ollowing passage:

"Stevenson, it appears, according to his friend's judgment, was
'incessantly and passionately interested in Stevenson,' but most of us
are incessantly and passionately interested in ourselves. 'He could
not be in the same room with a mirror but he must invite its
confidences every time he passed it.' I remember that George Sala,
who was certainly under no illusion as to his own personal aspect,
made public confession of an identical foible. Mr Henley may not have
an equal affection for the looking-glass, but he is a very poor and
unimaginative reader who does not see him gloating over the god-like
proportions of the shadow he sends sprawling over his own page. I
make free to say that a more self-conscious person than Mr Henley does
not live. 'The best and most interesting part of Stevenson's life
will never get written--even by me,' says Mr Henley.

"There is one curious little mark of animus, or one equally curious
affectation--I do not profess to know which, and it is most probably a
compound of the two--in Mr Henley's guardedly spiteful essay which
asks for notice. The dead novelist signed his second name on his
title-pages and his private correspondence 'Louis.' Mr Henley spells
it 'Lewis.' Is this intended to say that Stevenson took an
ornamenting liberty with his own baptismal appellation? If so, why
not say the thing and have done with it? Or is it one of Mr Henley's
wilful ridiculosities? It seems to stand for some sort of meaning,
and to me, at least, it offers a jarring hint of small spitefulness
which might go for nothing if it were not so well borne out by the
general tone of Mr Henley's article. It is a small matter enough, God
knows, but it is precisely because it is so very small that it
irritates."

CHAPTER XXVI--HERO-VILLAINS

In truth, it must indeed be here repeated that Stevenson for the reason
he himself gave about _Deacon Brodie_ utterly fails in that healthy
hatred of "fools and scoundrels" on which Carlyle somewhat incontinently
dilated. Nor does he, as we have seen, draw the line between hero and
villain of the piece, as he ought to have done; and, even for his own
artistic purposes, has it too much all on one side, to express it simply.
Art demands relief from any one phase of human nature, more especially of
that phase, and even from what is morbid or exceptional. Admitt