upon my
view, substantially just.

Now if you mean to comb my wig, comb it from the right parting--I know
you will comb it well.

An infinitely small jest occurs to me in connection with the historic
umbrella: and perhaps its infinite smallness attracts me. Would you mind
handing it to Rudyard Kipling with the enclosed note?[136] It seems to
me fitly to consecrate and commemorate this most absurd episode.

Yours very sincerely,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

[_Enclosure_]

This Umbrella
purchased in the year 1878 by
Robert Louis Stevenson
(and faithfully stabled for more than twelve years in the
halls of George Saintsbury)
is now handed on at the suggestion of the first and
by the loyal hands of the second,
to
Rudyard Kipling.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW.

FOOTNOTES:

[130] Of this _moratorium_ I believe I duly advised R. L. S. and I don't
think he objected. There was, if I remember rightly, a further reason
for it--that I was living in two places at the time and the subject was
not immediately at hand.

[131] Lockhart's (self-given) name in the "_Chaldee MS._" was "the
Scorpion that delighteth to sting the faces of men."

[132] Maupassant's ineffable hero and title-giver.

[133] Hardly any school-boy of my or Stevenson's generation would have
needed a reference to the _Essay on Murder_. But I am told that De
Quincey has gone out of fashion, with school-boys and others.

[134] We know now: also what "The Duke" said when consulted. They did
not agree with Stevenson, but then they knew all the facts and he did
not.

[135] I should have held it myself, if the facts had been what R. L. S.
thought them.

[136] Which of course is Mr. Kipling's property, not mine. But he has
most kindly joined in, authorising its publication, and that of the rest
of the letter as far as he is concerned.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Peace
of the Augustans

A Survey of Eighteenth Century Literature
as a Place of Rest and Refreshment

_Demy 8vo. 10s. 6d. net_

"No one living," according to the _Times_, "knows English
eighteenth century literature as well as Mr. Saintsbury
knows it.... If you do not know and like your eighteenth
century, then he will make you; and if you do, he will show
you that e