rmonics, there
is scarce harmony to his music; and in Henley--all of these; a touch, a
sense within sense, a sound outside the sound, the shadow of the
inscrutable, eloquent beyond all definition. The First London Voluntary
knocked me wholly.--Ever yours affectionately, my dear Charles,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Kind memories to your father and all friends.

TO W. E. HENLEY

_Vailima Plantation, Upolu, Samoa, August 1st, 1892._

MY DEAR HENLEY,--It is impossible to let your new volume pass in
silence. I have not received the same thrill of poetry since G. M.'s
_Joy of Earth_ volume and _Love in a Valley_; and I do not know that
even that was so intimate and deep. Again and again, I take the book
down, and read, and my blood is fired as it used to be in youth.
_Andante con moto_ in the _Voluntaries_, and the thing about the trees
at night (No. XXIV. I think) are up to date my favourites. I did not
guess you were so great a magician; these are new tunes, this is an
undertone of the true Apollo; these are not verse, they are
poetry--inventions, creations, in language. I thank you for the joy you
have given me, and remain your old friend and present huge admirer,

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

The hand is really the hand of Esau, but under a course of threatened
scrivener's cramp.

For the next edition of the Book of Verses, pray accept an emendation.
Last three lines of Echoes No. XLIV. read--

"But life in act? How should the grave
Be victor over these,
Mother, a mother of men?"

The two vocatives scatter the effect of this inimitable close. If you
insist on the longer line, equip "grave" with an epithet.

R. L. S.

TO E. L. BURLINGAME

Accompanying the MS. of the article giving extracts from the record
kept by Robert Stevenson the elder of the trip on which Sir Walter
Scott sailed in his company on board the Northern Lights yacht:
printed in Scribner's Magazine, 1893.

_Vailima, Upolu, August 1st, '92._

MY DEAR BURLINGAME,--Herewith _My Grandfather_. I have had rather a bad
time suppressing the old gentleman, who was really in a very garrulous
stage; as for getting him _in order_, I could do but little towards
that; however, there are one or two points of interest which may justify
us in printing. The swinging of his stick and not knowing the sailor of
Coruiskin, in particular, and the account of how he wrote the lives in
the Bell Book particul