My Contemporaries In Fiction | Page 8

exile in 'Never too Late to Mend'; the boat-race in 'Hard Cash'; the scene of Kate Peyton at the firelit window, and Griffith in the snow, in 'Griffith Gaunt.' There are a thousand bursts of laughter in his pages, not mere sniggers, but lung-shaking laughters, and the man who can go by any one of a hundred pathetic passages without tears is a man to be pitied. Let it be admitted that at times he wrenches his English rather fiercely, and yet let it be said that for delicacy, strength, sincerity, clarity, and all great graces of style, he is side by side with the noblest of our prose writers. Can it be that a few scattered drops of vulgarity in emphasis dim such a fire as this? Does so small a dead fly taint so big a pot of ointment? I will not be foolish enough to dogmatise on such a point, and yet I can find no other reasons than those I have already given why a master-craftsman should not hold a master-craftsman's place. Solomon has told us what 'a little folly' can do for him who is in reputation for wisdom.' The great mass of the public can always tell what pleases it, but it cannot always tell why it is pleased.
And the man who writes for wide and lasting fame has to depend, not upon the verdict of the expert and the cultured, but on the love of those who only know they love, and who have no power to give the critical why and wherefore. The public--'the stupid and ignorant pig of a public,' as 'Pococurante' called it years ago--is always being abused, and yet it is only the public which, in the end, can tell us if we have done well or ill. We have all to consent to be measured by it, and, in the long run, it estimates our stature with a perfect accuracy.
I hope I may not be thought impertinent in intruding here a reminiscence of Reade which seems characteristic of his sweeter side. In reading over these pages for the press I have been moved to a mournful and tender remembrance of the only one of the three great Vanished Masters whom it was my happy chance to meet in the flesh. I dedicated to him the second novel which left my pen--the third to reach the public--and in sending him the volumes on the day of issue I wrote what I remember as a rather boyish letter, in which I was at no pains to disguise my admiration for his genius. That admiration was not then tempered by the considerations which are expressed above, for they touched me only after many years of practice in the art he adorned so richly. He answered with a gentle and sad courtesy, and concluded with these words: 'It is no discredit in a young man to esteem a senior beyond his merits.' I have always thought that very graceful and felicitous, and now that I am myself grown to be a senior I am more persuaded of its charm than ever.

III.--ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
In the scheme of this series, as originally-announced, Thackeray's work should have formed the subject of the third chapter. But, on reflection, I have decided that, considering my present purpose, it would be little more than a useless self-indulgence to do what I at first intended. There is no sort of dispute about Thackeray. There is no need for any revision of the general opinion concerning him. It would be to me, personally, a delightful thing to write such an appreciation as I had in mind, but this is not the place for it.
Let us pass, then, at once to the consideration of the incomplete and arrested labours of the charming and accomplished workman whose loss all lovers of English literature are still lamenting.
I have special and private reasons for thinking warmly of Robert Louis Stevenson, the man; and these reasons seem to give me some added warrant for an attempt to do justice to Robert Louis Stevenson, the writer. With the solitary exception of the unfortunate cancelled letters from Samoa, which were written whilst he was in ill-health, and suffered a complete momentary eclipse of style, he has scarcely published a line which may not afford the most captious reader pleasure. With that sole exception he was always an artist in his work, and always showed himself alive to the fingertips. He was in constant conscious search of felicities in expression, and his taste was exquisitely just. His discernment in the use of words kept equal pace with his invention--he knew at once how to be fastidious and daring. It is to be doubted if any writer has laboured with more constancy to enrich and harden the texture of