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 influence. He played the 'sedulous ape/ as he himself phrased it, to Mr. Ruskin, to Hazlitt, to Sir Thomas Browne, to all the great ones of the past. It has been suggested that in his style he owed more to a master of the present than to any of the past grand masters. There are who give to Mr. George Meredith the rights of paternity to Stevenson's style. And, indeed, in their search for the unexpected adjective, in their use of the metaphoric verb, in their appeal to the sous-entendu, both masters have a common method. Yet the younger man has surpassed his model in lucidity, in grace, in restraint of his eccentricities, with the result that for ease there has been nothing like Stevenson's style since Lamb, while for vivacity and vividness there is nothing like it elsewhere in English prose. The richer rhythms he perhaps lacks, and his tone has possibly at times a touch of affectation. But no more subtle instrument of human thought has ever been wielded more gracefully outside the shores of France. No wonder that its influence has spread far and wide, till even the suburban journalist writes with something like ease.

But it was something more than that edulous imitation that gave Stevenson's style its cachet. The style is the habiliment of the spirit. At first sight it might seem that