searched for the story in his reprinted The remainder of the verse cannot in works, I cannot think of it without see- fairness (even to an author of thirteen) ing the dead body lying in a certain be given, as there are in the final line position on the dining-room floor. two qualifying epithets to one noun, I have only so far come upon two both of which have been struck out as specimens of Stevenson's literary work unsatisfactory by the already fastidious at that early age - one a rhyming self-critic. The dénouement is the death letter he wrote in reply to one I had of the young Baron of Manaheit, in the sent him embodying the regrets of his attempt to defy prophecy, and is deschoolmates at his absence in Torquay, scribed with a certain promise of Steand the other, an imperfect and much-venson's force and dramatic power: corrected-and-altered draft of a roman- He gasped, he struggled, then, with hands tic ballad of the "Baron of Manaheit." Of the (intentional) doggerel of the letter, the following lines are an amusing specimen, and are not without a hint of that playful humor which became one of his finest and most fascinating qualities: — E'er since I left I've pined in melancholly, Its rocks and sea Have witnessed my folly. That all the day I weep and pine in grief, I say again The greek for "stop the thief!" I intentionally preserve the slip in spelling and the lacking capital as characteristic of schoolboy haste and carelessness. I do not now remember what is the Greek for "Stop the thief!" but have no doubt it was a fine, mouthfilling phrase with probably an exhilarating suggestion of profanity. It may indeed encourage the juvenile literary aspirant to know that precocity in the matter of correct spelling is evidently not a sine quâ non of ultimate success in letters. The ballad was probably written for the Jack o' Lantern, but 'twas hardly in a state for publication, even there, in spite of the amount of "elbow grease" to which it has obviously been subjected. It opens characteristically with a description of a haunted house : The moon shone down from the black arch of night, on high, Gave one loud shriek and from his saddle dropped. But there is no sign in these early attempts of anything really premature or precocious, and nothing can be truer, in spite of his early bent towards letters, than that his success was the fruit, as he himself alleges, of persistent industry and indefatigable perseverance, and when we consider that all this was accomplished in the face of much discountenance and opposition, and despite all the drawbacks of physical weakness and almost continuous delicacy and ill-health, Stevenson's achievement in literature must seem nothing short of heroic. And when we remember that he died hard at work, too hard I fear, in the harness he had so resolutely buckled on, we may well declare that the Carlyle of the future will not have far to seek for a "Hero as Man of Letters." II. I THINK Stevenson and I must have left school about the same year — 1865 - he to make a valiant, but vain, attempt to follow his father's profession, and I to proceed to the arts classes of Edinburgh University; and so it came about that he followed me to the university some three years later, and we thus belonged to quite different generations of undergraduate life and moved in different sets. But I fancy we should have seen more of each other had it not been that our boyish friendship was thrown somewhat out of gear And showed a house close by the public by a crisis in my own inner history, way. chiefly induced, I believe, by a perusal of Pascal's "Pensées," which resulted A renewal of our intercourse came about rather curiously, from his instructing his publishers, Messrs. Chatto & Windus, to send me a copy of the volume entitled "Ballads," a form of compliment he had never before paid me. This naturally led to my writing to him, and this to a project that I should visit him in Samoa; a project, alas! never, to my infinite regret, carried out, the fault being my own, as was the misfortune. But it led to my receiving letters from him, which are naturally very precious possessions now. They are in the old vein of frank friendship, disengaged and manly, but breathing of that fine camaraderie of which he and Whitman, of all moderns, most possessed the secret. I had spoken warmly of the "Ballads," which the public, it seems, would have none of, especially the " Song of Rahero," which I regard as his highest achievement in verse, and he writes: in a period of religious depression — as I regard it now - which must have made me poor company for any one, but most of all for the bright, elastic hedonist, the truant, life-loving student, diligent in all studies but those prescribed for him. So there appears to me at this time a yawning gap in our intercourse which must have extended over several years, further accounted for by the fact that while he was at Edinburgh University I was mainly in Cambridge. Then he had, in those days, also to take swallow-flights southward in search of warmth and sunshine. But somehow, I recollect not how, our friendship became renewed, and on some bright day when the Edinburgh climate was gracious for a time he would pounce on me and carry me off to some snug, wind-sheltered seat in the Princess Street Gardens, and in pleasant fraternal converse we would report ourselves to each other and exchange mental electricities, no doubt largely to my profit. When we had, so to speak, squared our mental accounts, or my duties recalled me, we would are the verses of Prosator; but I do know part, probably for months, till his com- how to tell a yarn, and two of the yarns etary track again came into conjunction are great. "Rahero" is for its length a with my prosaic orbit, and he pounced perfect folk-tale; savage and yet fine, full on me for another day of reckoning. of tail-foremost morality, ancient as the But gradually as his wanderings ex- granite rocks; if the historian, not to say tended and his absences from Scotland the politician, could get that yarn into his grew in duration, his visits became head, he would have learned some of his But the average man at home more angelic in frequency; the last IAB C. remember was after his marriage, and cannot understand antiquity; he is sunk I saw Mrs. Stevenson at a little dis-over the ears in Roman civilization ; and a tance, but was not introduced to her. But I think I may say this curious fragmentary friendship maintained a wonderful warmth, not only on my part but on his. My love and admiration were doubtless fed continually by his books, and especially his essays, in which I always felt the true Stevenson, and which brought to me so completely his presence, his voice and smile, that my friend seemed ever at my elbow, ready to discourse in his best manner, his happiest vein. So even when the news of his death came, I did not feel it as a remote event, but rather as though a comrade in arms were shot down by one's side. They [the "Ballads "] failed to entertain a coy public, at which I wondered, not that I set much account by my verses, which tale like that of "Rahero" falls on his ears inarticulate. The Spectator said there was no psychology in it; that interested me much; my grandmother (as I used to call that able paper, and an able paper it is, and a fair one) cannot so much as observe the existence of savage psychology when it is put before it. I am at bottom a psychologist, and ashamed of it; the tale seized me one-third because of its picturesque features, two-thirds because of its astonishing psychology, and the Spectator says there's none. island work, exulting in the knowledge of I am going on with a lot of a new world, a new created world" and new men; and I am sure my income will DECLINE and FALL off; for the effort of comprehension is death to the intelligent public, and sickness to the dull. Everything he here says, points to a | was utterly repellent, and it does not remarkably sane and true estimate of require the record of his converse with his own powers, and I do not think I the Trappists to apprise us that in a ever met or read of a man of letters or clime whose religion is more indulgent genius of any kind more genuinely to human frailties and less divorced modest than Stevenson. His ideal was from the beautiful, his life might have high, and he seldom altogether pleased taken on more color of piety in the himself; so he was apt rather to dis-ordinary sense. parage too much those of his efforts In spite of the childish piety on which failed of his severe standard of which he seems to me to plume himachievement. He put me off reading self rather unnecessarily, the religious one of his volumes for years, because world, as he found it, revolted him by he described it as composed of pot- its harshness and moral pedantry, boilers or some such phrase. When I which too often but skimmed over came to read it I saw well enough what characters full of dishonesty, selfishmade him utter this libel on himself. ness, and even impurity. But his naThe work was not of his best, perhaps ture was not exactly of the religious somewhat tentative; but there were type; he was tender rather than revtouches of the master of story-telling erent, sympathetic and indulgent -a charm and force of style he could rather than austerely virtuous; the not divest himself of. As a rule he human was more to him than the was, in a degree very rare among divine. Yet he was ever on the road artistic natures, more severe and sternly to true piety by the route indicated in just to his own work than any of his St. John's epistles: the love of his critics; indeed, he sometimes treated brother; but his code is not a little his own offspring with a truculent heathen. Like Heine, he is a Hellenseverity worthy of a Roman father, or ist, not a Hebraist, more anxious and of his favorite, Lord Braxfield. Few appreciative of graciousness and grace men, I am convinced, have on any of bearing and conduct than of strict score treated themselves to more brutal | conformity to set rules of virtue or frankness. Still, when he had done morals. Of all rule and convention, what he thought was good work, he indeed, he was the sworn foe; virtue was minded to stick loyally by it, and itself only charms him when growing valiantly maintain his position, whether wild. Of the drudgery of labor at set against the slights of a fickle, dull-times and places, of the compliance scented public, or the onslaught of with civilized routine and fashion, he critics. was fully as incapable as Hottentot or Red Indian. He loved to plunge into vagrancy, into the lower strata of society, into the company of the huddled and hustled emigrant, or the companionship of primitive and savage peoples; anywhere, indeed, where he could purge himself of that middleclass respectability that so stank in his nostrils. When we come to judge of Stevenson's career, and especially his conduct of life, and more particularly when the fascinating autography we find in his books is supplemented by a biography indited by loving and sympathetic hands (as we hope it will be), we must always bear in mind the peculiarity of his ethical standards. He had early revolted against the grim rule of min- He had a true child's horror of being gled Calvinism and Puritanism, behind put into fine clothes, in which one which (in spite of the heroic purity of must "sit still and be good." I fancy many) lurks, as behind a grim mask, he modestly disclaimed the pretension much unlovely evil in Scottish char- to be good in the ordinary acceptation; acter. To his supple, artistic, and yet he has his own rather exacting perhaps somewhat Gallicized nature, standards for human action. He is with its unconquerable Bohemianism, austere with Robert Burns, and when the grim, granite face of Scottish piety he writes of Villon, we feel he is suffo cating with moral nausea. Neither of marble selfishness of the one, nor the peevish bitterness of the other. He made a brave fight to live, on the whole, the true and the beautiful, an ideal in its way more exacting than unique. In his life and his books one is often reminded of the models by which he shaped his action or his style, yet the result is pure Stevenson. them reaches his notion of manly conduct. He cannot forgive the village Don Juan that Scotland delights to honor as though he had been a saint; he cannot stomach the sordid envy or any. But the man, like his style, is the vile complacences of Villon. Yet another kind of bad character he can be indulgent enough to is his own "Master of Ballantrae," perhaps the most unmitigated and accomplished scoundrel in fiction, and he leaves him with the tragic honors of the story, while the poor, worthy, long-suffering brother sinks into a despicable sot. Stevenson's moral judgments were guided more by what I call the poetic or absolute ethic, than by that practical ethic which society, rather than the best impulses of our nature, imposes. Now in the poetic scale of virtues a high place, if not the highest, is always allotted to courage, and that absolutely and independently of the cause in which it is displayed. Courage as courage is morally beautiful, however inconvenient it may be to the authorities. Hence the highwayman, the brigand, and the buccaneer always appeal to us, however dark their deeds may be; but let them flinch or play the poltroon, and we are done with them. Love, again, is a true poet's virtue, and wherever we are convinced that the love is genuine, we are all, I fear, very willing to lend a hand in pitching the Decalogue overboard. So we might proceed to make a list of these romantic and poetic virtues and their more prosaic counterparts, as generosity and prudence, charity and circumspection, impulsiveness and caution, passion and the wisdom that is "aye sae cauld," and we should find Stevenson leaning to the former rather than the latter. But this is perhaps more à propos of his art than his life. I have no doubt, both from what he himself said to me and from what I know of his character, that he modelled his conduct as much after that of Goethe, as of any predecessor in letters. He had a touch of that paganism which Goethe and Heine exemplified, but he allowed himself neither the His life was perhaps more unique than his work. A life-long invalid, braving innumerable trials, hardships, and perils, before which the hardiest might have quailed; an Edinburghbred lad without reverence for caste or the religion of the tall hat, and yet more surprising, a member of the Scottish bar travelling in the steerage of an emigrant ship, and at times not over particular as to his own linen. A professed wanderer and Bohemian, with no pretensions to regular industry, and yet, when we consider his short life and the high quality of much of his work, one of the most prolific writers of his age. Beset from his childhood with disease, and menaced by death, sorely tempted (as he hints to me in a letter) to give way to evil courses, and tread the fatal path genius has so often trodden; passing through painful struggle with his father as to his career; driven hither and thither in search of the possibility of living; exiled from every intellectual centre, and yet exercising his splendid powers unweariedly, indefatigably, to the end! But every experience, however painful, he turned to gain ; from every enemy was wrested some weapon for use; as light-heartedly as a little child gathers a posy in a graveyard, he fearlessly reaped a harvest in the very "valley of the shadow." His one fear was that of "dying at the top," and in a letter dated June 30, 1894, he said in words that ring now like prophecy, "If I could die just now, or in say half a year, I should have had a splendid time of it on the whole. But it gets a little stale, and my work will begin to senesce, and parties to shy bricks at me; and it now begins to look as if I should survive to see myself impotent and forgotten." | until two years afterwards, when he He even moots the question as to was entered in the books as plebis filius. whether he should not have taken his Wood (Ath. Oxon.) tells us that "he father's way and been an engineer, was always averse to the crabbed studwith literature for an "amusement." ies of logic and philosophy. For so it But he adds, "I have pulled it off of course; I have won the wager, and it is pleasant while it lasts, but how long will it last?" was, that his genius being bent to the pleasant paths of poetry (its pitfalls had given him a wreath of his own, bays without snatching or struggling), did in a manner neglect academical studies, yet not so much but that he took degrees in arts, that of master being completed in 1575; at which time he was esteemed at the university a noted wit, and afterwards was in the court of Queen Elizabeth, where he was also reputed a rare poet, witty, comical, and facetious." He took the degree of B.A. in April, 1573, and that of M.A. two years afterwards. But for some reason unknown he afterwards left Oxford and removed to Cambridge, whence he went to court. There is preserved among the Lansdowne manuscripts in the British Museum a beautifully written Latin letter, dated 1574, from Lyly to Lord Burleigh, in which the young scholar solicits the patronage of the great statesman. And not in vain, for in "Euphues and his England" Lyly writes: "This noble man [Burleigh] I found so ready, being but a stranger, to do me good, that neither I ought to forget him, neither cease to pray for him." It would appear that he was admitted to some position of trust in Lord Burleigh's household, but from a letter addressed to his patron, preserved in the Lausdowne manuscripts, it seems that in 1582 he fell under some suspicion, and was dismissed in disgrace. The earnest and passionate tone in which he entreats that a full inquiry shall be instituted justifies the conclusion that the accusation was a false one. WHEN Sir Walter Scott, in the character of Sir Piercie Shafton, attempted the portrait of an Euphuist after the manner of John Lyly's once famous hero, few persons knew anything about "Euphues' Anatomie of Wit" or its author, for when "The Monastery" was written, Elizabethan literature, though Charles Lamb had directed attention to its treasures in his "Specimens" twelve years previously, was scarcely read by any one except himself and Coleridge. In a late edition of his romance Scott was fain to confess that his attempt had proved a failure. It is probable that the great novelist had never read “Euphues," and drew his knight from Jonson's and Shakespeare's caricatures instead of from the original. Charles Kingsley, in "Westward Ho!" falls foul of Sir Piercie, "God is my witness," he writes, and points out that he is an anachro-"before whom I speak, and before nism belonging to the later and worst whom for my speech I shall answer, days of the euphuistic craze. that all my thoughts concerning my The author of "The Anatomie of lord have been ever reverent and Wit," it would seem, was born in the almost religious. How I have dealt Weald of Kent, about the year 1553 or God knoweth and my lady can conjec1554, and entered Magdalen College, ture, so faithfully, as I am unspotted Oxford, in 1569, but did not matriculate for dishonesty, as a suckling from LIVING AGE. VOL. VI. 275 |