f the grossest and broadest
conveys the monstrous proposition that it is easy to tell the truth and
hard to tell a lie. I wish heartily it were!" Similarly in other essays
the influence of Montaigne is strongly felt; and although Stevenson never
fails to impart the flavour of his own individuality to his
discourses--for he is certainly no mere copyist--one realizes the
unwisdom of those enthusiastic admirers who have bracketed him with Lamb,
Montaigne, and Hazlitt. These were men of the primary order; whereas
Stevenson with all his grace and charm is assuredly of the secondary
order. And no admiration for his attractive personality and captivating
utterances should blind us to this fact.

As a critic of books his originality is perhaps more pronounced, but wise
and large though many of his utterances are, here again it is the
pleasant wayward Vagabond spirit that gives salt and flavour to them.
There are many critics less brilliant, less attractive in their speech,
in whose judgment I should place greater reliance. Sometimes, as in the
essay on "Victor Hugo's Romances," his own temperament stands in the way;
at other times, as in his "Thoreau" article, there is a vein of wilful
capriciousness, even of impish malice, that distorts his judgment.
Neither essays can be passed over; in each there is power and shrewd
flashes of discernment, and both are extremely interesting. One cannot
say they are satisfying. Stevenson does scant justice to the
extraordinary passion, the Titanic strength, of Hugo; and in the case of
Thoreau he dwells too harshly upon the less gracious aspects of the
"poet-naturalist."

It is only fair to say, however, that in the case of Thoreau he made
generous amends in the preface to the Collected Essays. Both the
reconsidered verdict and the original essay are highly characteristic of
the man. Other men have said equally harsh things of Thoreau. Stevenson
alone had the fairness, the frank, childlike spirit to go back upon
himself. These are the things that endear us to Stevenson, and make it
impossible to be angry with any of his paradoxes and extravagant capers.
Who but Stevenson would have written thus: "The most temperate of living
critics once marked a passage of my own with a cross and the words, 'This
seems nonsense.' It not only seemed, it was so. It was a private
bravado of my own which I had so often repeated to keep up my spirits
that I had grown at last wholly to believe it, and