ir number is inordinate and remarkable. They will not bear an
immediate comparison with their originals; but we may be sure that the
vintages of Mephistopheles would not have stood a comparison with real
wine. One of the books which established Stevenson's fame was the New
Arabian Nights. The series of tales about Prince Florizel of Bohemia was
a brilliant, original, and altogether delightful departure in light
literature. The stories are a frank and wholesome caricature of the
French detective story. They are legitimate pieces of literature because
they are burlesque, and because the smiling Mephistopheles who lurks
everywhere in the pages of Stevenson is for this time the acknowledged
showman of the piece.

A burlesque is always an imitation shown off by the foil of some
incongruous setting. The setting in this case Stevenson found about him
in the omnibuses, the clubs, and the railways of sordid and complicated
London.

In this early book Stevenson seems to have stumbled upon the true
employment of his powers without realizing the treasure trove, for he
hardly returned to the field of humor, for which his gifts most happily
fitted him. As a writer of burlesque he truly expresses himself. He is
full of genuine fun.

The fantastic is half brother to the burlesque. Each implies some
original as a point of departure, and as a scheme for treatment some
framework upon which the author's wit and fancy shall be lavished.

It is in the region of the fantastic that Stevenson loved to wander,
and it is in this direction that he expended his marvellous ingenuity.
His fairy tales and arabesques must be read as they were written, in the
humor of forty fancies and without any heavy-fisted intention of getting
new ideas about life. It will be said that the defect of Stevenson is
expressed by these very qualities, fancy and ingenuity, because they are
contradictory, and the second destroys the first. Be this as it may,
there are many people whose pleasure is not spoiled by elaboration and
filigree work.

Our ability to follow Stevenson in his fantasias depends very largely
upon how far our imaginations and our sentimental interests are
dissociated from our interest in real life. Commonplace and common-sense
people, whose emotional natures are not strongly at play in the conduct
of their daily lives, have a fund of unexpended mental activity, of a
very low degree of energy, which delights to be occupied with the unreal
and the i