know
not if I have at all been able to hit the mean, and to succeed in making
these letters, as it has been my object to make them, present, without
offence or intrusion, a just, a living, and proportionate picture of the
man as far as they will yield it. There is one respect in which his own
practice and principle has had to be in some degree violated, if the
work was to be done at all. Except in the single case of the essay
_Ordered South_, he would never in writing for the public adopt the
invalid point of view, or invite any attention to his infirmities. 'To
me,' he says, 'the medicine bottles on my chimney and the blood on my
handkerchief are accidents; they do not colour my view of life; and I
should think myself a trifler and in bad taste if I introduced the world
to these unimportant privacies.' But from his letters to his family and
friends these matters could not possibly be left out. The tale of his
life, in the years when he was most of a correspondent, was in truth a
tale of daily and nightly battle against weakness and physical distress
and danger. To those who loved him, the incidents of this battle were
communicated, sometimes gravely, sometimes laughingly. I have greatly
cut down such bulletins, but could not possibly omit them altogether."

In 1911, twelve years after the above words were written, the estimate
expressed in them of Stevenson's qualities as a writer, and of the place
he seemed likely to maintain in the affections of English readers all
the world over, had been amply confirmed by the lapse of time. The sale
of his works kept increasing rather than diminishing. Editions kept
multiplying. A new generation of readers had found life and letters,
nature and human nature, touched by him at so many points with so
vivifying and illuminating a charm that it had become scarcely possible
to take up any newspaper or magazine and not find some reference to his
work and name. Both series of letters--even one mainly concerned, as the
_Vailima Letters_ are, with matters of interest both remote and
transitory--had been read in edition after edition: and readers had been
and were continually asking for more. The time was thought to have come
for a new and definitive edition, in which the two series of letters
already published should be thrown into one, and as much new material
added as could be found suitable. The task of carrying out this scheme
fell again upon me. The new edition constituted in effect a