ar as "You must read it, please,"
even on the friends of the friends, and so on in successive waves, yet
it did not reach a wide circle: five or six thousand copies were sold in
the first year. That is failure in the eyes of many of our novelists
whose style does not bore the unfastidious _abonne_. Stevenson, in
writing an article for a magazine on his "First Book," chose "Treasure
Island," for books other than novels do not count as books. He spoke of
terror as the motive and interest of the tale; the dread for each and
all of a mutiny headed by his ruthless favourite, John Silver. Indeed,
terror, whether caused by the eccentric furies of Mr. William Bones,
mariner, or of the awful blind Pew with his tapping staff, runs through
the volume as the dominant motive. But there is so much else: the many
landscapes, so various and so vivid; the humour of the Doctor and the
Squire, the variety of the seamen's characters; the Man of the Island,
with his craving for a piece of cheese; above all, John Silver. He is
terrible, this coldly cruel, crafty, and masterful Odysseus of the
Pacific. His creator liked him, but I could have seen Silver withering
on the wuddie at Execution Dock, or suspended from a yardarm, without
shedding the tears of sensibility. "A pirate is rather a beast than
otherwise," says a young critic in "The Human Boy," and I cannot get
over Silver gloating on the prospect of torturing Trelawny. At all
events, he is an original creation, and a miraculous portent in a boy's
book.

Fiercer attacks of illness in various forms drove Stevenson to
Bournemouth; he was engaged, when he had the strength, on those plays
(in collaboration with Mr. Henley) which prove that he had not the
mysterious gift of writing for the stage. "I hope Mr. Henley wrote most
of it," said a lady, as she left the theatre where she had seen "Deacon
Brodie" played. Had Deacon Brodie been Archdeacon Brodie, there would
have been more piquancy in the contrast of his "double life."

This idea of the double life of each man had long haunted Stevenson. He
told me once that he meant to write a story "about a fellow who was two
fellows," which did not, when thus stated, seem a fortunate idea.
However, happily, he continued to think of Hyde and Jekyll, yet knew not
how to manage them. One night, after eating bread and jam freely, he had
a nightmare; he saw Hyde, pursued, take refuge in a closet, swallow "the
mixture as before"--the mysterious powder or