getting a belly-god burgess through a needle's eye! Oh, let him
stick, by all means; and let his polity tumble in the dust; and let
his epitaph and all his literature (of which my own works begin to
form no inconsiderable part) be abolished even from the history of
man! For a fool of this monstrosity of dulness there can be no
salvation; and the fool who looked for the elixir of life was an angel
of reason to the fool who looks for the Deserving Poor.'

An equal sense of the realities of life and death gives the force of a
natural law to the pathos of _Old Mortality_, that essay in which
Stevenson pays passionate tribute to the memory of his early friend, who
'had gone to ruin with a kingly abandon, like one who condescended; but
once ruined, with the lights all out, he fought as for a kingdom.' The
whole description, down to the marvellous quotation from Bunyan that
closes it, is one of the sovereign passages of modern literature; the
pathos of it is pure and elemental, like the rush of a cleansing wind, or
the onset of the legions commanded by

'The mighty Mahmud, Allah-breathing Lord,
That all the misbelieving and black Horde
Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul
Scatters before him with his whirlwind Sword.'

Lastly, to bring to an end this imperfect review of the works of a writer
who has left none greater behind him, Stevenson excels at what is perhaps
the most delicate of literary tasks and the utmost test, where it is
successfully encountered, of nobility,--the practice, namely, of self-
revelation and self-delineation. To talk much about oneself with detail,
composure, and ease, with no shadow of hypocrisy and no whiff or taint of
indecent familiarity, no puling and no posing,--the shores of the sea of
literature are strewn with the wrecks and forlorn properties of those who
have adventured on this dangerous attempt. But a criticism of Stevenson
is happy in this, that from the writer it can pass with perfect trust and
perfect fluency to the man. He shares with Goldsmith and Montaigne, his
own favourite, the happy privilege of making lovers among his readers.
'To be the most beloved of English writers--what a title that is for a
man!' says Thackeray of Goldsmith. In such matters, a dispute for pre-
eminence in the captivation of hearts would be unseemly; it is enough to
say that Stevenson too has his lovers among those who have accompanied
him on his _Inland Voy