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Robert Louis Stevenson-Part25_Alexander H.Japp(1839-1905)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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into his head, were not forgotten. Mr Henley knew him best, as



Stevenson says in the preface to VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE dedicated to

Henley, 'when he lived his life at twenty-five.' In these days he



had [in some degree] forgotten about the Shorter Catechism, but the

'solemn pause' between Saturday and Monday came back in full force



to R. L. Stevenson in Samoa."

Now to me that is a most suggestive and significant fact. It will



be the business of future critics to show in how far such falling

back would of necessity modify what Mr Baildon has set down as his



corner-stone of morality, and how far it was bound to modify the

atmosphere - the purely egotistic, hedonistic, and artistic



atmosphere, in which, in his earlier life as a novelist, at all

events, he had been, on the whole, for long whiles content to work.



CHAPTER XXIX - LOVE OF VAGABONDS

WHAT is very remarkable in Stevenson is that a man who was so much



the dreamer of dreams - the mystic moralist, the constant

questioner and speculator on human destiny and human perversity,



and the riddles that arise on the search for the threads of motive

and incentives to human action - moreover, a man, who constantly



suffered from one of the most trying and weakening forms of ill-

health - should have been so full-blooded, as it were, so keen for



contact with all forms of human life and character, what is called

the rougher and coarser being by no means excluded. Not only this:



he was himself a rover - seeking daily adventure and contact with

men and women of alien habit and taste and liking. His patience is



supported by his humour. He was a bit of a vagabond in the good

sense of the word, and always going round in search of "honest



men," like Diogenes, and with no tub to retire into or the desire

for it. He thus on this side touches the Chaucers and their



kindred, as well as the Spensers and Dantes and their often

illusive CONFRERES. His voyage as a steerage passenger across the



Atlantic is only one out of a whole chapter of such episodes, and

is more significant and characteristic even than the TRAVELS WITH A



DONKEY IN THE CEVENNES or the INLAND VOYAGE. These might be ranked

with the "Sentimental Journeys" that have sometimes been the



fashion - that was truly of a prosaic and risky order. The appeal

thus made to an element deep in the English nature will do much to



keep his memory green in the hearts that could not rise to

appreciation of his style and literary gifts at all. He loves the



roadways and the by-ways, and those to be met with there - like him

in this, though unlike him in most else. The love of the roadsides



and the greenwood - and the queer miscellany of life there unfolded

and ever changing - a kind of gipsy-like longing for the tent and



familiar contact with nature and rude human-nature in the open

dates from beyond Chaucer, and remains and will have gratification



- the longing for novelty and all the accidents, as it were, of

pilgrimage and rude social travel. You see it bubble up, like a



true and new nature-spring, through all the surface coatings of

culture and artificiality, in Stevenson. He anew, without



pretence, enlivens it - makes it first a part of himself, and then

a part of literature once more. Listen to him, as he sincerely



sings this passion for the pilgrimage - or the modern phase of it -

innocent vagabond roving:



"Give to me the life I love,

Let the lave go by me;



Give the jolly heaven above,

And the by-way nigh me:



Bed in the bush, with stars to see;

Bread I dip in the river -



Here's the life for a man like me,

Here's the life for ever....



"Let the blow fall soon or late;

Let what will be o'er me;



Give the face of earth around

And the road before me.






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