Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson | Page 3

the spirit. As his romances
have brought pleasure to thousands of readers, so the spectacle of his
cheerful march through the Valley of the Shadow of Death is a constant
source of comfort and inspiration. One feels ashamed of cowardice and
petty irritation after witnessing the steady courage of this man. His
philosophy of life is totally different from that of Stoicism; for the Stoic
says, "Grin and bear it," and usually succeeds in doing neither.
Stevenson seems to say, "Laugh and forget it," and he showed us how

to do both.
Stevenson had the rather unusual combination of the Artist and the
Moralist, both elements being marked in his writings to a very high
degree. The famous and oft-quoted sonnet by his friend, the late Mr.
Henley, gives a vivid picture:
"Thin-legged, thin-chested, slight unspeakably, Neat-footed and
weak-fingered: in his face-- Lean, large-honed, curved of beak, and
touched with race, Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea, The
brown eyes radiant with vivacity-- There shown a brilliant and
romantic grace, A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace Of passion,
impudence, and energy. Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck, Most
vain, most generous, sternly critical, Buffoon and poet, lover and
sensualist; A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck, Much Antony, of
Hamlet most of all, And something of the Shorter Catechist."
He was not primarily a moral teacher, like Socrates or Thomas Carlyle;
nor did he feel within him the voice of a prophetic mission. The virtue
of his writings consists in their wholesome ethical quality, in their solid
health. Fresh air is often better for the soul than the swinging of the
priest's censer. At a time when the school of Zola was at its climax,
Stevenson opened the windows and let in the pleasant breeze. For the
morbid and unhealthy period of adolescence, his books are more
healthful than many serious moral works. He purges the mind of
uncleanness, just as he purged contemporary fiction.
As Stevenson's correspondence with his friends like Sidney Colvin and
William Archer reveals the social side of his nature, so his
correspondence with the Unseen Power in which he believed shows
that his character was essentially religious. A man's letters are often a
truer picture of his mind than a photograph; and when these epistles are
directed not to men and women, but to the Supreme Intelligence, they
form a real revelation of their writer's heart. Nothing betrays the
personality of a man more clearly than his prayers, and the following
petition that Stevenson composed for the use of his household at
Vailima, bears the stamp of its author.
"At Morning. The day returns and brings us the petty round of irritating
concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to perform them
with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound with industry.
Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, bring us to our

resting beds weary and content and undishonoured, and grant us in the
end the gift of sleep."
III
STEVENSON'S VERSATILITY
Stevenson was a poet, a dramatist, an essayist, and a novelist, besides
writing many political, geographical, and biographical sketches. As a
poet, his fame is steadily waning. The tendency at first was to rank him
too high, owing to the undeniable charm of many of the poems in the
_Child's Garden of Verses_. The child's view of the world, as set forth
in these songs, is often originally and gracefully expressed; but there is
little in Stevenson's poetry that is of permanent value, and it is probable
that most of it will be forgotten. This fact is in a way a tribute to his
genius; for his greatness as a prose writer has simply eclipsed his
reputation as a poet.
His plays were failures. They illustrate the familiar truth that a man
may have positive genius as a dramatic writer, and yet fail as a
dramatist. There are laws that govern the stage which must be obeyed;
play-writing is a great art in itself, entirely distinct from literary
composition. Even Browning, the most intensely dramatic poet of the
nineteenth century, was not nearly so successful in his dramas as in his
dramatic lyrics and romances.
His essays attracted at first very little attention; they were too fine and
too subtle to awaken popular enthusiasm. It was the success of his
novels that drew readers back to the essays, just as it was the vogue of
Sudermann's plays that made his earlier novels popular. One has only
to read such essays, however, as those printed in this volume to realise
not only their spirit and charm, but to feel instinctively that one is
reading English Literature. They are exquisite works of art, written in
an almost impeccable style. By many judicious