s to appeal with success to the large
public, and not to the tiny circle who surround the essayist. It did not
seem likely that our incalculable public would make themselves at home in
those fantastic purlieus which Mr. Stevenson's fancy discovered near the
Strand. The impossible Young Man with the Cream Tarts, the ghastly
revels of the Suicide Club, the Oriental caprices of the Hansom Cabs--who
could foresee that the public would taste them! It is true that Mr.
Stevenson's imagination made the President of the Club, and the cowardly
member, Mr. Malthus, as real as they were terrible. His romance always
goes hand in hand with reality; and Mr. Malthus is as much an actual man
of skin and bone, as Silas Lapham is a man of flesh and blood. The world
saw this, and applauded the "Noctes of Prince Floristan," in a fairy
London.

Yet, excellent and unique as these things were, Mr. Stevenson had not yet
"found himself." It would be more true to say that he had only
discovered outlying skirts of his dominions. Has he ever hit on the road
to the capital yet? and will he ever enter it laurelled, and in triumph?
That is precisely what one may doubt, not as without hope. He is always
making discoveries in his realm; it is less certain that he will enter
its chief city in state. His next work was rather in the nature of
annexation and invasion than a settling of his own realms. "Prince Otto"
is not, to my mind, a ruler in his proper soil. The provinces of George
Sand and of Mr. George Meredith have been taken captive. "Prince Otto"
is fantastic indeed, but neither the fantasy nor the style is quite Mr.
Stevenson's. There are excellent passages, and the Scotch soldier of
fortune is welcome, and the ladies abound in subtlety and wit. But the
book, at least to myself, seems an extremely elaborate and skilful
_pastiche_. I cannot believe in the persons. I vaguely smell a moral
allegory (as in "Will of the Mill"). I do not clearly understand what it
is all about. The scene is fairyland; but it is not the fairyland of
Perrault. The ladies are beautiful and witty; but they are escaped from
a novel of Mr. Meredith's, and have no business here. The book is no
more Mr. Stevenson's than "The Tale of Two Cities" was Mr. Dickens's.

It was probably by way of mere diversion and child's play that Mr.
Stevenson began "Treasure Island." He is an amateur of boyish pleasures
of masterpieces at a penny plain and twopence coloured.