Stevensoniana; an anecdotal life and appreciation of Robert Louis Stevenson

Front matter

An anecdotal life and appreciation of

Edited from the writings of J. M. Barrie, S. R. Crockett, G. K. Chesterton, Conan Doyle, Edmund Gosse, W. E. Henley, Henry James, Ian Maclaren, D. Christie Murray, W. Robertson Nicoll, A. W.

Pinero, A. T. Quiller-Couch, Lord Rosebery, Leslie Stephen, L Zangwill, etc.

Introduction To New Edition

On the publication of the library edition of this work it met with a gratifying reception from the critical press of England and America and from Stevensonians on both sides of the Atlantic. Indeed, out of some scores of reviews there were but three in any sense adverse, and each of these was so whole-heartedly abusive that it indicated the hand of a prejudiced critic. As one of these suspiciously intemperate articles appeared in a provincial journal more notable for its football reports than for literary opinion, it were waste of time to notice it. But, were I so minded, I might furnish forth — and in due time, perhaps, I shall — an instructive chapter on the ethics of reviewing, based chiefly on the other two unpleasantly personal attacks. It is far from my wish to involve in a literary controversy any work that is associated, however unworthily, with the name of R. L. Stevenson. But I shall permit myself the remark, that if within this book I have enclosed a considerable area whereon a certain gentleman had promised himself to build, and if the bare idea of it received the disapproval of another, it would only have been in accord with good taste had both refrained from availing themselves of the opportunities of anonymous journalism to abuse it when it issued from the press. Thus much, but no more, by way of reference to a matter that concerns the sphere of literary workers rather than the wider world of general readers. The opinions of the reviewers printed with the present edition, together with the pleasing fact that a thousand Stevensonian collectors viii STEVENSONIANA

have taken up the first expensive edition of * Stevensoniana,' may be thought to outweigh in some measure the unfavourable views of two, or perhaps three, excellent but not disinterested gentlemen.

There is another reason why I have been tempted to preface this edition with some reference to the criticisms which the book has evoked. The idea that governed its compilation was not, in the first instance, the production of an ' anecdotal life ' of Stevenson, but, as several critics have been good enough to point out, the result of my labour is a work of sufficient sequence and coherency to justify the addition that is made to the title-page of this popular re-issue.

A very large proportion of the volume is drawn from sources not easily available to the general reader, and numerous letters which I have received from Stevensonians, at home and more particularly in America, indicate that a considerable amount of material which has eluded even the enthusiastic collector has here been captured to his service. In order, as far as possible, to avoid duplication, permission was not sought to reprint from works devoted entirely to the work or personality of R. L. S.

As the plan of the book has precluded me from the expression of any personal opinion, I refrain even here from taking sides in the unhappy controversy that followed upon the late W. E. Henley's memorable article in the Pall Mall Magazine^ but I did not see my way entirely to exclude that article, and gladly availed myself of Mr. Henley's kind permission to make what use of it I cared. Without abating one jot of my admiration for R. L. S., I found it possible to include a great part of the much debated essay, and surely the whole of it might have been incorporated without endangering in any degree the cherished memory of one whose friendship is among the strongest claims on our remembrance that Henley himself possessed ? There are others, still among

INTRODUCTION TO NEW EDITION ix

us, who, in vastly greater measure than he, will owe any niche they may obtain in the mind of the next generation to that same friendship. But, as I have seen it stated with some show of authority since the death of Mr. Henley, that had he lived he would have retracted much of what he wrote in that article, it may be worth while to quote his own words from a letter I received from him not many months before his death : * As for the P, M. M. I want to make a distinction. You may take all you wish of it, till you come to the last paragraph. You excerpt a few lines from this : but I bar. Take the whole paragraph, please ; or end on " rare fellows in their day." You see, it cost me a lot to write that paragraph. I should not have written it, had I not felt the occasion very instant. Had I known what I know now, I should pretty certainly have dotted i's and crossed t's. I say no more. Only I say that that paragraph is what I mean, and what I want to leave.' In face of this I did not hesitate to print the paragraph, and the more it is read the greater is the wonder it should have provoked so much heated discussion. After all, it is salutary to remember that Stevenson was a little lower than the angels !

To Mr. Graham Balfour I am indebted for a gracious act of friendliness, whereby I have been enabled to correct several errors that had escaped my vigilance in the first edition, and especially to remove a reference to Stevenson and Father Damien which, on following Mr. Balfour's directions, I found to be quite inaccurate. Its place has been taken by an extract from the letter of chief Mataafa to the president of the Stevenson Fellowship in San Francisco ; in every way more agreeable reading.

I have not, however, sought to extend the volume by any gatherings from the ceaseless stream of literary journalism concerned with the life and work of R. L. S. ; a stream that is flowing with unabated vigour. Interesting though this has been since I brought * Stevensoniana ' to completion three years ago, I confess I have detected

X STEVENSONIANA

little that would warrant the extension of these already crowded pages.

An important feature of the present edition is the collection of illustrations with which it has been enriched. Scarcely less interesting than some of the literary matter are these scenes and portraits, and with the exception of the admirably produced brochure in the * Bookman Booklets ' series no such collection has hitherto been available in book form.

The means of thanking individually the goodly company of authors, editors, and publishers, without whose indulgent assistance ' Stevensoniana ' had remained for its editor an * enchanted cigarette ' — if Balzac's simile may be so applied — cannot be duly exercised within the scant pages of this introduction, and to attempt a detailed list of acknowledgments would be to weight the volume with extra pages of doubtful interest. The editor is none the less — he could not be more — sincere in his expression of gratitude to all who have co-operated.

Special mention must be made of the kindness of the following publishers, whose names do not all appear in acknowledgments of the books issued from their houses : Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, Mr. John Murray, Messrs. Chatto and Windus, Messrs. Longmans, Green, and Co., Messrs. William Blackwood and Sons, Messrs. Isbister and Co., Mr. William Heinemann, Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, Mr. John Lane, Mr. A. H. BuUen, Mr. David Nutt, and Mr. A. L. Humphreys.

J. A. H.

Contents

PAGE

INTRODUCTION TO NEW EDITION, , . . vii

I

HIS FOREBEARS AND INHERITED CHARACTERISTICS Robert Stevenson, Grandfather— The Balfour Pedigree — Anecdote of Dr. Lewis Balfour— Alan Stevenson, builder of Skerryvore — Thomas Stevenson's Literary Taste — The Mother of R. L. S.— Anecdote of Mrs. Thomas Stevenson, i

II

Lewis, not Louis — Boyhood recalled by 'Two of His Cousins' — Influence of Early Environment — Swanston : His Early Home — More Swanston Memories — *The Secret of Swanston' — Stevenson's Literary Apprenticeship — First Published Writings — Stevenson at Edinburgh University — 'Always Supposing'— 'The Sedulous Ape' — First Meeting with Edmund Gosse — First Meeting with George Meredith — A Latin Quarter Reminiscence — 'Life at Twenty-five,' ....... lo

III His First Visit To America, And His Marriage

First Landing in New York — Dark Days in California — San Francisco Editor's Story — An Impression by C. Warren Stoddard— Romance of his Marriage, . . .40 xii STEVENSONIANA

IV STEVENSON'S FIRST NOVEL

PAGE

Mr. Henley's Version — Editor of Young Folks' Version — Dr. Japp's Account of 'Treasure Island' — Mr. Gosse's Memory of Braemar, ..... 53

V

WORK AND PLAY AT DAVOS AND HY^RES

* Among the Philistines' at Davos — 'Robert Louis Stevenson, Illustrator' — As a Professorial Candidate — Bright Days at ' La Solitude,' ...... 62

VI

Home-Life at Bournemouth — Origin of ' Jekyll and Hyde' —

Farewell to England, ..... 75

VII

Arrival at New York — Projected Visit to Japan — Literary Reputation in America — A Portrait at Saranac Lake— As a Picturesque Invalid in New York — An Impression by Jeanette L. Gilder, ...... 83

VIII

*To Tusitala in Vailima' (Poem by Edmund Gosse) — Stevenson in Hawaii — A Visit to Vailima — 'As a Samoan Chief — A

Talk with Tusitala — An American ' Interviewer ' at Vailima — The Library at Vailima — Tusitala's Birthday Feast — A Samoan Resident's Reminiscences — As a Sunday-school Teacher— Meeting with a Fellow-Novelist at Apia

CONTENTS xiii

PAGE

—The High Chief of Samoa and R. L. S.— * The Road of the Loving Heart ' — Stevenson's Death — Stevenson's Grave — The Grave by Moonlight — A Later Visit to Vaea, ........ 92

IX

* Apparition' (Poem by W. E. Henley) — 'The Two Stevensons' — One of the thinnest — In a New York street car — * Talked with his whole body' — The Delight of his Talk — A Fireside Impression — A Memory Portrait — Traits of Character — 'The Bravest of Men' — 'Enormous Capacity for Joy'— 'That Kobold Look'— 'Not a True Bohemian ' — Stevenson's Handwriting — His Relations with Children — His Love of Music — On ' Mount Ego,' . 132

X

Critical Estimate — 'Austere Self-Training' — His Manifold Nature — The Artist's Progress — A French Critic's Appreciation— His Mastery of Style — A Study in German — His own Hints on Style — ' The Secret of Charm' — The Fame of an Essayist — His Knowledge of his Limitations — His Heroines — Lack of ' Feminine Interest ' — An Artist's Heroism — His Favourite Story — Methods of Work — Posthumous Works — Scott and Stevenson — Compared with Shakespeare — Stevenson as a Poet — ' Stevenson the Dramatist' — Stevenson and Science — Was Stevenson Overrated? .,..,.. 163

XI HIS RELIGION

*The Rule of Christ'— A Minister's View— His * Simple System of Morals ' — The Apostle of Happiness — ' Leaning towards Catholicism,' . . . . .214 xiv STEVENSONIANA

XII R. L. S. AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

PAG8

Henry James — John Addington Symonds — Sir Leslie Stephen — J. M. Barrie, I., ll. — Mr. Barrie's Speech at Edinburgh — Lord Rosebery — Sir Conan Doyle — S. R. Crockett, I., II., III. — 'Ian Maclaren' — David Christie Murray — Israel Zangwill — A. T. Quiller-Couch — John A. Steuart — Bret Harte— Coulson Kernahan — Justin McCarthy, M.P. — Dr. W. Robertson Nicoll — Herbert Paul, . .225

XIII

To Robert Louis Stevenson : Robert Burns Wilson — To Prospero in Samoa : ' Y. Y.' — On a Youthful Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson : James Whitcomb Riley — Written in a Copy of Mr. Stevenson's ' Catriona ' : William Watson— R. L. S. : Richard Garnett— Home from the Hill : W. Robertson Nicoll— Valediction (R. L. S. 1894) : Louise Imogen Guiney — In Memoriam Stevenson: Owen Wister — For R. L. S. on Vaea Top : Louise Imogen Guiney — To Robert Louis Stevenson : Bruce Porter — An Elegy : Richard Le Gallienne — A Seamark : Bliss Carman — The Word of the Water : Bliss Carman — Stevenson of the Letters : B. Paul Neuman — R. L. S. In Memoriam : Austin Dobson, . . , « 274

XIV

Books which Influenced Me' — A Dream-Book of R. L. S. — Two American Favourites — Memorial Meeting in New York — Reminiscences at Dundee Memorial Meeting — Melbourne Memorial Meeting — The Edinburgh Memorial — San Francisco Memorial Fountain — Birthday Celebra-

CONTENTS XV

VAGE

tion in San Francisco — The * Life ' reviewed by ' An Intimate Friend' — 'A South Sea Trader' — G. K. Chesterton on the 'Life'— * The Body-Snatcher'— 'Deacon Brodie' — 'The Bottle Imp' — Apropos 'Vailima Letters' — The Trudeau Dedications— Anecdote of Childhood by R. L. S. — An Historic Inkstand — Stevenson's Delusion — A Stevenson Shrine in San Francisco — Note on Stevenson's Portraits — Stevenson's Letters to an Artist — R. L. S. and Rodin — Bibliographical, ..... 291

LIST OF PLATES

1. Robert Louis Stevenson, . Photogravure frontispiece*

From a Photograph in the possession of Edmund Gosse, Esq.

2. TheTwoGrandfathersofR. L.Stevenson— To face p. i

1. Rev. Lewis Balfour.

2, Robert Stevenson.

3. Thomas Stevenson— Father of R. L. Stevenson,1

Mrs. Thomas Stevenson— Mother of R. L. }- « 6

Stevenson, ... J

4. No. 8 Howard Place, Edinburgh— Birthplace

of R. L. Stevenson, ....

5. No. 17 Heriot Row, Edinburgh,

6. Robert Louis Stevenson— Juvenile Por-

2. From a Crayon Drawing, 1854.

7. Shop at Corner of Antigua Street, Edin

8. CoLiNTON Manse in the Present Day,

9. Swanston Cottage, the Early Home of R. L,

Stevenson, ....

10. The 'Roaring Shepherd's' Cottage, Swan

11. Robert Louis Stevenson as a Young Man—

3. Wearing Sir Walter Simpson's Hat, 1876

xvi

14 16

22 38

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xvii

12. No. lo West Street, New York, where

Stevenson lived on his first landing in New

York, ...... To face p, 42

13. The House where Stevenson lived from

September to December 1879, in Monterey, California, . . . . „ 44

14. Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, . . ,,50

15. Chalet 'La Solitude,' Hyeres, where

Stevenson lived from March 1883 to July 1884, Stevenson's Chalet ' Am Stein,' on the Hill above the English Chapel, Davos Platz,

16. Mrs. R. L. Stevenson, "i

Robert Louis Stevenson,/ • • • m

From a Photograph by Sir Percy Shelly.

17. Stevenson at Vailima, . . . . „ 92

After the Photograph by J. Davis, Apia, Samoa.

18. Vailima— Stevenson's House, . . . „ 100

19. Vailima— Dining and Reception Room, . „ 108

20. The Road OF THE Loving Heart, . . ,,124

21. Feast given to the Chiefs on Completion

22. The Tomb of Robert Louis Stevenson,

Mount Vaea, Samoa, . . . . ,,128

23. A Favourite Portrait of R. L. Stevenson, . ,,140

24. Stevenson playing on a Flageolet, . . „ 160

25. Two Interesting Portraits of R. L. Stevenson, „ 163

Taken in Australia, 1893.

^t. Robert Louis Stevenson, . . . „ 290

This Portrait was first published, along with Mr. Austin Dobson's verses in the Student (Edinburgh) of January 1901. b xviii STEVENSONIANA

27. The Edinburgh Memorial, St. Giles Cathedral, To face p. 306

From a Bas-relief originally modelled by Augustus St. Gaudens in 1887.

28. The San Francisco Memorial, . . . „ 308

29. Two Familiar Portrait Studies of Stevenson— „ 329

1. From the Etching by William Strang.

2. From the Pencil Sketch by Percy F. S.

Spence.

30. Robert Louis Stevenson, . . . ,,331

1. After the Sketch in Oils by Sir William

Richmond, R.A.

2. After the Portrait painted by Count

Girolama Nerli at Samoa in 1894.

I

HIS FOREBEARS AND INHERITED CHARACTERISTICS

Robert Louis {Lewis) Stevenson was born at No. 8 Howard Place^ Edinburgh, November 13, 1850. Thomas, his father, was the youngest son of Robert Stevenson, in cofnmon with whom and the tatter's stepfather he held the post of Engineer to the Board of Northern Lighthouses. The mother of Robert Louis was the daughter of Dr. Lewis Balfour, parish minister of Colinton,

The following account of Stevenson's grandfather IS abridged from the article in the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica ' :

Robert Stevenson was the only son of Alan Stevenson, partner in a West Indian house in Glasgow, and was born in that city 8th June 1772. Having lost his father in infancy, he removed with his mother to Edinburgh. In his youth he assisted his stepfather, Thomas Smith, in his light- ^o^^^^^* house schemes, and at the early age of nineteen was Qj-andfather sent to superintend the erection of a lighthouse on the island of Little Cumbrae. He succeeded his stepfather, whose daughter he married in 1799, as Engineer to the Board of Northern Lighthouses, and at the same time began general practice as a civil engineer. During his period of office from 1 797 to 1843, he designed and executed no fewer than eighteen lighthouses, the most important being that on the Bell Rock, begun in 1807 and

A completed in 1810. In his general practice as a civil engineer he was employed in the construction of many county roads, harbours, docks, breakwaters, and several important bridges. It was he that brought into notice the superiority of malleable iron rods for railways over the old cast-iron, and he was the inventor of the movable jib and balance cranes. It was chiefly through his interposition that an Admiralty survey was established, from which the Admiralty sailing directions for the coasts of Great Britain and Ireland have been prepared. He pubhshed an account of the Bell Rock lighthouse in 1824, and, besides contributing important articles on engineering subjects to Brewster's * Edinburgh Encyclopaedia' and the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica,' was the author of various papers read before the societies he was connected with. He died at Edinburgh, 12th July 1850.

A ' Life of Robert Stevenson,' by his son David Stevenson, appeared in 1878. David Stevenson (1815-86), who along with his brother Alan succeeded to his father's business, was the author of a ' Sketch of the Civil Engineering of North America,' 'Marine Surveying,' 'Canal and River Engineering,' and of various papers read before learned societies.

Mr. J. F. George, writing in Scottish Notes and Queries^ April 1903, supplies some suggestive notes of Stevenson's ancestry on his mother's side. His maternal grandfather, the Rev. Dr. Lewis Balfour of Colin ton, was a younger son of John Balfour of Pilrig, and grandson of Professor James Balfour of the same place. Mr. George writes :

About 1650, James Balfour, one of the Principal Clerks of the Court of Session, married Bridget, daughter of Chalmers of Balbithan, Keithhall, and that estate was for some time in the name of Balfour. His son, James Balfour of Pedi^ree^"' Balbithan, Merchant and Magistrate of Edinburgh, paid poll-tax in 1696, but by 1699 the land had been sold. This was probably due to the fact that Balfour was one of the Governors of the Darien Company. His grandson, James Balfour of Pilrig (i 705-1 795), sometime Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh University, whose portrait is sketched in *Catriona,'also made a Garioch [Aberdeenshire district] marriage,

HIS FOREBEARS 3

his wife being Cecilia, fifth daughter of Sir John Elphinstone, second bart. of Logie (Elphinstone) and Sheriff of Aberdeen, by Mary, daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot, first bart. of Minto.

Referring to the Minto descent, Stevenson claims to have * shaken a spear in the Debatable Land and shouted the slogan of the EUiots.' He evidently knew little or nothing of his relations on the Elphinstone side. The Logie Elphinstones were a cadet branch of Glack, an estate acquired by Nicholas Elphinstone in 1499. William Elphinstone, a younger son of James of Glack and Elizabeth Wood of Bonnyton, married Margaret Forbes, and was father of Sir James Elphinstone, bart. of Logie, so created in 170 1. . . .

Stevenson would have been delighted to acknowledge his relationship, remote though it was, to the * Wolf of Badenoch,' who burned Elgin Cathedral without the Earl of Kildare's excuse that he thought the bishop was in it ; the Wolfs son, the victor of Harlaw, [and] his nephew ' John o' CouU,' Constable of France. . . . Also among Tusitala's kin may be noted, in addition to the later Gordons of Gight, the Tiger Earl of Crawford, familiarly known as ' Earl Beardie,' the ' Wicked Master ' of the same line, who was fatally stabbed by a Dundee cobbler ' for taking a stoup of drink from him ' ; Lady Jean Lindsay, who ran away with a 'common jockey with the horn,' and latterly became a beggar; David Lindsay, the last laird of Edzell, who ended his days as hostler at a Kirkwall inn, and 'Mussel Mou'ed Charlie,' the Jacobite ballad-singer.

Stevenson always believed he had a strong spiritual affinity to Robert Fergusson. It is more than probable that there was a distant material affinity as well. Margaret Forbes, the mother of Sir James Elphinstone, the purchaser of Logie, has not been identified, but it is possible she was of the branch of the Tolquhon Forbeses who previously owned Logie. Fergusson's mother, Elizabeth Forbes, was the daughter of a Kildrummy tacksman, who by constant tradition is stated to have been of the house of Tolquhon. It would certainly be interesting if this suggested connection could be proved.

In a little vi^ork entitled * The Parish of Colinton,' published in Edinburgh in the autumn of 1902, two letters are printed from the celebrated Lord Cockburn, author of 'Memorials of his Time/ to the Rev. Dr. Lewis Balfour. In the first Cockburn is solicitous, in Anecdote of a practical way, about the heightening of the Dr. Lewis church spire. In the second, dated January Balfour. 1840, he takes the liberty of modifying, in characteristic fashion, what he considered the overlavish contribution which the minister had made to a valedictory presentation to the schoolmaster:

As I am told it is by no means a case of such urgency as justifies these heroic sacrifices, so take ;£'4 off your benevolent but nonsensical ;£^. I meant to have given only ;£i, but that our friend might not lose by the deduction of your ^£4, I have made it £S'

In the editor's copy of the * Account of the Skerryvore Lighthouse,' written by Alan Stevenson, and published by Messrs. A. and C. Black in 1848 — two years before the Alan Steven- birth of Alan's nephew, the novelist — there son, builder is pasted a newspaper clipping, evidently of Skerry- from the Scotsman^ being a biographical ^°^®* sketch of the celebrated engineer. This

article is written with so much literary grace and sympathetic knowledge of the man that it is worthy of quotation here :

Alan, eldest son of the late Robert Stevenson, the well-known civil engineer and author of the Bell Rock Lighthouse, was born at Edinburgh in 1807. He was educated at the High School and University, where he greatly distinguished himself, and took the then somewhat unusual degree of Master of Arts and obtained under Leslie the Fellowes Prize for excellency as an advanced student of Natural Philosophy. He afterwards studied in England under the direction of a clergyman, and received the degree of Bachelor of Laws from the University of Glasgow.

His own wish was to study for the Church, but he gave it up for his father's profession — in which he soon made himself a name. Though obliged by illness to retire from work when in the fulness of his years and powers, the services he performed

HIS FOREBEARS 5

as Engineer to the Commissioners of Northern Lighthouses were such as to entitle him to lasting remembrance in the annals of our highest scientific achievements — in a department at once so perilous, difficult in its nature, and so inestimable in its results. During his connection with the Board, he introduced many improvements in the dioptric system of illumination, and erected numerous lighthouses on our coasts, including his masterpiece, the renowned Skerryvore.

There is little doubt that the mental tension caused by the responsibilities and difficulties of this work, acting upon his sensitive, chivalrous, and unsparing nature, was the main cause of the sudden shattering of his nervous system, which, in 1852, made it necessary for him to withdraw absolutely from his profession and the world. What a trial this must have been to one of his keen, intrepid temper, his high enthusiasm, and his delight in the full exercise of his powers, no one but himself and those who never left him for these long dreary years can ever tell — when his mind, his will, his affections survived, as it were, the organ through which they were wont to act — like one whose harp is all unstrung, and who has the misery to know it can do his bidding no more. He died peacefully at his house at Portobello [23rd December 1865], in his fifty-ninth year.

Besides his purely professional excellences, Mr. Stevenson had genuine literary genius — not receptive merely, but in the true sense original.

He had in everything he did that grace and delicacy, that perception of spiritual depth and height, that sense of a beauty transcending all adequate expression, and that tender, pervading melancholy, which are among the bitter-sweet birthrights of genius. This is not the place for expatiating on that characteristic part of his nature, his ideality — without which in its measure and intensity he would not have been the great engineer and man of science we all know him to have been. Imagination proper — the sense of the possible, of a realisable ideal — has to do with building lighthouses and breakwaters, not much less than with the making of epics or oratorios. All such creative acts postulate a faculty of projection from the finite and known into the unknown and untried, whence is brought back that which becomes to the race a possession and a joy for ever — be it a Skerryvore or Eddystone, a 'Divine Comedy' or a * Prince of Denmark.'

Mr. Stevenson read Italian and Spanish critically and with ease, and knew both literatures thoroughly. He knew Homer by heart; and read Aristophanes in Greek more readily than most of us could read Montaigne in French. We remember, many years ago, hearing him say that when alone for months in the midst of the sea, at his lighthouse work, he read Don Quixote, Aristophanes, and Dante, twice through.

We have before us now a little volume printed this year for private circulation, entitled 'The Ten Hymns of Synesius, Bishop of Cyrene, a.d. 410, in English verse,' etc., which he thus speaks of in his preface: 'It pleased God in 1852 to disable me, by a severe nervous affection, for my duties as engineer to the Board of Northern Lighthouses; and I took to beguiling my great sufferings by trying to versify the whole ten hymns of Synesius. During many an hour the employment helped to soothe my pain.'

It is quite wonderful, if we consider the nature of the task and his broken health, how nobly he has rendered those sublime old hymns, in which we find the doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul so glorified in Wordsworth's 'Intimations of Immortality,' and with which the heavenly-minded Leighton refreshed himself, and eight of which were translated by Coleridge into English anacreontics, before that strange and mournful prodigy had reached his fifteenth year.

From an appreciation of R. L. S. published in the Quarterly Review^ April 1895 :

For his pedigree, it was, in the best Scottish sense, honourable. To be mentioned in Gibbon's * Decline and Fall,' says Thackeray, is like having your name written on the fagade of St. Peter's

at Rome. It is hardly less to have had a grand- Thomas father whose name stands in one of Scott's prefaces, Stevenson's ^^^^ especially when the book thus introduced is taste *The Pirate,' and secret ambition pricks us on till

we rival or outdo that ill-written yet moving romance of the sea-rover, with a certain 'Treasure Island' of our own.

o

a

IS 55

HIS FOREBEARS 7

From his Highland ancestors Louis drew the strain of Celtic melancholy, with all its perils and possibilities, and its kinship to the mood of day-dreaming, which has flung over so many of his pages now the vivid light wherein figures imagined grow real as flesh and blood, and yet again the ghostly, strange, lonesome, and stinging mist, under whose spell we see the world bewitched, and every object quickens with a throb of infectious terror. ' Love, anger, and indignation,' we read in the son's too brief and touching outline of his father, Thomas Stevenson, •shone through him and broke forth in imagery.'

How impressive, how enlightening is it to be told of his * just and picturesque' language, of his 'freakish humour,' clothing itself in a vesture at once apt and emphatic ; above all, of the painful yet surely most admirable circumstance attending his last moments, when, as he began to ' feel the ebbing ' of that great power of speech, the dying * would reject one word after another as inadequate, and leave his phrase unfinished, rather than finish it without propriety.' What an inbred charm and eloquence must language have possessed for such a one, who even with failing breath would not handle it rudely !