y Burgess till you die.
Can it be? Is there not some escape, some furlough from the Moral Law,
some holiday jaunt contrivable into a Better Land? Shall we never shed
blood? This prospect is too grey.

Here lies a man who never did
Anything but what he was bid;
Who lived his life in paltry ease,
And died of commonplace disease.

To confess plainly, I had intended to spend my life (or any leisure I
might have from Piracy upon the high seas) as the leader of a great
horde of irregular cavalry, devastating whole valleys. I can still,
looking back, see myself in many favourite attitudes; signalling for a
boat from my pirate ship with a pocket-handkerchief, I at the jetty end,
and one or two of my bold blades keeping the crowd at bay; or else
turning in the saddle to look back at my whole command (some five
thousand strong) following me at the hand-gallop up the road out of the
burning valley: this last by moonlight.

_Et point du tout._ I am a poor scribe, and have scarce broken a
commandment to mention, and have recently dined upon cold veal! As for
you (who probably had some ambitions), I hear of you living at Dover, in
lodgings, like the beasts of the field. But in heaven, when we get
there, we shall have a good time, and see some real carnage. For heaven
is--must be--that great Kingdom of Antinomia, which Lamb saw dimly
adumbrated in the _Country Wife_, where the worm which never dies (the
conscience) peacefully expires, and the sinner lies down beside the Ten
Commandments. Till then, here a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Bowling, with
neither health nor vice for anything more spirited than procrastination,
which I may well call the Consolation Stakes of Wickedness; and by whose
diligent practice, without the least amusement to ourselves, we can rob
the orphan and bring down grey hairs with sorrow to the dust.

This astonishing gush of nonsense I now hasten to close, envelope, and
expedite to Shakespeare's Cliff. Remember me to Shakespeare, and believe
me, yours very sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO EDMUND GOSSE

Mr. Gosse had written describing the office which he then occupied, a
picturesque old-fashioned chamber in the upper stories of the Board
of Trade.

_La Solitude, Hyeres, March 17, 1884._

MY DEAR GOSSE,--Your office--office is profanely said--your bower upon
the leads is divine. Have you, like Pepys, "the right to fiddle" there?
I see you mount the companion, bar