f fiction. They certainly constitute
the most original portion of his entire literary output. It is
astonishing that this young Scotchman should have been able to make so
many actually new observations on a game so old as Life. There is a
shrewd insight into the motives of human conduct that makes some of
these graceful sketches belong to the literature of philosophy, using
the word philosophy in its deepest and broadest sense. The essays are
filled with whimsical paradoxes, keen and witty as those of Bernard
Shaw, without having any of the latter's cynicism, iconoclasm, and
sinister attitude toward morality. For the real foundation of even the
lightest of Stevenson's works is invariably ethical.

His fame as a writer of prose romances grows brighter every year. His
supreme achievement was to show that a book might be crammed with the
most wildly exciting incidents, and yet reveal profound and acute
analysis of character, and be written with consummate art. His tales
have all the fertility of invention and breathless suspense of Scott
and Cooper, while in literary style they immeasurably surpass the
finest work of these two great masters.

His best complete story, is, I think, _Treasure Island_. There is a
peculiar brightness about this book which even the most notable of the
later works failed to equal. Nor was it a trifling feat to make a
blind man and a one-legged man so formidable that even the reader is
afraid of them. Those who complain that this is merely a pirate story
forget that in art the subject is of comparatively little importance,
whereas the treatment is everything. To say, as some do, that there is
no difference between _Treasure Island_ and a cheap tale of blood and
thunder, is equivalent to saying that there is no difference between
the Sistine Madonna and a chromo Virgin.

IV

THE PERSONAL ESSAY

The Personal Essay is a peculiar form of literature, entirely
different from critical essays like those of Matthew Arnold and from
purely reflective essays, like those of Bacon. It is a species of
writing somewhat akin to autobiography or firelight conversation;
where the writer takes the reader entirely into his confidence, and
chats pleasantly with him on topics that may be as widely apart as the
immortality of the soul and the proper colour of a necktie. The first
and supreme master of this manner of writing was Montaigne, who
belongs in the front rank of the world's greatest writers of prose.
Mo