escapade in _Catriona_ and
in not a few in _Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_. The fault of that last story is
simply that we seem to hear Stevenson chuckling to himself, "Ah, now,
won't they all say at last how clever I am." That too mars the _Merry
Men_, whoever wrote them or part wrote them, and _Prince Otto_ would have
been irretrievably spoiled by this self-conscious sense of cleverness had
it not been for style and artifice. In this incessant "see how clever I
am," we have another proof of the abounding youthfulness of R. L.
Stevenson. If, as Mr Baildon says (p. 30), he had true child's horror of
being put in fine clothes in which one must sit still and be good,
_Prince Otto_ remains attractive in spite of some things and because of
his fine clothes. Neither Poe nor Hawthorne could have fallen to the
piracy, and treasure-hunting of _The Master of Ballantrae_.

"Far behind Scott in the power of instinctive, irreflective, spontaneous
creation of character, Stevenson tells his story with more art and with a
firmer grip on his reader." And that is exactly what I, wishing to do
all I dutifully can for Stevenson, cannot see. His genius is in nearly
all cases pulled up or spoiled by his all too conscious cleverness, and
at last we say, "Oh Heavens! if he could and would but let himself go or
forget himself what he might achieve." But he doesn't--never does, and
therefore remains but a second-rate creator though more and more the
stylist and the artist. This is more especially the case at the very
points where writers like Scott would have risen and roused all the
readers' interest. When Stevenson reaches such points, he is always as
though saying "See now how cleverly I'll clear that old and stereotyped
style of thing and do something _new_." But there are things in life and
human nature, which though they are old are yet ever new, and the true
greatness of a writer can never come from evading or looking askance at
them or trying to make them out something else than what they really are.
No artistic aim or ambition can suffice to stand instead of them or to
refine them away. That way lies only cold artifice and frigid lacework,
and sometimes Stevenson did go a little too much on this line.

CHAPTER XXI--UNITY IN STEVENSON'S STORIES

The unity in Stevenson's stories is generally a unity of subjective
impression and reminiscence due, in the first place, to his quick, almost
abnormal boyish reverence for mere anim