o higher; let
him be still discontented, and let him (if it might be) see the merits
and not the faults of his rivals, and he may swarm at last to the
top-gallant. There is no other way. Admiration is the only road to
excellence; and the critical spirit kills, but envy and injustice are
putrefaction on its feet.

Thus far the moralist. The eager author now begs to know whether you may
have got the other Whistles, and whether a fresh proof is to be taken;
also whether in that case the dedication should not be printed
therewith; _B_ulk _D_elights _P_ublishers (original aphorism; to be said
sixteen times in succession as a test of sobriety).

Your wild and ravening commands were received; but cannot be obeyed. And
anyway, I do assure you I am getting better every day; and if the
weather would but turn, I should soon be observed to walk in hornpipes.
Truly I am on the mend. I am still very careful. I have the new
dictionary; a joy, a thing of beauty, and--bulk. I shall be raked i' the
mools before it's finished; that is the only pity; but meanwhile I sing.

I beg to inform you that I, Robert Louis Stevenson, author of
_Brashiana_ and other works, am merely beginning to commence to prepare
to make a first start at trying to understand my profession. O the
height and depth of novelty and worth in any art! and O that I am
privileged to swim and shoulder through such oceans! Could one get out
of sight of land--all in the blue? Alas not, being anchored here in
flesh, and the bonds of logic being still about us.

But what a great space and a great air there is in these small shallows
where alone we venture! and how new each sight, squall, calm, or
sunrise! An art is a fine fortune, a palace in a park, a band of music,
health, and physical beauty; all but love--to any worthy practiser. I
sleep upon my art for a pillow; I waken in my art; I am unready for
death, because I hate to leave it. I love my wife, I do not know how
much, nor can, nor shall, unless I lost her; but while I can conceive my
being widowed, I refuse the offering of life without my art. I _am_ not
but in my art; it is me; I am the body of it merely.

And yet I produce nothing, am the author of _Brashiana_ and other works:
tiddy-iddity--as if the works one wrote were anything but 'prentice's
experiments. Dear reader, I deceive you with husks, the real works and
all the pleasure are still mine and incommunicable. After this break in
my work, beginning to return