rsations that pass between his
characters have an air of distinction that is all his own. His books are
full of brilliant talk--talk real and convincing enough in its purport
and setting, but purged of the languors and fatuities of actual
commonplace conversation. It is an enjoyment like that to be obtained
from a brilliant exhibition of fencing, clean and dexterous, to assist at
the talking bouts of David Balfour and Miss Grant, Captain Nares and Mr.
Dodd, Alexander Mackellar and the Master of Ballantrae, Prince Otto and
Sir John Crabtree, or those wholly admirable pieces of special pleading
to be found in _A Lodging for the Night_ and _The Sire de Maletroit's
Door_. But people do not talk like this in actual life--''tis true, 'tis
pity; and pity 'tis, 'tis true.' They do not; in actual life
conversation is generally so smeared and blurred with stupidities, so
invaded and dominated by the spirit of dulness, so liable to swoon into
meaninglessness, that to turn to Stevenson's books is like an escape into
mountain air from the stagnant vapours of a morass. The exact
reproduction of conversation as it occurs in life can only be undertaken
by one whose natural dulness feels itself incommoded by wit and fancy as
by a grit in the eye. Conversation is often no more than a nervous habit
of body, like twiddling the thumbs, and to record each particular remark
is as much as to describe each particular twiddle. Or in its more
intellectual uses, when speech is employed, for instance, to conceal our
thoughts, how often is it a world too wide for the shrunken nudity of the
thought it is meant to veil, and thrown over it, formless, flabby, and
black--like a tarpaulin! It is pleasant to see thought and feeling
dressed for once in the trim, bright raiment Stevenson devises for them.

There is an indescribable air of distinction, which is, and is not, one
and the same thing with style, breathing from all his works. Even when
he is least inspired, his bearing and gait could never be mistaken for
another man's. All that he writes is removed by the width of the spheres
from the possibility of commonplace, and he avoids most of the snares and
pitfalls of genius with noble and unconscious skill.

If he ever fell into one of these--which may perhaps be doubted--it was
through too implicit a confidence in the powers of style. His open
letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde in vindication of Father Damien is perhaps
his only literary mistake.