The Project Gutenberg eBook, Robert Louis Stevenson, by Walter Raleigh

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Title: Robert Louis Stevenson

Author: Walter Raleigh

Release Date: January 17, 2007 [eBook #333]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON***

Transcribed from the 1906 Edward Arnold edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

BY
WALTER RALEIGH

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
AUTHOR OF
'STYLE,' 'MILTON,' 'WORDSWORTH,' ETC.

_FOURTH IMPRESSION_

LONDON
EDWARD ARNOLD
41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, BOND STREET, W.
1906

THE GREATER PART OF THIS
ESSAY WAS GIVEN AS A LECTURE
AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION
ON THE 17TH OF MAY
1895

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

When a popular writer dies, the question it has become the fashion with a
nervous generation to ask is the question, 'Will he live?' There was no
idler question, none more hopelessly impossible and unprofitable to
answer. It is one of the many vanities of criticism to promise
immortality to the authors that it praises, to patronise a writer with
the assurance that our great-grandchildren, whose time and tastes are
thus frivolously mortgaged, will read his works with delight. But 'there
is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth
all things: our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and
sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors.' Let us make sure
that our sons will care for Homer before we pledge a more distant
generation to a newer cult.

Nevertheless, without handling the prickly question of literary
immortality, it is easy to recognise that the literary reputation of
Robert Louis Stevenson is made of good stuff. His fame has spread, as
lasting fame is wont to do, from the few to the many. Fifteen years ago
his essays and fanciful books of travel were treasured by a small and
discerning company of admirers; long before he chanced to fell the
British public with _Treasure Island_ and _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ he
had shown himself a delicate marksman. And although large editions are
nothing, standard edit