e, being both humorous and true. There is
comfort in the thought that such efforts as may have been made to keep
him in the path of virtuous respectability failed. Rather than _do_
anything Stevenson preferred to loaf and to write books. And he early
learned that considerable loafing is necessary if one expects to
become a writer. There is a sense in which it is true that only lazy
people are fit for literature. Nothing is so fruitful as a fine gift
for idleness. The most prolific writers have been people who seemed to
have nothing to do. Every one has read that description of George Sand
in her latter years, 'an old lady who came out into the garden at
mid-day in a broad-brimmed hat and sat down on a bench or wandered
slowly about. So she remained for hours looking about her, musing,
contemplating. She was gathering impressions, absorbing the universe,
steeping herself in Nature; and at night she would give all this forth
as a sort of emanation.' One shudders to think what the result might
have been if instead of absorbing the universe George Sand had done
something practical during those hours. But the Scotchman was not like
George Sand in any particular that I know of save in his perfect
willingness to bask in the sunshine and steep himself in Nature. His
books did not 'emanate.' The one way in which he certainly did not
produce literature was by improvisation. George Sand never revised her
work; it might almost be said that Robert Louis Stevenson never did
anything else.

Of his method we know this much. He himself has said that when he went
for a walk he usually carried two books in his pocket, one a book to
read, the other a note-book in which to put down the ideas that came
to him. This remark has undoubtedly been seized upon and treasured in
the memory as embodying a secret of his success. Trusting young souls
have begun to walk about with note-books: only to learn that the
note-book was a detail, not an essential, in the process.

He who writes while he walks cannot write very much, but he may, if he
chooses, write very well. He may turn over the rubbish of his
vocabulary until he finds some exquisite and perfect word with which
to bring out his meaning. This word need not be unusual; and if it is
'exquisite' then exquisite only in the sense of being fitted with rare
exactness to the idea. Stevenson wrote so well in part because he
wrote so deliberately. He knew the vulgarity of haste, especially in
the makin