The style of these books, whose great charm renders their defects pathetic rather than culpable, is found again in the mass of fiction which Stevenson left behind. His first stories, the fantastic and subtly humorous Beginning of StevenNew Arabian Nights (1882), were collected and son's fiction. reprinted from the now defunct magazine called London. These grotesque sketches, which showed the marks of a very fertile and somewhat morbid imagination, did not attract general attention, and it was not until the appearance of the pirate story of Treasure Island, at the end of 1882, which had been published as a serial in a boys' magazine, that Stevenson's name became recognised as a writer of fiction. Even then he was regarded by most people as a writer for schoolboys, and his purely literary claims were overlooked by the admirers of his invention. Treasure Island was followed in 1885 by Prince Otto, a fantasy which clearly owed its inspiration to Mr. Meredith, and, in the same year, A Child's Garden of Verses

added a fresh contribution to the record of Stevenson's versatility and originated the fashion of writing children's poems in a manner which appeals principally to their elders. In 1886 appeared the thin pamphlet containing the history of Dr. Fekyll and Mr. Hyde, a little masterpiece supplementary to the New Arabian Nights. About the same time Kidnapped (1886) followed up and improved upon the line of romance which had been inaugurated by Treasure Island. Since that day this breathless tale of adventure, a semi-historical narrative of the most stirring period of the eighteenth century, has had its thousands of readers, and David Balfour and Alan Breck have taken their place cheek by jowl with Scott's heroes. distinctly boyish tone, evident through the polish of eighteenthcentury style with which Stevenson elaborated his book, is still prominent in The Black Arrow (1888), a romance of the Two Roses. Between Kidnapped and this book came a volume of verses (1887) called, in imitation of Ben Jonson, Underwoods, to which, in 1890, was added a book of Ballads. Stevenson's verses are always fair, but he was never more than a minor poet.

The

"The Master of Ballantrae" and later

work.

The book which redeemed him in the general eye from his reputation as a teller of juvenile tales, was the really great romance, The Master of Ballantrae (1889), in which he showed his full capacity for invention and the creation of character combined with an excellence of style and a dramatic power far beyond the comprehension of schoolboys. Four years later Catriona (1893), the sequel to Kidnapped, reached an even higher level of construction and style, which indicated a way of escape from his early mannerisms and involuntary affectation. However, delicately firm as is the treatment of Catriona, and although it combines the superficially hostile elements of romantic narrative and elaborate analysis of character in perfect harmony, it contains no character equal to James Durie, nor any scene

which can compare with the garden duel in The Master of Ballantrae. Stevenson, even before Ballantrae, had been working in collaboration with members of his family; he had written with his wife The Dynamiter (1885), a delightful series of preposterous tales forming a second volume of the New Arabian Nights; and with his son-in-law, Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, he produced a whimsical tale called The Wrong Box (1888), and two stories of South Sea adventure, The Wrecker (1892), and The Ebb Tide (1894), both of them possessing extraordinary merit and worked out in a spirit of sheer realism. Their naturalistic fidelity is even surpassed in Stevenson's unassisted Beach of Falesá, the first and longest of three tales known collectively as the Island Nights' Entertainments (1893). For the most part these stories of the Pacific were written at Samoa, where Stevenson had settled after his long wanderings, living in something like the state of a native chieftain, and doing his best to alleviate the civil troubles so well described in his Footnote to History (1893). At the end of 1894 he died suddenly, and was buried, under circumstances as romantic as any which he himself had imagined, on a mountain-top near his villa. But, although he had devoted so much of his later work to the archipelago which he had chosen for his residence, he was still faithful to romance and his native country. Catriona came across the sea to England; and, a little before his death, he was engaged on St. Ives, the romance of a French prisoner in Edinburgh Castle. This, however, he abandoned to begin a new novel, Weir of Hermiston, which was stopped by death. The fragment published in 1896 is long enough to show that in this book, a novel of Scottish character deeply tinged with romance, he would have surpassed all his previous efforts. St. Ives, however, which was published, with a continuation by an ardent disciple, Mr. Quiller-Couch, in 1897, is certainly the least striking or memorable of his stories. A third posthumous book, the Vailima Letters (1895) to Mr. Sidney Colvin, added fresh information on Stevenson's private life and methods of work, and added a picturesque talent for letter-writing to the other items of his reputation.

Stevenson.

That this novelist, so prolific in spite of his youth, effected something like a revolution in the English novel, it is impossible to deny. Himself a lover of romance, heart and soul, Influence of a disciple of Scott and the elder Dumas, who turned his whole life into a kind of voluntary romance, living as few other men would dream of living, he came upon English life at a time when it was peculiarly susceptible to any commanding influence-when it was more ready than ever before to answer to the call of some striking personality. His work was to resuscitate the failing and well-nigh extinct spirit of romance in English fiction, to save it from degenerating into humdrum or merely photographic realism. He himself was capable of realistic writing. His book of stories, called The Merry

1

Men (1886), is proof enough that he could write short and vivid tales as well as long narratives; but, whether he treated, as in Markheim, a single episode in a few pages, or, as in The Ebb Tide, a sordid phase of life in a succession of chapters, he surrounded his work with an ideal atmosphere of romance which breathed all manner of suggestions for future work. Considered purely as a writer of stirring romance he is second only to Scott; while, as a novel of the last century and a masterly success in an archaic style, Catriona is worthy of comparison with Esmond. We can hardly wonder that he found not only admirers, but adorers; that his genius and influence have been made the subject of extravagant hyperbole. It is beyond the limits of this book to say how far the work of his imitators, the now countless tribe of minor historical novelists, and the Scottish writers who look to him as "the dear king of us all," will go ; but it is certainly true that, rapidly but surely, at an age when few authors have published their first masterpiece, Stevenson brought about a not merely temporary change in the most characteristic and interesting department of his century's literature. It is of happy augury to the future of English literary history that its annals should for the present close with a name which represents all that was freshest and youngest and most fruitful for good in the writing of his time. So far is the record unrolled, and so far there is no dimness in its characters.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

MINOR NOVELISTS.

1850-1900.

CAROLINE CLIVE (1801-1873), nte Meysey-Wigley, wife of the Rev. Archer Clive, Chancellor of Hereford Cathedral, deserves mention as the authoress of Paul Ferroll (1855) and Why Paul Ferroll Killed his Wife (1860)-two of the best sensational novels of the century. Mrs. Clive also wrote, earlier in life, a book of verse called IX Poems by V. (1840), which was succeeded by less remarkable volumes. Another novel, John Greswold, appeared in 1864.

CHARLES ALLSTON COLLINS (1828-1873), brother of Wilkie Collins and son-in-law of Charles Dickens, was a painter of the PreRaffaellite persuasion, but also wrote charming and humorous ENG. LIT.

essays, and by A Cruise on Wheels and other works gained a deserved popularity with readers of fiction.

MORTIMER COLLINS (1827-1876), although almost exactly a contemporary of Wilkie and Charles Collins, and a prolific novelist, journalist, and writer of verse, was in no way connected with them. Nothing of his work retains much interest, but, as a man of considerable intellect who played an important figure in journalistic society, he deserves mention.

DINAH MARIA CRAIK (18261887), better known as MISS MULOCK, was the daughter of a dissenting minister at Stoke-on-Trent, and became the wife of a partner in the publishing house of Macmillan. Her first book, The Ogilvies (1849). found appreciative readers, who welcomed its successor, Olive (1850). With John Halifax, Gentleman 3 G

ROBERT SMITH SURTEES (18031864), in his "Jorrocks Papers" of the New Sporting Magazine, sug-editions.