distant gray little island which was Motherland to him, home of
his youth and of his kindred, the earth where he was fain to lie
when his time came. Stevenson, to the end, could always return
to sheer story, as in "St. Ives," but in doing so, is a little
below his best: that kind did not call on his complete powers:
in such fiction deep did not answer unto deep.

In 1883, when "Treasure Island" appeared, the public was gasping
for the oxygen that a story with outdoor movement and action
could supply: there was enough and to spare of invertebrate
subtleties, strained metaphysics and coarse naturalistic
studies. A sublimated dime novel like "Treasure Island" came at
the psychologic moment; the year before "The New Arabian Nights"
had offered the same sort of pabulum, but had been practically
overlooked. Readers were only too glad to turn from people with
a past to people of the past, or to people of the present whose
ways were ways of pleasantness. Stevenson substituted a lively,
normal interest in life for plotlessness and a surfeit of the
flesh. The public rose to the bait as the trout to a
particularly inviting fly. Once more reverting to the good old
appeal of Scott--incident, action and derring-do--he added the
attraction of his personal touch, and what was so gallantly
preferred was greedily grasped.

Although, as has been said, Stevenson passed from the primitive
romance of the Shilling Shocker to the romance of character, his
interest in character study was keen from the first: the most
plot-cunning and external of his yarns have that illuminative
exposure of human beings--in flashes at least--which mark him
off from the bluff, robust manner of a Dumas and lend an
attraction far greater than that of mere tangle of events. This
gets fullest expression in the Scotch romances.

"The Master of Ballantrae," for one illustration; the interplay
of motive and act as it affects a group of human beings is so
conducted that plot becomes a mere framework, within which we
are permitted to see a typical tragedy of kinship. This receives
curious corroboration in the fact that when, towards the close
of the story, the scene shifts to America and the main motive--the
unfolding of the fraternal fortunes of the tragic brothers,
is made minor to a series of gruesome adventures (however
entertaining and well done) the reader, even if uncritical, has
an uneasy sense of disharmony: and rightly, since the strict
character romance h