were then
divided in opinion; some preferring his essays, and his two books of
sentimental travel, "An Inland Voyage" (1878) and "Travels with a
Donkey" (1879). These were, indeed, admirable in style, humour,
description, and incident, but the creative imagination in the stories
of Villon's night and of the Sieur de Maletroit's door, the painting of
character, the romance, the vividness, were worth many such volumes.
They were well received by the Press, these sketches of travel, but, as
Monsieur Got says in his "Journal" (1857), "Les succes des delicats
sont, meme quand ils s'etablissent, trop lents a s'etablir. La foule
s'est tellement democratisee qu'il n'a pas de salut si l'on ne frappe
brutalement." The needful brutality was not employed till Stevenson
"knocked them" with "Jekyll and Hyde."

"The world is so full of a number of things," that a few essays, two or
three short stories in a magazine, a little book of sketches in prose,
may be masterpieces in their three several ways, but they escape the
notice of all but a few amateurs. Mr. Kipling's knock was much more
insistent; he could not be unheard. It was not by essays on Burns and
Knox, however independently done, that Stevenson could make his mark.

Concerning these heroes, Scotland has a vision of her own, and no man
must undo it; no man must tell, about Knox, facts ignored by Professors
of Church History. Indeed, to study Knox afresh demands research for
which Stevenson had not the opportunity. The Covenanting side of his
nature appeared in his study of the moral aspect of Burns; his feet of
clay. It is agreed that we must veil the feet of clay. As Lockhart says,
Scott infuriated Mr. Alexander Peterkin by remarking that Burns "was not
chivalrous." Stevenson went further, and annoyed the Peterkins of his
day. His task required courage: it was not found wanting.

In 1877, Stevenson had a new, if very narrow, opening. A friend of his
at Edinburgh University, a young Mr. Caldwell Brown (so Stevenson named
him to me; his real name seems to have been Glasgow Brown), came to the
great metropolis to found a Conservative weekly journal. "London" was
its name, but Edinburgh was its nature, and base, if a base it had. The
editor was "in the air"; he knew nothing of his business and its
difficulties; nothing of what the Conservative public, with sixpences to
spend, was likely to want. He approached some of Stevenson's friends,
and he gave the Conservative party scores