s we want, not the high poetic
function which represents the world; we are then like the Asiatic with
his improvisatore or the middle-agee with his trouvere. We want
incident, interest, action: to the devil with your philosophy. When we
are well again, and have an easy mind, we shall peruse your important
work; but what we want now is a drug. So I, when I am ready to go beside
myself, stick my head into a story-book, as the ostrich with her bush;
let fate and fortune meantime belabour my posteriors at their will.

I have not seen the Spectator article; nobody sent it to me. If you had
an old copy lying by you, you would be very good to despatch it to me. A
little abuse from my grandmamma would do me good in health, if not in
morals.

This is merely to shake hands with you and give you the top of the
morning in 1880. But I look to be answered; and then I shall promise to
answer in return. For I am now, so far as that can be in this world, my
own man again, and when I have heard from you, I shall be able to write
more naturally and at length.

At least, my dear Meiklejohn, I hope you will believe in the sincerely
warm and friendly regard in which I hold you, and the pleasure with
which I look forward, not only to hearing from you shortly, but to
seeing you again in the flesh with another good luncheon and good talk.
Tell me when you don't like my work.--Your friend,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

TO W. E. HENLEY

The essays here mentioned on Benjamin Franklin and William Penn were
projects long cherished but in the end abandoned: _The Forest State_
came to maturity three years later as _Prince Otto_.

_608 Bush Street, San Francisco, Cal., February 1880._

MY DEAR HENLEY,--Before my work or anything I sit down to answer your
long and kind letter.

I am well, cheerful, busy, hopeful; I cannot be knocked down; I do not
mind about the _Emigrant_. I never thought it a masterpiece. It was
written to sell, and I believe it will sell; and if it does not, the
next will. You need not be uneasy about my work; I am only beginning to
see my true method.

(1) As to _Studies_. There are two more already gone to Stephen.
_Yoshida Torajiro_, which I think temperate and adequate; and _Thoreau_,
which will want a really Balzacian effort over the proofs. But I want
_Benjamin Franklin and the Art of Virtue_ to follow; and perhaps also
_William Penn_, but this last may be perhaps delayed for another
volume--