Walter Raleigh | Page 8

words, and next, a sense of harmony,
proportion, and effect in their combination. It is amazing what nobility
a mere truism is often found to possess when it is clad with a garment
thus woven.
Stevenson had both these sensitive capabilities in a very high decree.
His careful choice of epithet and name have even been criticised as
lending to some of his narrative-writing an excessive air of deliberation.
His daintiness of diction is best seen in his earlier work; thereafter his
writing became more vigorous and direct, fitter for its later uses, but
never unillumined by felicities that cause a thrill of pleasure to the
reader. Of the value of words he had the acutest appreciation.
VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE, his first book of essays, is crowded with
happy hits and subtle implications conveyed in a single word. 'We have
all heard,' he says in one of these, 'of cities in South America built upon
the side of fiery mountains, and how, even in this tremendous
neighbourhood, the inhabitants are not a jot more impressed by the
solemnity of mortal conditions than if they were delving gardens in the
greenest corner of England.' You can feel the ground shake and see the
volcano tower above you at that word 'TREMENDOUS
neighbourhood.' Something of the same double reference to the original
and acquired meanings of a word is to be found in such a phrase as
'sedate electrician,' for one who in a back office wields all the lights of
a city; or in that description of one drawing near to death, who is
spoken of as groping already with his hands 'on the face of the
IMPASSABLE.'

The likeness of this last word to a very different word, 'IMPASSIVE,'
is made to do good literary service in suggesting the sphinx-like image
of death. Sometimes, as here, this subtle sense of double meanings
almost leads to punning. In ACROSS THE PLAINS Stevenson narrates
how a bet was transacted at a railway-station, and subsequently, he
supposes, 'LIQUIDATED at the bar.' This is perhaps an instance of the
excess of a virtue, but it is an excess to be found plentifully in the
works of Milton.
His loving regard for words bears good fruit in his later and more
stirring works. He has a quick ear and appreciation for live phrases on
the lips of tramps, beach-combers, or Americans. In THE BEACH OF
FALESA the sea-captain who introduces the new trader to the South
Pacific island where the scene of the story is laid, gives a brief
description of the fate of the last dealer in copra. It may serve as a
single illustration of volumes of racy, humorous, and imaginative
slang;
' "Do you catch a bit of white there to the east'ard?" the captain
continued. "That's your house. . . . When old Adams saw it, he took and
shook me by the hand. 'I've dropped into a soft thing here,' says he. 'So
you have,' says I. . . . Poor Johnny! I never saw him again but the
once . . . and the next time we came round there he was dead and buried.
I took and put up a bit of stick to him: 'John Adams, OBIT eighteen and
sixty-eight. Go thou and do likewise.' I missed that man. I never could
see much harm in Johnny."
' "What did he die of ?" I inquired.
' "Some kind of sickness," says the captain. "It appears it took him
sudden. Seems he got up in the night, and filled up on Pain- Killer and
Kennedy's Discovery. No go - he was booked beyond Kennedy. Then
he had tried to open a case of gin. No go again: not strong enough. . . .
Poor John!" '
There is a world of abrupt, homely talk like this to be found in the
speech of Captain Nares and of Jim Pinkerton in THE WRECKER; and
a wealth of Scottish dialect, similar in effect, in KIDNAPPED,
CATRIONA, and many other stories. It was a delicate ear and a sense
trained by practice that picked up these vivid turns of speech, some of
them perhaps heard only once, and a mind given to dwell on words,
that remembered them for years, and brought them out when occasion

arose.
But the praise of Stevenson's style cannot be exhausted in a description
of his use of individual words or his memory of individual phrases. His
mastery of syntax, the orderly and emphatic arrangement of words in
sentences, a branch of art so seldom mastered, was even greater. And
here he could owe no great debt to his romantic predecessors in prose.
Dumas, it is true, is a master of narrative, but he wrote in French, and a
style will hardly bear expatriation. Scott's sentences are, many