them to its own stamp. This was what Stevenson did, +and the very conversations that pass between his characters have an +air of distinction that is all his own. His books are full of +brilliant talk - talk real and convincing enough in its purport and +setting, but purged of the languors and fatuities of actual +commonplace conversation. It is an enjoyment like that to be +obtained from a brilliant exhibition of fencing, clean and +dexterous, to assist at the talking bouts of David Balfour and Miss +Grant, Captain Nares and Mr. Dodd, Alexander Mackellar and the +Master of Ballantrae, Prince Otto and Sir John Crabtree, or those +wholly admirable pieces of special pleading to be found in A +LODGING FOR THE NIGHT and THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR. But people +do not talk like this in actual life- ' 'tis true, 'tis pity; and +pity 'tis, 'tis true.' They do not; in actual life conversation is +generally so smeared and blurred with stupidities, so invaded and +dominated by the spirit of dulness, so liable to swoon into +meaninglessness, that to turn to Stevenson's books is like an +escape into mountain air from the stagnant vapours of a morass. +The exact reproduction of conversation as it occurs in life can +only be undertaken by one whose natural dulness feels itself +incommoded by wit and fancy as by a grit in the eye. Conversation +is often no more than a nervous habit of body, like twiddling the +thumbs, and to record each particular remark is as much as to +describe each particular twiddle. Or in its more intellectual +uses, when speech is employed, for instance, to conceal our +thoughts, how often is it a world too wide for the shrunken nudity +of the thought it is meant to veil, and thrown over it, formless, +flabby, and black - like a tarpaulin! It is pleasant to see +thought and feeling dressed for once in the trim, bright raiment +Stevenson devises for them. + +There is an indescribable air of distinction, which is, and is not, +one and the same thing with style, breathing from all his works. +Even when he is least inspired, his bearing and gait could never be +mistaken for another man's. All that he writes is removed by the +width of the spheres from the possibility of commonplace, and he +avoids most of the snares and pitfalls of genius with noble and +unconscious skill. + +If he ever fell into one of these - which may perhaps be doubted - +it was through too implicit a confidence in the powers of style. +His open letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde in vindication of Father +Damien is perhaps his only literary mistake. It is a matchless +piece of scorn and invective, not inferior in skill to anything he +ever wrote. But that it was well done is no proof that it should +have been done at all. 'I remember Uzzah and am afraid,' said the +wise Erasmus, when he was urged to undertake the defence of Holy +Church; 'it is not every one who is permitted to support the Ark of +the Covenant.' And the only disquietude suggested by Stevenson's +letter is a doubt whether he really has a claim to be Father +Damien's defender, whether Father Damien had need of the assistance +of a literary freelance. The Saint who was bitten in the hand by a +serpent shook it off into the fire and stood unharmed. As it was +in the Mediterranean so it was also in the Pacific, and there is +something officious in the intrusion of a spectator, something +irrelevant in the plentiful pronouns of the first person singular +to be found sprinkled over Stevenson's letter. The curse spoken in +Eden, 'Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all +the days of thy life,' surely covered by anticipation the case of +the Rev. Dr. Hyde. + + +II. ROMANCE. - The faculty of romance, the greatest of the gifts +showered on Stevenson's cradle by the fairies, will suffer no +course of development; the most that can be done with it is to +preserve it on from childhood unblemished and undiminished. It is +of a piece with Stevenson's romantic ability that his own childhood +never ended; he could pass back into that airy world without an +effort. In his stories his imagination worked on the old lines, +but it became conscious of its working. And the highest note of +these stories is not drama, nor character, but romance. In one of +his essays he defines the highest achievement of romance to be the +embodiment of 'character, thought, or emotion in some act or +attitude that shall be remarkably striking to the mind's eye.' His +essay on Victor Hugo shows how keenly conscious he was that +narrative romance can catch and embody emotions and effects that +are for ever out of the reach of the drama proper, and of the essay +or homily, just as they are out of the reach of sculpture and +painting. Now, it is precisely in these effects that the chief +excellence of romance resides; it was the discovery of a world of +these effects, insusceptible of treatment by the drama, neglected +entirely by the character-novel, which constituted the Romantic +revival of the end of last century. 'The artistic result of a +romance,' says Stevenson, 'what is left upon the memory by any +powerful and artistic novel, is something so complicated and +refined that it is difficult to put a name upon it, and yet +something as simple as nature. . . . The fact is, that art is +working far ahead of language as well as of science, realizing for +us, by all manner of suggestions and exaggerations, effects for +which as yet we have no direct name, for the reason that these +effects do not enter very largely into the necessities of life. +Hence alone is that suspicion of vagueness that often hangs about +the purpose of a romance; it is clear enough to us in thought, but +we are not used to consider anything clear until we are able to +formulate it in words, and analytical language has not been +sufficiently shaped to that end.' He goes on to point out that +there is an epical value about every great romance, an underlying +idea, not presentable always in abstract or critical terms, in the +stories of such masters of pure romance as Victor Hugo and +Nathaniel Hawthorne. + +The progress of romance in the present century has consisted +chiefly in the discovery of new exercises of imagination and new +subtle effects in story. Fielding, as Stevenson says, did not +understand that the nature of a landscape or the spirit of the +times could count for anything in a story; all his actions consist +of a few simple personal elements. With Scott vague influences +that qualify a man's personality begin to make a large claim; 'the +individual characters begin to occupy a comparatively small +proportion of that canvas on which armies manoeuvre and great hills +pile themselves upon each other's shoulders.' And the achievements +of the great masters since Scott - Hugo, Dumas, Hawthorne, to name +only those in Stevenson's direct line of ancestry - have added new +realms to the domain of romance. + +What are the indescribable effects that romance, casting far beyond +problems of character and conduct, seeks to realise? What is the +nature of the great informing, underlying idea that animates a +truly great romance - THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR, MONTE CRISTO, LES +MISERABLES, THE SCARLET LETTER, THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE? These +questions can only be answered by de-forming the impression given +by each of these works to present it in the chop-logic language of +philosophy. But an approach to an answer may be made by +illustration. + +In his AMERICAN NOTEBOOKS Nathaniel Hawthorne used to jot down +subjects for stories as they struck him. His successive entries +are like the souls of stories awaiting embodiment, which many of +them never received; they bring us very near to the workings of the +mind of a great master. Here are some of them: + + +'A sketch to be given of a modern reformer, a type of the extreme +doctrines on the subject of slaves, cold water, and the like. He +goes about the streets haranguing most eloquently, and is on the +point of making many converts, when his labours are suddenly +interrupted by the appearance of the keeper of a madhouse whence he +has escaped. Much may be made of this idea.' + +'The scene of a story or sketch to be laid within the light of a +street lantern; the time when the lamp is near going out; and the +catastrophe to be simultaneous with the last flickering gleam.' + +'A person to be writing a tale and to find it shapes itself against +his intentions; that the characters act otherwise than he thought, +and a catastrophe comes which he strives in vain to avert. It +might shadow forth his own fate - he having made himself one of the +personages.' + +'Two persons to be expecting some occurrence and watching for the +two principal actors in it, and to find that the occurrence is even +then passing, and that they themselves are the two actors.' + +'A satire on ambition and fame from a statue of snow.' + + +Hawthorne used this idea in one of his sketches. + + +'A moral philosopher to buy a slave, or otherwise get possession of +a human being, and to use him for the sake of experiment by trying +the operation of a certain vice on him.' + + +M. Bourget, the French romancer, has made use of this idea in his +novel called LE DISCIPLE. Only it is not a slave, but a young girl +whom he pretends to love, that is the subject of the moral +philosopher's experiment; and a noisy war has been waged round the +book in France. Hawthorne would plainly have seized the romantic +essence of the idea and would have avoided the boneyard of 'problem +morality.' + + +'A story the principal personage of which shall seem always on the +point of entering on the scene, but shall never appear.' + + +This is the device that gives fascination to the figures of +Richelieu in MARION DELORME, and of Captain Flint in TREASURE +ISLAND. + + +'The majesty of death to be exemplified in a beggar, who, after +being seen humble and cringing in the streets of a city for many +years, at length by some means or other gets admittance into a rich +man's mansion, and there dies - assuming state, and striking awe +into the breasts of those who had looked down upon him.' + + +These are all excellent instances of the sort of idea that gives +life to a romance - of acts or attitudes that stamp themselves upon +the mind's eye. Some of them appeal chiefly to the mind's eye, +others are of value chiefly as symbols. But, for the most part, +the romantic kernel of a story is neither pure picture nor pure +allegory, it can neither be painted nor moralised. It makes its +most irresistible appeal neither to the eye that searches for form +and colour, nor to the reason that seeks for abstract truth, but to +the blood, to all that dim instinct of danger, mystery, and +sympathy in things that is man's oldest inheritance - to the +superstitions of the heart. Romance vindicates the supernatural +against science and rescues it from the palsied tutelage of +morality. + +Stevenson's work is a gallery of romantic effects that haunt the +memory. Some of these are directly pictorial: the fight in the +round-house on board the brig COVENANT; the duel between the two +brothers of Ballantrae in the island of light thrown up by the +candles from that abyss of windless night; the flight of the +Princess Seraphina through the dark mazes of the wood, - all these, +although they carry with them subtleties beyond the painter's art, +yet have something of picture in them. But others make entrance to +the corridors of the mind by blind and secret ways, and there +awaken the echoes of primaeval fear. The cry of the parrot - +'Pieces of eight' - the tapping of the stick of the blind pirate +Pew as he draws near the inn-parlour, and the similar effects of +inexplicable terror wrought by the introduction of the blind +catechist in KIDNAPPED, and of the disguise of a blind leper in THE +BLACK ARROW, are beyond the reach of any but the literary form of +romantic art. The last appearance of Pew, in the play of ADMIRAL +GUINEA, written in collaboration with Mr. W. E. Henley, is perhaps +the masterpiece of all the scenes of terror. The blind ruffian's +scream of panic fear, when he puts his groping hand into the +burning flame of the candle in the room where he believed that he +was unseen, and so realises that his every movement is being +silently watched, is indeed 'the horrors come alive.' + +The animating principle or idea of Stevenson's longer stories is +never to be found in their plot, which is generally built +carelessly and disjointedly enough around the central romantic +situation or conception. The main situation in THE WRECKER is a +splendid product of romantic aspiration, but the structure of the +story is incoherent and ineffective, so that some of the best +passages in the book - the scenes in Paris, for instance - have no +business there at all. The story in KIDNAPPED and CATRIONA wanders +on in a single thread, like the pageant of a dream, and the reader +feels and sympathises with the author's obvious difficulty in +leading it back to the scene of the trial and execution of James +Stewart. THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE is stamped with a magnificent +unity of conception, but the story illuminates that conception by a +series of scattered episodes. + +That lurid embodiment of fascinating evil, part vampire, part +Mephistopheles, whose grand manner and heroic abilities might have +made him a great and good man but for 'the malady of not wanting,' +is the light and meaning of the whole book. Innocent and +benevolent lives are thrown in his way that he may mock or distort +or shatter them. Stevenson never came nearer than in this +character to the sublime of power. + +But an informing principle of unity is more readily to be +apprehended in the shorter stories, and it is a unity not so much +of plot as of impression and atmosphere. His islands, whether +situated in the Pacific or off the coast of Scotland, have each of +them a climate of its own, and the character of the place seems to +impose itself on the incidents that occur, dictating subordination +or contrast. The events that happen within the limits of one of +these magic isles could in every case be cut off from the rest of +the story and framed as a separate work of art. The long +starvation of David Balfour on the island of Earraid, the sharks of +crime and monsters of blasphemy that break the peace of the shining +tropical lagoons in TREASURE ISLAND and THE EBB TIDE, the captivity +on the Bass Rock in CATRIONA, the supernatural terrors that hover +and mutter over the island of THE MERRY MEN - these imaginations +are plainly generated by the scenery against which they are thrown; +each is in some sort the genius of the place it inhabits. + +In his search for the treasures of romance, Stevenson adventured +freely enough into the realm of the supernatural. + +When he is handling the superstitions of the Scottish people, he +allows his humorous enjoyment of their extravagance to peep out +from behind the solemn dialect in which they are dressed. The +brief tale of THRAWN JANET, and Black Andy's story of Tod Lapraik +in CATRIONA, are grotesque imaginations of the school of TAM O' +SHANTER rather than of the school of Shakespeare, who deals in no +comedy ghosts. They are turnip-lanterns swayed by a laughing +urchin, proud of the fears he can awaken. Even THE STRANGE CASE OF +DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE and the story of THE BOTTLE IMP are +manufactured bogeys, that work on the nerves and not on the heart, +whatever may be said by those who insist on seeing allegory in what +is only dream-fantasy. The supernatural must be rooted deeper than +these in life and experience if it is to reach an imposing stature: +the true ghost is the shadow of a man. And Stevenson shows a sense +of this in two of his very finest stories, the exquisite idyll of +WILL O' THE MILL and the grim history of MARKHEIM. Each of these +stories is the work of a poet, by no means of a goblin-fancier. +The personification of Death is as old as poetry; it is wrought +with moving gentleness in that last scene in the arbour of Will's +inn. The wafted scent of the heliotropes, which had never been +planted in the garden since Marjory's death, the light in the room +that had been hers, prelude the arrival at the gate of the +stranger's carriage, with the black pine tops standing above it +like plumes. And Will o' the Mill makes the acquaintance of his +physician and friend, and goes at last upon his travels. In the +other story, Markheim meets with his own double in the house of the +dealer in curiosities, whom he has murdered. It is not such a +double as Rossetti prayed for to the god of Sleep: + + +'Ah! might I, by thy good grace, +Groping in the windy stair +(Darkness and the breath of space +Like loud waters everywhere), +Meeting mine own image there +Face to face, +Send it from that place to her!' + + +but a clear-eyed critic of the murderer, not unfriendly, who lays +bare before him his motives and history. At the close of that +wonderful conversation, one of the most brilliant of its author's +achievements, Markheim gives himself into the hands of the police. +These two stories, when compared with the others, serve to show how +Stevenson's imagination quickened and strengthened when it played +full upon life. For his best romantic effects, like all great +romance, are illuminative of life, and no mere idle games. + + +III. MORALITY. - His genius, like the genius of Nathaniel +Hawthorne, was doubly rich in the spirit of romance and in a wise +and beautiful morality. But the irresponsible caprices of his +narrative fancy prevented his tales from being the appropriate +vehicles of his morality. He has left no work - unless the two +short stories mentioned above be regarded as exceptions - in which +romance and morality are welded into a single perfect whole, +nothing that can be put beside THE SCARLET LETTER or THE MARBLE +FAUN for deep insight and magic fancy joined in one. Hence his +essays, containing as they do the gist of his reflective wisdom, +are ranked by some critics above his stories. + +A novel cannot, of course, be moral as an action is moral; there is +no question in art of police regulations or conformity to +established codes, but rather of insight both deep and wide. +Polygamy and monogamy, suttee, thuggism, and cannibalism, are all +acceptable to the romancer, whose business is with the heart of a +man in all times and places. He is not bound to display allegiance +to particular moral laws of the kind that can be broken; he is +bound to show his consciousness of that wider moral order which can +no more be broken by crime than the law of gravitation can be +broken by the fall of china - the morality without which life would +be impossible; the relations, namely, of human beings to each +other, the feelings, habits, and thoughts that are the web of +society. For the appreciation of morality in this wider sense high +gifts of imagination are necessary. Shakespeare could never have +drawn Macbeth, and thereby made apparent the awfulness of murder, +without some sympathy for the murderer - the sympathy of +intelligence. These gifts of imagination and sympathy belong to +Stevenson in a very high degree; in all his romances there are +gleams from time to time of wise and subtle reflection upon life, +from the eternal side of things, which shine the more luminously +that they spring from the events and situations with no suspicion +of homily. In THE BLACK ARROW, Dick Shelton begs from the Duke of +Gloucester the life of the old shipmaster Arblaster, whose ship he +had taken and accidentally wrecked earlier in the story. The Duke +of Gloucester, who, in his own words, 'loves not mercy nor mercy- +mongers,' yields the favour reluctantly. Then Dick turns to +Arblaster. + + +' "Come," said Dick, "a life is a life, old shrew, and it is more +than ships or liquor. Say you forgive me, for if your life is +worth nothing to you, it hath cost me the beginnings of my fortune. +Come, I have paid for it dearly, be not so churlish." + +' "An I had my ship," said Arblaster, "I would 'a' been forth and +safe on the high seas - I and my man Tom. But ye took my ship, +gossip, and I'm a beggar; and for my man Tom, a knave fellow in +russet shot him down, 'Murrain,' quoth he, and spake never again. +'Murrain' was the last of his words, and the poor spirit of him +passed. 'A will never sail no more, will my Tom." + +'Dick was seized with unavailing penitence and pity; he sought to +take the skipper's hand, but Arblaster avoided his touch. + +' "Nay," said he, "let be. Y' have played the devil with me, and +let that content you." + +'The words died in Richard's throat. He saw, through tears, the +poor old man, bemused with liquor and sorrow, go shambling away, +with bowed head, across the snow, and the unnoticed dog whimpering +at his heels; and for the first time began to understand the +desperate game that we play in life, and how a thing once done is +not to be changed or remedied by any penitence.' + + +A similar wisdom that goes to the heart of things is found on the +lips of the spiritual visitant in Markheim. + + +' "Murder is to me no special category," replied the other. "All +sins are murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like +starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of +famine, and feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond +the moment of their acting; I find in all that the last consequence +is death; and to my eyes the pretty maid, who thwarts her mother +with such taking graces on a question of a ball, drips no less +visibly with human gore than such a murderer as yourself." ' + + +The wide outlook on humanity that expresses itself in passages like +these is combined in Stevenson with a vivid interest in, and quick +appreciation of, character. The variety of the characters that he +has essayed to draw is enormous, and his successes, for the +purposes of his stories, are many. Yet with all this, the number +of lifelike portraits, true to a hair, that are to be found in his +works is very small indeed. In the golden glow of romance, +character is always subject to be idealised; it is the effect of +character seen at particular angles and in special lights, natural +or artificial, that Stevenson paints; he does not attempt to +analyse the complexity of its elements, but boldly projects into it +certain principles, and works from those. It has often been said +of Scott that he could not draw a lady who was young and beautiful; +the glamour of chivalry blinded him, he lowered his eyes and +described his emotions and aspirations. Something of the same +disability afflicted Stevenson in the presence of a ruffian. He +loved heroic vice only less than he loved heroic virtue, and was +always ready to idealise his villains, to make of them men who, +like the Master of Ballantrae, 'lived for an idea.' Even the low +and lesser villainy of Israel Hands, in the great scene where he +climbs the mast to murder the hero of TREASURE ISLAND, breathes out +its soul in a creed: + + +' "For thirty years," he said, "I've sailed the seas, and seen good +and bad, better and worse, provisions running out, knives going, +and what not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o' +goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don't +bite; them's my views - Amen, so be it." ' + + +John Silver, that memorable pirate, with a face like a ham and an +eye like a fragment of glass stuck into it, leads a career of +wholehearted crime that can only be described as sparkling. His +unalloyed maleficence is adorned with a thousand graces of manner. +Into the dark and fetid marsh that is an evil heart, where low +forms of sentiency are hardly distinguishable from the all- +pervading mud, Stevenson never peered, unless it were in the study +of Huish in THE EBB TIDE. + +Of his women, let women speak. They are traditionally accredited +with an intuition of one another's hearts, although why, if woman +was created for man, as the Scriptures assure us, the impression +that she makes on him should not count for as much as the +impression she makes on some other woman, is a question that cries +for solution. Perhaps the answer is that disinterested curiosity, +which is one means of approach to the knowledge of character, +although only one, is a rare attitude for man to assume towards the +other sex. Stevenson's curiosity was late in awaking; the heroine +of THE BLACK ARROW is dressed in boy's clothes throughout the +course of the story, and the novelist thus saved the trouble of +describing the demeanour of a girl. Mrs. Henry, in THE MASTER OF +BALLANTRAE, is a charming veiled figure, drawn in the shadow; Miss +Barbara Grant and Catriona in the continuation of KIDNAPPED are +real enough to have made many suitors for their respective hands +among male readers of the book; - but that is nothing, reply the +critics of the other party: a walking doll will find suitors. The +question must stand over until some definite principles of +criticism have been discovered to guide us among these perilous +passes. + +One character must never be passed over in an estimate of +Stevenson's work. The hero of his longest work is not David +Balfour, in whom the pawky Lowland lad, proud and precise, but 'a +very pretty gentleman,' is transfigured at times by traits that he +catches, as narrator of the story, from its author himself. But +Alan Breek Stewart is a greater creation, and a fine instance of +that wider morality that can seize by sympathy the soul of a wild +Highland clansman. 'Impetuous, insolent, unquenchable,' a condoner +of murder (for 'them that havenae dipped their hands in any little +difficulty should be very mindful of the case of them that have'), +a confirmed gambler, as quarrel-some as a turkey-cock, and as vain +and sensitive as a child, Alan Breek is one of the most lovable +characters in all literature; and his penetration - a great part of +which he learned, to take his own account of it, by driving cattle +'through a throng lowland country with the black soldiers at his +tail' - blossoms into the most delightful reflections upon men and +things. + +The highest ambitions of a novelist are not easily attainable. To +combine incident, character, and romance in a uniform whole, to +alternate telling dramatic situation with effects of poetry and +suggestion, to breathe into the entire conception a profound +wisdom, construct it with absolute unity, and express it in perfect +style, - this thing has never yet been done. A great part of +Stevenson's subtle wisdom of life finds its readiest outlet in his +essays. In these, whatever their occasion, he shows himself the +clearest-eyed critic of human life, never the dupe of the phrases +and pretences, the theories and conventions, that distort the +vision of most writers and thinkers. He has an unerring instinct +for realities, and brushes aside all else with rapid grace. In his +lately published AMATEUR EMIGRANT he describes one of his fellow- +passengers to America: + + +'In truth it was not whisky that had ruined him; he was ruined long +before for all good human purposes but conversation. His eyes were +sealed by a cheap school-book materialism. He could see nothing in +the world but money and steam engines. He did not know what you +meant by the word happiness. He had forgotten the simple emotions +of childhood, and perhaps never encountered the delights of youth. +He believed in production, that useful figment of economy, as if it +had been real, like laughter; and production, without prejudice to +liquor, was his god and guide.' + + +This sense of the realities of the world, - laughter, happiness, +the simple emotions of childhood, and others, - makes Stevenson an +admirable critic of those social pretences that ape the native +qualities of the heart. The criticism on organised philanthropy +contained in the essay on BEGGARS is not exhaustive, it is +expressed paradoxically, but is it untrue? + + +'We should wipe two words from our vocabulary: gratitude and +charity. In real life, help is given out of friendship, or it is +not valued; it is received from the hand of friendship, or it is +resented. We are all too proud to take a naked gift; we must seem +to pay it, if in nothing else, then with the delights of our +society. Here, then, is the pitiful fix of the rich man; here is +that needle's eye in which he stuck already in the days of Christ, +and still sticks to-day, firmer, if possible, than ever; that he +has the money, and lacks the love which should make his money +acceptable. Here and now, just as of old in Palestine, he has the +rich to dinner, it is with the rich that he takes his pleasure: and +when his turn comes to be charitable, he looks in vain for a +recipient. His friends are not poor, they do not want; the poor +are not his friends, they will not take. To whom is he to give? +Where to find - note this phrase - the Deserving Poor? Charity is +(what they call) centralised; offices are hired; societies founded, +with secretaries paid or unpaid: the hunt of the Deserving Poor +goes merrily forward. I think it will take a more than merely +human secretary to disinter that character. What! a class that is +to be in want from no fault of its own, and yet greedily eager to +receive from strangers; and to be quite respectable, and at the +same time quite devoid of self-respect; and play the most delicate +part of friendship, and yet never be seen; and wear the form of +man, and yet fly in the face of all the laws of human nature: - and +all this, in the hope of getting a belly-god burgess through a +needle's eye! Oh, let him stick, by all means; and let his polity +tumble in the dust; and let his epitaph and all his literature (of +which my own works begin to form no inconsiderable part) be +abolished even from the history of man! For a fool of this +monstrosity of dulness there can be no salvation; and the fool who +looked for the elixir of life was an angel of reason to the fool +who looks for the Deserving Poor.' + + +An equal sense of the realities of life and death gives the force +of a natural law to the pathos of OLD MORTALITY, that essay in +which Stevenson pays passionate tribute to the memory of his early +friend, who 'had gone to ruin with a kingly abandon, like one who +condescended; but once ruined, with the lights all out, he fought +as for a kingdom.' The whole description, down to the marvellous +quotation from Bunyan that closes it, is one of the sovereign +passages of modern literature; the pathos of it is pure and +elemental, like the rush of a cleansing wind, or the onset of the +legions commanded by + + +'The mighty Mahmud, Allah-breathing Lord, +That all the misbelieving and black Horde +Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul +Scatters before him with his whirlwind Sword.' + + +Lastly, to bring to an end this imperfect review of the works of a +writer who has left none greater behind him, Stevenson excels at +what is perhaps the most delicate of literary tasks and the utmost +test, where it is successfully encountered, of nobility, - the +practice, namely, of self-revelation and self-delineation. To talk +much about oneself with detail, composure, and ease, with no shadow +of hypocrisy and no whiff or taint of indecent familiarity, no +puling and no posing, - the shores of the sea of literature are +strewn with the wrecks and forlorn properties of those who have +adventured on this dangerous attempt. But a criticism of Stevenson +is happy in this, that from the writer it can pass with perfect +trust and perfect fluency to the man. He shares with Goldsmith and +Montaigne, his own favourite, the happy privilege of making lovers +among his readers. 'To be the most beloved of English writers - +what a title that is for a man!' says Thackeray of Goldsmith. In +such matters, a dispute for pre-eminence in the captivation of +hearts would be unseemly; it is enough to say that Stevenson too +has his lovers among those who have accompanied him on his INLAND +VOYAGE, or through the fastnesses of the Cevennes in the wake of +Modestine. He is loved by those that never saw his face; and one +who has sealed that dizzy height of ambition may well be content, +without the impertinent assurance that, when the Japanese have +taken London and revised the contents of the British Museum, the +yellow scribes whom they shall set to produce a new edition of the +BIOGRAPHIE UNIVERSELLE will include in their entries the following +item: - 'STEVENSON, R. L. A PROLIFIC WRITER OF STORIES AMONG THE +ABORIGINES. FLOURISHED BEFORE THE COMING OF THE JAPANESE. HIS +WORKS ARE LOST.' + + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Robert Louis Stevenson + diff --git a/old/rlswr10.zip b/old/rlswr10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b644205 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/rlswr10.zip |