Page:A bibliography of the works of Robert Louis Stevenson.djvu/20

Rh in the form, though not in the spirit, of Baudelaire, never survived. I suspect that these prose poems might have been more in the spirit of Baudelaire than Mr. Colvin is willing to allow. The author of Le Voyage, at any rate, often wrote in the spirit of Stevenson.

In compiling a bibliography of the finished works of any writer, it is impossible to leave out of sight those which were projected, or if begun, failed to reach completion. One of these has always had a fascination for me. Students of Keats will remember that in writing to his sister-in-law on January 17, 1820, the poet mentioned that he and his friends 'had a young, long, raw, lean Scotchman with us yesterday, called Thornton. Rice, for fun or for mistake, would persist in calling him Stevenson.' Little could this unconscious prophet have dreamt that nearly sixty years later the heart of a young, long, raw, lean Scotchman, called Stevenson, would 'leap at the thought' of joining in a literary scheme of which Keats was to have been the central subject. That scheme unluckily never came to fruition. Stevenson admitted that he was not a keen partisan, 'and to write a good book you must be.' But in regard to Keats, his partisanship was strongly pronounced. Whether in his Scottish home, or among the islands of the Pacific, his thoughts always reverted to Endymion whenever Nature presented a beautiful scene before his eyes. Nor was he in his methods of work less under the influence of his favourite poet. A book on Keats by Stevenson would have been a good book.

Three of his fragments, The Great North Road, The Young xii