ES

VIII BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME
NOTES

IX PULVIS ET UMBRA
NOTES

INTRODUCTION

I

LIFE OF STEVENSON

Robert Louis Stevenson[1] was born at Edinburgh on the 13 November
1850. His father, Thomas, and his grandfather, Robert, were both
distinguished light-house engineers; and the maternal grandfather,
Balfour, was a Professor of Moral Philosophy, who lived to be ninety
years old. There was, therefore, a combination of _Lux et Veritas_ in
the blood of young Louis Stevenson, which in _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_
took the form of a luminous portrayal of a great moral idea.

In the language of Pope, Stevenson's life was a long disease. Even as
a child, his weak lungs caused great anxiety to all the family except
himself; but although Death loves a shining mark, it took over forty
years of continuous practice for the grim archer to send the black
arrow home. It is perhaps fortunate for English literature that his
health was no better; for the boy craved an active life, and would
doubtless have become an engineer. He made a brave attempt to pursue
this calling, but it was soon evident that his constitution made it
impossible. After desultory schooling, and an immense amount of
general reading, he entered the University of Edinburgh, and then
tried the study of law. Although the thought of this profession became
more and more repugnant, and finally intolerable, he passed his final
examinations satisfactorily. This was in 1875.

He had already begun a series of excursions to the south of France and
other places, in search of a climate more favorable to his incipient
malady; and every return to Edinburgh proved more and more
conclusively that he could not live in Scotch mists. He had made the
acquaintance of a number of literary men, and he was consumed with a
burning ambition to become a writer. Like Ibsen's _Master-Builder_,
there was a troll in his blood, which drew him away to the continent
on inland voyages with a canoe and lonely tramps with a donkey; these
gave him material for books full of brilliant pictures, shrewd
observations, and irrepressible humour. He contributed various
articles to magazines, which were immediately recognised by critics
like Leslie Stephen as bearing the unmistakable mark of literary
genius; but they attracted almost no attention from the general
reading public, and their author had only the consciousness of good
work for his reward. In 1880 he was married.

Stev