his voice as he exclaimed, "Ah, the years go on, and I don't miss

him less, but more; next to my mother he was the best friend I ever
had: a man with a heart of gold; his house was a second home to

me."
Stevenson's experience shows how easy it is with a certain type of

man, to restore the old feudal conditions of service and
relationship. Stevenson did this in essentials in Samoa. He tells

us how he managed to get good service out of the Samoans (who are
accredited with great unwillingness to work); and this he DID by

firm, but generous, kindly, almost brotherlytreatment, reviving,
as it were, a kind of clan life - giving a livery of certain

colours - symbol of all this. A little fellow of eight, he tells,
had been taken into the household, made a pet of by Mrs Strong, his

stepdaughter, and had had a dress given to him, like that of the
men; and, when one day he had strolled down by himself as far as

the hotel, and the master of it, seeing him, called out in Samoan,
"Hi, youngster, who are you?" The eight-year-old replied, "Why,

don't you see for yourself? I am one of the Vailima men!"
The story of the ROAD OF THE LOVING HEART was but another fine

attestation of it.
CHAPTER XII - HIS GENIUS AND METHODS

TO have created a school of idolaters, who will out and out swear
by everything, and as though by necessity, at the same time, a

school of studious detractors, who will suspiciously question
everything, or throw out suggestions of disparagement, is at all

events, a proof of greatness, the countersign of undoubted genius,
and an assurance of lasting fame. R. L. Stevenson has certainly

secured this. Time will tell what of virtue there is with either
party. For me, who knew Stevenson, and loved him, as finding in

the sweet-tempered, brave, and in some things, most generous man,
what gave at once tone and elevation to the artist, I would fain

indicate here my impressions of him and his genius - impressions
that remain almost wholly uninfluenced by the vast mass of matter

about him that the press now turns out. Books, not to speak of
articles, pour forth about him - about his style, his art, his

humour and his characters - aye, and even about his religion.
Miss Simpson follows Mr Bellyse Baildon with the EDINBURGH DAYS,

Miss Moyes Black comes on with her picture in the FAMOUS SCOTS, and
Professor Raleigh succeeds her; Mr Graham Balfour follows with his

LIFE; Mr Kelman's volume about his Religion comes next, and that is
reinforced by more familiar letters and TABLE TALK, by Lloyd

Osbourne and Mrs Strong, his step-children; Mr J. Hammerton then
comes on handily with STEVENSONIANA - fruit lovingly gathered from

many and far fields, and garnered with not a little tact and taste,
and catholicity; Miss Laura Stubbs then presents us with her

touching STEVENSON'S SHRINE: THE RECORD OF A PILGRIMAGE; and Mr
Sidney Colvin is now busily at work on his LIFE OF STEVENSON, which

must do not a little to enlighten and to settle many questions.
Curiosity and interest grow as time passes; and the places

connected with Stevenson, hitherto obscure many of them, are now
touched with light if not with romance, and are known, by name at

all events, to every reader of books. Yes; every place he lived
in, or touched at, is worthy of full description if only on account

of its associations with him. If there is not a land of Stevenson,
as there is a land of Scott, or of Burns, it is due to the fact

that he was far-travelled, and in his works painted many scenes:
but there are at home - Edinburgh, and Halkerside and Allermuir,

Caerketton, Swanston, and Colinton, and Maw Moss and Rullion Green
and Tummel, "the WALE of Scotland," as he named it to me, and the

Castletown of Braemar - Braemar in his view coming a good second to
Tummel, for starting-points to any curious worshipper who would go

the round in Scotland and miss nothing. Mr Geddie's work on THE
HOME COUNTRY OF STEVENSON may be found very helpful here.

1. It is impossible to separate Stevenson from his work, because of
the imperious personal element in it; and so I shall not now strive

to gain the appearance of cleverness by affecting any distinction
here. The first thing I would say is, that he was when I knew him

- what pretty much to the end he remained - a youth. His outlook
on life was boyishly genial and free, despite all his sufferings

from ill-health - it was the pride of action, the joy of endurance,
the revelry of high spirits, and the sense of victory that most

fascinated him; and his theory of life was to take pleasure and
give pleasure, without calculation or stint - a kind of boyish

grace and bounty never to be overcome or disturbed by outer
accident or change. If he was sometimes haunted with the thought

of changes through changed conditions or circumstances, as my very
old friend, Mr Charles Lowe, has told even of the College days that

he was always supposing things to undergo some sea-change into
something else, if not "into something rich and strange," this was

but to add to his sense of enjoyment, and the power of conferring
delight, and the luxuries of variety, as boys do when they let

fancy loose. And this always had, with him, an individual
reference or return. He was thus constantly, and latterly, half-

consciously, trying to interpret himself somehow through all the
things which engaged him, and which he so transmogrified - things

that especially attracted him and took his fancy. Thus, if it must
be confessed, that even in his highest moments, there lingers a

touch - if no more than a touch - of self-consciousness which will
not allow him to forget manner in matter, it is also true that he

is cunningly conveying traits in himself; and the sense of this is
often at the root of his sweet, gentle, naive humour. There is,

therefore, some truth in the criticisms which assert that even
"long John Silver," that fine pirate, with his one leg, was, after

all, a shadow of Stevenson himself - the genial buccaneer who did
his tremendous murdering with a smile on his face was but Stevenson

thrown into new circumstances, or, as one has said, Stevenson-cum-
Henley, so thrown as was also Archer in WEIR OF HERMISTON, and more

than this, that his most successful women-folk - like Miss Grant
and Catriona - are studies of himself, and that in all his heroes,

and even heroines, was an unmistakable touch of R. L. Stevenson.
Even Mr Baildon rather maladroitly admits that in Miss Grant, the

Lord Advocate's daughter, THERE IS A GOOD DEAL OF THE AUTHOR
HIMSELF DISGUISED IN PETTICOATS. I have thought of Stevenson in

many suits, beside that which included the velvetjacket, but -
petticoats!

Youth is autocratic, and can show a grand indifferency: it goes
for what it likes, and ignores all else - it fondly magnifies its

favourites, and, after all, to a great extent, it is but analysing,
dealing with and presenting itself to us, if we only watch well.

This is the secret of all prevailingromance: it is the secret of
all stories of adventure and chivalry of the simpler and more

primitive order; and in one aspect it is true that R. L. Stevenson
loved and clung to the primitive and elemental, if it may not be

said, as one distinguishedwriter has said, that he even loved
savagery in itself. But hardly could it be seriously held, as Mr

I. Zangwill held:
"That women did not cut any figure in his books springs from this

same interest in the elemental. Women are not born, but made.
They are a social product of infinite complexity and delicacy. For

a like reason Stevenson was no interpreter of the modern.... A
child to the end, always playing at 'make-believe,' dying young, as

those whom the gods love, and, as he would have died had he
achieved his centenary, he was the natural exponent in literature

of the child."
But there were subtly qualifying elements beyond what Mr Zangwill

here recognises and reinforces. That is just about as correct and
true as this other deliverance:

"His Scotch romances have been as over-praised by the zealous
Scotsmen who cry 'genius' at the sight of a kilt, and who lose

their heads at a waft from the heather, as his other books have
been under-praised. The best of all, THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE,

ends in a bog; and where the author aspires to exceptional subtlety
of character-drawing he befogs us or himself altogether. We are so

long weighing the brothers Ballantrae in the balance, watching it
incline now this way, now that, scrupulously removing a particle of

our sympathy from the one brother to the other, to restore it again