Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson | Page 4

readers, they are placed
above his works of fiction. They certainly constitute the most original
portion of his entire literary output. It is astonishing that this young
Scotchman should have been able to make so many actually new
observations on a game so old as Life. There is a shrewd insight into
the motives of human conduct that makes some of these graceful
sketches belong to the literature of philosophy, using the word
philosophy in its deepest and broadest sense. The essays are filled with
whimsical paradoxes, keen and witty as those of Bernard Shaw,

without having any of the latter's cynicism, iconoclasm, and sinister
attitude toward morality. For the real foundation of even the lightest of
Stevenson's works is invariably ethical.
His fame as a writer of prose romances grows brighter every year. His
supreme achievement was to show that a book might be crammed with
the most wildly exciting incidents, and yet reveal profound and acute
analysis of character, and be written with consummate art. His tales
have all the fertility of invention and breathless suspense of Scott and
Cooper, while in literary style they immeasurably surpass the finest
work of these two great masters.
His best complete story, is, I think, Treasure Island. There is a peculiar
brightness about this book which even the most notable of the later
works failed to equal. Nor was it a trifling feat to make a blind man and
a one-legged man so formidable that even the reader is afraid of them.
Those who complain that this is merely a pirate story forget that in art
the subject is of comparatively little importance, whereas the treatment
is everything. To say, as some do, that there is no difference between
Treasure Island and a cheap tale of blood and thunder, is equivalent to
saying that there is no difference between the Sistine Madonna and a
chromo Virgin.
IV
THE PERSONAL ESSAY
The Personal Essay is a peculiar form of literature, entirely different
from critical essays like those of Matthew Arnold and from purely
reflective essays, like those of Bacon. It is a species of writing
somewhat akin to autobiography or firelight conversation; where the
writer takes the reader entirely into his confidence, and chats pleasantly
with him on topics that may be as widely apart as the immortality of the
soul and the proper colour of a necktie. The first and supreme master of
this manner of writing was Montaigne, who belongs in the front rank of
the world's greatest writers of prose. Montaigne talks endlessly on the
most trivial subjects without ever becoming trivial. To those who really
love reading and have some sympathy with humanity, Montaigne's
Essays are a "perpetual refuge and delight," and it is interesting to
reflect how far in literary fame this man, who talked about his meals,
his horse, and his cat, outshines thousands of scholarly and talented
writers, who discussed only the most serious themes in politics and

religion. The great English prose writers in the field of the personal
essay during the seventeenth century were Sir Thomas Browne,
Thomas Fuller, and Abraham Cowley, though Walton's Compleat
Angler is a kindred work. Browne's _Religio Medici_, and his
delightful _Garden of Cyrus_, old Tom Fuller's quaint Good Thoughts
in Bad Times and Cowley's charming Essays are admirable examples of
this school of composition. Burton's wonderful Anatomy of Melancholy
is a colossal personal essay. Some of the papers of Steele and Addison
in the _Tatler_, _Guardian,_ and the Spectator are of course notable;
but it was not until the appearance of Charles Lamb that the personal
essay reached its climax in English literature. Over the pages of the
Essays of Elia hovers an immortal charm--the charm of a nature
inexhaustible in its humour and kindly sympathy for humanity.
Thackeray was another great master of the literary easy-chair, and is to
some readers more attractive in this attitude than as a novelist. In
America we have had a few writers who have reached eminence in this
form, beginning with Washington Irving, and including Donald G.
Mitchell, whose Reveries of a Bachelor has been read by thousands of
people for over fifty years.
As a personal essayist Stevenson seems already to belong to the first
rank. He is both eclectic and individual. He brought to his pen the
reminiscences of varied reading, and a wholly original touch of fantasy.
He was literally steeped in the gorgeous Gothic diction of the
seventeenth century, but he realised that such a prose style as illumines
the pages of William Drummond's Cypress Grove and Browne's Urn
Burial was a lost art. He attempted to imitate such writing only in his
youthful exercises, for his own genius was forced to express itself in an
original way. All of his personal essays have that air of distinction