Walter Raleigh | Page 6

myself.' And this was an
omission that he never remedied in his later works. Indeed, his zest in
life, whether lived in the back gardens of a town or on the high seas,
was so great that it seems probable the writer would have been lost had
the man been dowered with better health.
'Whereas my birth and spirit rather took The way that takes the town,
Thou didst betray me to a ling'ring book, And wrap me in a gown,'
says George Herbert, who, in his earlier ambitions, would fain have
ruffled it with the best at the court of King James. But from Stevenson,
although not only the town, but oceans and continents, beckoned him to
deeds, no such wail escaped. His indomitable cheerfulness was never
embarked in the cock-boat of his own prosperity. A high and simple

courage shines through all his writings. It is supposed to be a normal
human feeling for those who are hale to sympathize with others who
are in pain. Stevenson reversed the position, and there is no braver
spectacle in literature than to see him not asking others to lower their
voices in his sick-room, but raising his own voice that he may make
them feel at ease and avoid imposing his misfortunes on their notice.
'Once when I was groaning aloud with physical pain,' he says in the
essay on CHILD'S PLAY, 'a young gentleman came into the room and
nonchalantly inquired if I had seen his bow and arrow. He made no
account of my groans, which he accepted, as he had to accept so much
else, as a piece of the inexplicable conduct of his elders; and, like a
wise young gentleman, he would waste no wonder on the subject.' Was
there ever a passage like this? The sympathy of the writer is wholly
with the child, and the child's absolute indifference to his own
sufferings. It might have been safely predicted that this man, should he
ever attain to pathos, would be free from the facile, maudlin pathos of
the hired sentimentalist.
And so also with what Dr. Johnson has called 'metaphysical distresses.'
It is striking enough to observe how differently the quiet monasteries of
the Carthusian and Trappist brotherhoods affected Matthew Arnold and
Robert Louis Stevenson. In his well- known elegiac stanzas Matthew
Arnold likens his own state to that of the monks:
'Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be
born, With nowhere yet to rest my head, Like these on earth I wait
forlorn. Their faith, my tears, the world deride - I come to shed them at
their side.'

To Stevenson, on the other hand, our Lady of the Snows is a mistaken
divinity, and the place a monument of chilly error, - for once in a way
he takes it on himself to be a preacher, his temperament gives voice in a
creed:
'And ye, O brethren, what if God, When from Heaven's top He spies
abroad, And sees on this tormented stage The noble war of mankind
rage, What if His vivifying eye, O monks, should pass your corner by?
For still the Lord is Lord of might; In deeds, in deeds, He takes delight;
The plough, the spear, the laden barks, The field, the founded city,
marks; He marks the smiler of the streets, The singer upon garden seats;

He sees the climber in the rocks; To Him, the shepherd folds his flocks;
For those He loves that underprop With daily virtues Heaven's top, And
bear the falling sky with ease, Unfrowning Caryatides. Those He
approves that ply the trade, That rock the child, that wed the maid, That
with weak virtues, weaker hands, Sow gladness on the peopled lands,
And still with laughter, song, and shout Spin the great wheel of earth
about.
But ye? - O ye who linger still Here in your fortress on the hill, With
placid face, with tranquil breath, The unsought volunteers of death, Our
cheerful General on high With careless looks may pass you by!'
And the fact of death, which has damped and darkened the writings of
so many minor poets, does not cast a pallor on his conviction. Life is of
value only because it can be spent, or given; and the love of God
coveted the position, and assumed mortality. If a man treasure and hug
his life, one thing only is certain, that he will be robbed some day, and
cut the pitiable and futile figure of one who has been saving
candle-ends in a house that is on fire. Better than this to have a foolish
spendthrift blaze and the loving cup going round. Stevenson speaks
almost with a personal envy of the conduct of the four marines of the
WAGER. There was no room for