classes and repetitions, nor could the
desultory mode of schooling enforced upon him by ill-health answer much
purpose by way of discipline. According to his own account he was at
college, as he had been at school, an inveterate idler and truant. But
outside the field of school and college routine he showed an eager
curiosity and activity of mind. "He was of a conversable temper," so he
says of himself, "and insatiably curious in the aspects of life, and
spent much of his time scraping acquaintance with all classes of men and
womenkind." Of one class indeed, and that was his own, he had soon had
enough, at least in so far as it was to be studied at the dinners,
dances, and other polite entertainments of ordinary Edinburgh society.
Of these he early wearied. At home he made himself pleasant to all
comers, but for his own resort chose out a very few houses, mostly those
of intimate college companions, into which he could go without
constraint, and where his inexhaustible flow of poetic, imaginative, and
laughing talk seems generally to have rather puzzled his hearers than
impressed them. On the other hand, during his endless private rambles
and excursions, whether among the streets and slums, the gardens and
graveyards of the city, or farther afield among the Pentland hills or on
the shores of Forth, he was never tired of studying character and
seeking acquaintance among the classes more nearly exposed to the pinch
and stress of life.

In the eyes of anxious elders, such vagrant ways naturally take on the
colours of idleness and a love of low company. Stevenson was, however,
in his own fashion an eager student of books as well as of man and
nature. He read precociously and omnivorously in the _belles-lettres_,
including a very wide range of English poetry, fiction, and essays, and
a fairly wide range of French; and was a genuine student of Scottish
history, especially from the time of the persecutions down, and to some
extent of history in general. The art of literature was already his
private passion, and something within him even already told him that it
was to be his life's work. On all his truantries he went pencil and
copybook in hand, trying to fit his impression of the scene to words, to
compose original rhymes, tales, dialogues, and dramas, or to imitate the
style and cadences of the author he at the moment preferred. For three
or four years, nevertheless, he tried dutifully, if half-heartedly, to
prepare himself