should have supposed to be the less congenial
field of art: there she may now be said to rage, and with special
severity in all that touches dialect, so that in every novel the
letters of the alphabet are tortured, and the reader wearied, to
commemorate shades of mispronunciation."

But in this last extract we are still three degrees away from what can
be done in the line of gentility and delicate effeteness of style. Take
the following, which is the very peach-blow of courtesy:--

"But upon one point there should be no dubiety: if a man be not
frugal he has no business in the arts. If he be not frugal he steers
directly for that last tragic scene of _le vieux saltimbanque_; if
he be not frugal he will find it hard to continue to be honest. Some
day when the butcher is knocking at the door he may be tempted, he
may be obliged to turn out and sell a slovenly piece of work. If the
obligation shall have arisen through no wantonness of his own, he is
even to be commended, for words cannot describe how far more
necessary it is that a man should support his family than that he
should attain to--or preserve--distinction in the arts," etc.

Now the very next essay to this is a sort of intoned voluntary played
upon the more sombre emotions.

"What a monstrous spectre is this man, the disease of the
agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged in
slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of
himself; grown upon with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that move
and glitter in his face; a thing to set children screaming;--and yet
looked at nearlier, known as his fellows know him, how surprising
are his attributes."

There is a tincture of Carlyle in this mixture. There are a good many
pages of Gothic type in the later essays, for Stevenson thought it the
proper tone in which to speak of death, duty, immortality, and such
subjects as that. He derived this impression from the works of Sir
Thomas Browne. But the solemnity of Sir Thomas Browne is like a
melodious thunder, deep, sweet, unconscious, ravishing.

"Time sadly overcometh all things and is now dominant and sitteth
upon a sphinx and looketh upon Memphis and old Thebes, while his
sister Oblivion reclineth semi-somnous upon a pyramid, gloriously
triumphing, making puzzles of Titanian erections, and turning old
glories into dreams. History sinketh beneath her cloud. The
traveller as he