e Stephen had it in his second series of
the _Studies of a Biographer_:

"The younger brother in _The Master of Ballantrae_, who is
black-mailed by the utterly reprobate master, ought surely to be
interesting instead of being simply sullen and dogged. In the later
adventures, we are invited to forgive him on the ground that his brain
has been affected: but the impression upon me is that he is sacrificed
throughout to the interests of the story [or more strictly for the
working out of the problem as originally conceived by the author]. The
curious exclusion of women is natural in the purely boyish stories,
since to a boy woman is simply an incumbrance upon reasonable modes of
life. When in _Catriona_ Stevenson introduces a love story, it is
still unsatisfactory, because David Balfour is so much the undeveloped
animal that his passion is clumsy, and his charm for the girl
unintelligible. I cannot feel, to say the truth, that in any of these
stories I am really among living human beings with whom, apart from
their adventures, I can feel any very lively affection or antipathy."

In the _Ebb-Tide_ it is, in this respect, yet worse: the three heroes
choke each other off all too literally.

In his excess of impartiality he tones down the points and lines that
would give the attraction of true individuality to his characters, and
instead, would fain have us contented with his liberal, and even over-
sympathetic views of them and allowances for them. But instead of thus
furthering his object, he sacrifices the whole--and his story becomes,
instead of a broad and faithful human record, really a curiosity of
autobiographic perversion, and of overweening, if not extravagant egotism
of the more refined, but yet over-obtrusive kind.

Mr Baildon thus hits the subjective tendency, out of which mainly this
defect--a serious defect in view of interest--arises.

"That we can none of us be sure to what crime we might not descend, if
only our temptation were sufficiently acute, lies at the root of his
fondness and toleration for wrong-doers (p. 74).

Thus he practically declines to do for us what we are unwilling or unable
to do for ourselves. Interest in two characters in fiction can never, in
this artificial way, and if they are real characters truly conceived, be
made equal, nor can one element of claim be balanced against another,
even at the beck of the greatest artist.