business at all; I had
meant originally to lay all the profits to the credit of Samoa; when it
comes to the pinch of writing, I judge this unfair--I give too much--and
I mean to keep (if there be any profit at all) one-half for the artisan;
the rest I shall hold over to give to the Samoans _for that which I
choose and against work done_. I think I have never heard of greater
insolence than to attempt such a subject; yet the tale is so strange and
mixed, and the people so oddly charactered--above all, the whites--and
the high note of the hurricane and the warships is so well prepared to
take popular interest, and the latter part is so directly in the day's
movement, that I am not without hope that some may read it; and if they
don't, a murrain on them! Here is, for the first time, a tale of
Greeks--Homeric Greeks--mingled with moderns, and all true; Odysseus
along-side of Rajah Brooke, _proportion gardee_; and all true. Here is
for the first time since the Greeks (that I remember) the history of a
handful of men, where all know each other in the eyes, and live close in
a few acres, narrated at length, and with the seriousness of history.
Talk of the modern novel; here is a modern history. And if I had the
misfortune to found a school, the legitimate historian might lie down
and die, for he could never overtake his material. Here is a little tale
that has not "caret"-ed its "vates"; "sacer" is another point.

R. L. S.

TO HENRY JAMES

Mr. Henry James was in the habit of sending out for Stevenson's
reading books that seemed likely to interest him, and among the last
had been M. Paul Bourget's _Sensations d'Italie_.

_December 7th, 1891._

MY DEAR HENRY JAMES,--Thanks for yours; your former letter was lost; so
it appears was my long and masterly treatise on the _Tragic Muse_. I
remember sending it very well, and there went by the same mail a long
and masterly tractate to Gosse about his daddy's life, for which I have
been long expecting an acknowledgment, and which is plainly gone to the
bottom with the other. If you see Gosse, please mention it. These gems
of criticism are now lost literature, like the tomes of Alexandria. I
could not do 'em again. And I must ask you to be content with a dull
head, a weary hand, and short commons, for to-day, as I am physically
tired with hard work of every kind, the labours of the planter and the
author both piled upon me mountain deep. I am delighted beyo