Page:Robert Louis Stevenson - a Bookman extra number 1913.djvu/25

 poorly as I have indicated it—revives a grateful reminiscence of the dilettantism of the Restoration.

If these things be so, to what shall we ascribe it but to pure Genius? Talent beats smoother the trodden ways; Genius alone strikes out a new path. Stevenson has already found imitators, but his only rivals are not of his own generation; they sleep on their marble shelves beneath quaint classic canopies. Not by copying their eccentricities, but by adapting their liberal spirit and scrupulous manipulation to his modern needs, has he woven round him the spell of a magic personality and renewed our affection for the mother tongue.

It was not this side glimpse, this rambling excursion that I sat down to write. But after all there has been—there will yet be—no lack of criticisms on his several works. Personally, though I retract much that of old I hastily objected, there remains still more than one issue which I would gladly join with Stevenson, nor should I shrink from retorting upon him the playful charge of "protervity" which he once brought against me. A few words as to his influence will be more to the purpose. Some miserable rivals—their names I dare not breathe—may be more popular, but strange to tell, he is popular too. While on the one hand I was surprised at the gravity with which Pattison commended to me Stevenson's early essays, I have been equally struck by the keen relish of working men, not merely for his stories themselves, but for his manner of narration. After all, music can be enjoyed without understanding it. Upon the brighter spirits of the younger generation his influence is steadily growing. In the case of several whose development I have watched, the usual phases of enthusiasm lead up through various modern writers to Stevenson. There for the present they pause to enlarge their knowledge of bygone masters, as though conscious that he indicates the high-water mark of contemporary prose. From him they are learning the secret of fastidious and scrupulous diction, of rapid and veracious narrative, of measured design and proportion—graces which have too long lain dormant among us. But after all he marks but a transition, not a culminating point. Nothing he has yet put forth in scope, amplitude, or import challenges the great masterpieces. Yet is his place among the masters. What though his aim be short of the highest, his achievement less than perfect, his example point to no ultimate goal? He stands apart supreme in his own magic circle, compelling his spectres and chanting