Page:Robert Louis Stevenson - a Bookman extra number 1913.djvu/22

THE GENIUS OF STEVENSON The ingenious mind could flit securely from grave to gay, from majestic to minute, for all inconsistency of matter was harmonised by a suave regularity of manner; what to us would be but picturesque disorder it shrank from with the embarrassment of literary nakedness. This same scholarly instinct has, by I know not what channel, passed to Stevenson—the same fastidious nicety, the same unfailing charm of expression. As an essayist or a story-teller, who more versatile, more erratic than he, eluding our criticism as he glides from tragedy to farce, from mirth to meditation, like some storm-bird diving to the depths and anon skimming airily on the surface? Are then his works a mere dazzling kaleidoscope, and he after all but Arlequin Auteur? By no means; for what writer is more easy to single out even from his imitators? His work is indeed of a rare and peculiar unity; the same unmistakable personality pervades every page; and in his style we find the secret of this harmony. It may vary sometimes in character according to the exigencies of the subject, but never at all in its one persistent feature—its excellence, or (to use a bad word in a good sense) its superiority. Superior—that is, on a higher plane, of a finer quality than the language which does the everyday business of busy men. Superior—that is, aristocratically exclusive; and just as the ancient tongues which were the secret of priests and nobles were distrusted by the slaves, so nowadays superiority of style is an affront to mediocrity. You may call it affected; what you mean by affected depends on how much you know of the practice of the art. For myself I shall not readily believe that any beautiful yet concise expression of original consecutive thought was ever written currente calamo. With all the stimulus of listening senates or a breathless congregation, the orator can hardly rise to the unaffected nonchalance with which he is wont to pass the time o' day; how much less the author in his silent study. If affectation means sentimental insincerity, then is it nothing to our purpose; I have before now been asked to hand the butter with all the affectations of Della Crusca. If it means only artifice, the charge is a compliment. Mr. Stevenson's style is thoroughly artificial, because the work of a thorough artifex, as indeed is Rembrandt's painting. But the artifice lies not in a knack of fine periods, but in the self-control, the self-repression, the self-respect which keeps watch against slovenliness and vulgarity; his page is illuminated not so much by unvarying brilliance as by unvarying determination to express himself strongly