Page:Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson, Hitherto unpublished, 1921.djvu/24

 Child's Garden," "Requiem," and "In Memoriam F. A. S.," the poems here and lately published from his manuscripts may fairly be held to do more than the earlier volumes of his verse could ever have done towards establishing his reputation as a poet born, not made; as a writer who could probably have won fame through poetry had he not turned to prose, as a child of song not unworthy to be remembered with those Scotch forerunners whom he so delighted to honor, Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns.

Like Fergusson and Burns, Stevenson is not less interesting as a man than he is as a poet, and it is therefore proper to consider first the biographical importance of the poems here collected. One piece in particular calls for attention. The lines assigned provisionally to the year 1872, "I have a friend; I have a story," if Mr. Hellman be right, as he doubtless is, in connecting them with the verses first published in 1916 entitled "God gave to me a child in part," offer hints of a love tragedy of intense passion and suffering enacted in Edinburgh in the opening years of Stevenson's manhood. It is neither necessary nor [ 18 ]