writes: "It is never worth while to inflict pain upon a snail for
any literary purpose; and where events may appear to be favourable
to me and contrary to others, I would rather be misunderstood than
cause a pang to any one whom I have known, far less whom I have
loved." Whether an editor or biographer would be justified in
carrying out this principle to the full may perhaps be doubted.

THE LETTERS
OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

1868-1882

THE LETTERS
OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

I

STUDENT DAYS AT EDINBURGH

TRAVELS AND EXCURSIONS

1868-1873

The following section consists chiefly of extracts from the
correspondence and journals addressed by Louis Stevenson, as a lad of
eighteen to twenty-two, to his father and mother during summer
excursions to the Scottish coast or to the Continent. There exist enough
of them to fill a volume; but it is not in letters of this kind to his
family that a young man unbosoms himself most freely, and these are
perhaps not quite devoid of the qualities of the guide-book and the
descriptive exercise. Nevertheless they seem to me to contain enough
signs of the future master-writer, enough of character, observation, and
skill in expression, to make a certain number worth giving by way of an
opening chapter to the present book. Among them are interspersed four or
five of a different character addressed to other correspondents, and
chiefly to his lifelong friend and intimate, Mr. Charles Baxter.

On both sides of the house Stevenson came of interesting stock. His
grandfather was Robert Stevenson, civil engineer, highly distinguished
as the builder of the Bell Rock lighthouse. By this Robert Stevenson,
his three sons, and two of his grandsons now living, the business of
civil engineers in general, and of official engineers to the
Commissioners of Northern Lights in particular, has been carried on at
Edinburgh with high credit and public utility for almost a century.
Thomas Stevenson, the youngest of the three sons of the original Robert,
was Robert Louis Stevenson's father. He was a man not only of mark,
zeal, and inventiveness in his profession, but of a strong and singular
personality; a staunch friend and sagacious adviser, trenchant in
judgment and demonstrative in emotion, outspoken, dogmatic,--despotic,
even, in little things, but withal essentially chivalrous and
soft-hearted; apt to pass with the swiftest tra