nd handier assurance than any letters can give of the place held by
his work in the esteem of "the boys."

We must not make too much of what he wrote in this dark mood. A few
days later he was at work on _Weir of Hermiston_, laboring "at the
full pitch of his powers and in the conscious happiness of their
exercise." Once more he felt himself to be working at his best. The
result the world has not yet been allowed to see: for the while we are
satisfied and comforted by Mr. Colvin's assurances. "The fragment on
which he wrought during the last month of his life gives to my mind
(as it did to his own) for the first time the true measure of his
powers; and if in the literature of romance there is to be found work
more masterly, of more piercing human insight and more concentrated
imaginative wisdom, I do not know it."

On the whole, these letters from Vailima give a picture of a serene
and--allowance being made for the moods--a contented life. It is, I
suspect, the genuine Stevenson that we get in the following passage
from the letter of March, 1891:--

"Though I write so little, I pass all my hours of field-work in
continual converse and imaginary correspondence. I scarce pull up
a weed, but I invent a sentence on the matter to yourself; it
does not get written; _autant en emportent les vents_; but the
intent is there, and for me (in some sort) the companionship.
To-day, for instance, we had a great talk. I was toiling, the
sweat dripping from my nose, in the hot fit after a squall of
rain; methought you asked me--frankly, was I happy? Happy (said
I); I was only happy once; that was at Hyeres; it came to an end
from a variety of reasons--decline of health, change of place,
increase of money, age with his stealing steps; since then, as
before then, I know not what it means. But I know pleasures
still; pleasure with a thousand faces and none perfect, a
thousand tongues all broken, a thousand hands, and all of them
with scratching nails. High among these I place the delight of
weeding out here alone by the garrulous water, under the silence
of the high wood, broken by incongruous sounds of birds. And take
my life all through, look at it fore and back, and upside down--I
would not change my circumstances, unless it were to bring you
here. And yet God knows perhaps this intercourse of writing
serves as well; and I wonder,