uched than Scott would have cared to draw it: a
French companion picture to the Baron Bradwardine. The whole piece reads
as if Mr. Stevenson had engaged in a struggle with himself as he wrote.
The sky is never blue, the sun never shines: we weary for a "westland
wind." There is something "thrawn," as the Scotch say, about the story;
there is often a touch of this sinister kind in the author's work. The
language is extraordinarily artful, as in the mad lord's words, "I have
felt the hilt dirl on his breast-bone." And yet, one is hardly thrilled
as one expects to be, when, as Mackellar says, "the week-old corpse
looked me for a moment in the face."

Probably none of Mr. Stevenson's many books has made his name so familiar
as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde." I read it first in manuscript, alone, at
night; and, when the Butler and Mr. Urmson came to the Doctor's door, I
confess that I threw it down, and went hastily to bed. It is the most
gruesome of all his writings, and so perfect that one can complain only
of the slightly too obvious moral; and, again, that really Mr. Hyde was
more of a gentleman than the unctuous Dr. Jekyll, with his "bedside
manner."

So here, not to speak of some admirable short stories like "Thrawn
Janet," is a brief catalogue--little more--of Mr. Stevenson's literary
baggage. It is all good, though variously good; yet the wise world asks
for the masterpiece. It is said that Mr. Stevenson has not ventured on
the delicate and dangerous ground of the novel, because he has not
written a modern love story. But who has? There are love affairs in
Dickens, but do we remember or care for them? Is it the love affairs
that we remember in Scott? Thackeray may touch us with Clive's and Jack
Belsize's misfortunes, with Esmond's melancholy passion, and amuse us
with Pen in so many toils, and interest us in the little heroine of the
"Shabby Genteel Story." But it is not by virtue of those episodes that
Thackeray is so great. Love stories are best done by women, as in "Mr.
Gilfil's Love Story"; and, perhaps, in an ordinary way, by writers like
Trollope. One may defy critics to name a great English author in fiction
whose chief and distinguishing merit is in his pictures of the passion of
Love. Still, they all give Love his due stroke in the battle, and
perhaps Mr. Stevenson will do so some day. But I confess that, if he
ever excels himself, I do not expect it to be in a love story.

Possibly it may be in