finish, which the Artist so ardently
desires and so keenly feels, for which (in the vigorous words of Balzac)
he must toil 'like a miner buried in a landslip,' for which day after day
he recasts and revises and rejects, the gross mass of the Public must be
ever blind. To those lost pains, suppose you attain the highest point of
merit, posterity may possibly do justice; suppose, as is so probable,
that you fail by even a hair's breadth of the highest, rest certain they
shall never be observed. Under the shadow of this cold thought alone in
his studio the Artist must preserve from day to day his constancy to the
ideal." {124a}

An exacting ideal, but one to which Stevenson was as faithful as a
Calvinist to his theology. The question arises, however; is the
fastidiousness, the patient care of the Artist, consistent with
Vagabondage? Should one not say the greater the stylist, the lesser the
Vagabond?

This may be admitted. And thus it is that in the letters alone do we
find the Vagabond temperament of Stevenson fully asserting itself.
Elsewhere 'tis held in check. As Mr. Sidney Colvin justly says: {124b}
"In his letters--excepting a few written in youth, and having more or
less the character of exercises, and a few in after years which were
intended for the public eye--Stevenson, the deliberate artist is scarcely
forthcoming at all. He does not care a fig for order, or logical
sequence, or congruity, or for striking a key of expression and keeping
it, but becomes simply the most spontaneous and unstudied of human
beings. He will write with the most distinguished eloquence on one day,
with simple good sense and good feeling on a second, with flat triviality
on another, and with the most slashing, often ultra-colloquial vehemency
on a fourth, or will vary through all these moods, and more, in one and
the same letter."

Fresh and spontaneous his letters invariably appear; with a touch of the
invalid's nervous haste, but never lacking in courage, and with nothing
of the querulousness which we connect with chronic ill-health. Weak and
ailing, shadowed by death for many years before the end, Stevenson showed
a fine fortitude, which will remain in the memory of his friends as his
most admirable character. With the consistency of Mark Tapley (and with
less talk about it) he determined to be jolly in all possible
circumstances. Right to the end his wonderful spirits, his courageous
gaiety attended him; the frail body