, at "the choice of the essential note
and the right word," in exercises written for his own improvement, is a
thing so original that it keeps me wondering. Like most of us, I have
always thought, with Mr. Froude, when asked how he acquired his style,
that a man sits down and says what he has to say, and there is an end of
it. We must not write like Clarendon now, even if we could; our
sentences must be brief. It would be affectation to write like Sir
Thomas Browne, if we could; or like de Quincey; and nobody can write
like Mr. Ruskin, when he is simple, or like the late Master of Balliol,
Mr. Jowett.

How far and how early Stevenson succeeded in the pursuit of style may be
seen in his "Juvenilia": for example, in the essay on the Old Gardener.
But one is inclined to think that he succeeded because he had a very
keen natural perception of all things, was a most minute observer, knew
what told in the matter of words, in fact, had a genius of his own; and
that these graces came to him, though he says that they did not, by
nature. He tells us how often he wrote and rewrote some of his
chapters, some of his books. His _prima cura_ we have not seen; perhaps
it was as good as his most polished copy. "Prince Otto" has even seemed
to me, in places, over-written. He now and then ran near the rock of
preciosity, though he very seldom piled up his barque on that reef. His
style is, to the right reader, a perpetual feast, "a dreiping roast,"
and his style cannot be parodied. I never saw a parody that came within
a league of the jest it aimed at, save one burlesque of the deliberately
stilted manner of his "New Arabian Nights." This triumph was achieved by
Mr. Walter Pollock.

Stevenson's manner was too appropriate to his matter for parody: for
nobody could reproduce his matter and the vividness of his
visualization. When his characters were Scots, Lowlanders or
Highlanders, it seems to me that their style has no rival except in the
talk of Sir Walter's countrymen. A minute student who knew Stevenson,
has told me that he once suggested "chafts," where Louis had written
"cheeks" or "jaws," and that the emendation was accepted, but his Scots
always use "the right word," and never (in prose) say "tae" for "to," I
think. Theirs is the good Scots.

Perhaps I am biased in my doubt concerning the usefulness of his
persistence in re-writing, by my regret that he destroyed so many of his
romances, as not worthy of him. "King's chaff is be