y _Timon_? Well, here is my worst quarrel with
you. You take my young books as my last word. The tendency to try to say
more has passed unperceived (my fault, that). And you make no allowance
for the slowness with which a man finds and tries to learn his tools. I
began with a neat brisk little style, and a sharp little knack of
partial observation; I have tried to expand my means, but still I can
only utter a part of what I wish to say, and am bound to feel; and much
of it will die unspoken. But if I had the pen of Shakespeare, I have no
_Timon_ to give forth. I feel kindly to the powers that be; I marvel
they should use me so well; and when I think of the case of others, I
wonder too, but in another vein, whether they may not, whether they
must not, be like me, still with some compensation, some delight. To
have suffered, nay, to suffer, sets a keen edge on what remains of the
agreeable. This is a great truth, and has to be learned in the
fire.--Yours very truly,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

We expect you, remember that.

TO WILLIAM ARCHER

_Skerryvore, Bournemouth, November 1, 1885._

DEAR MR. ARCHER,--You will see that I had already had a sight of your
article and what were my thoughts.

One thing in your letter puzzles me. Are you, too, not in the
witness-box? And if you are, why take a wilfully false hypothesis? If
you knew I was a chronic invalid, why say that my philosophy was
unsuitable to such a case? My call for facts is not so general as yours,
but an essential fact should not be put the other way about.

The fact is, consciously or not, you doubt my honesty; you think I am
making faces, and at heart disbelieve my utterances. And this I am
disposed to think must spring from your not having had enough of pain,
sorrow, and trouble in your existence. It is easy to have too much; easy
also or possible to have too little; enough is required that a man may
appreciate what elements of consolation and joy there are in everything
but absolutely overpowering physical pain or disgrace, and how in almost
all circumstances the human soul can play a fair part. You fear life, I
fancy, on the principle of the hand of little employment. But perhaps my
hypothesis is as unlike the truth as the one you chose. Well, if it be
so, if you have had trials, sickness, the approach of death, the
alienation of friends, poverty at the heels, and have not felt your
soul turn round upon these things and spurn them u