emit
that flash of summer lightning.

Stevenson gave rare honour to his work, and the artist who shows his
self-respect in that best of ways will always be respected by the
world. He has fairly won our affection and esteem, and we give them
ungrudgingly. In seeming to belittle him I have taken an ungrateful
piece of work in hand. But in the long run a moderately just estimate of
a good man's work is of more service to his reputation than a strained
laudation can be. It is not the critics, and it is not I, who will
finally measure his proportions. He seems to me to stand well in the
middle of the middle rank of accepted writers. He will not live as an
inventor, for he has not invented. He will not live as one of those who
have opened new fields of thought. He will not live amongst those who
have explored the heights and the deeps of the spirit of man. He
may live--'the stupid and ignorant pig of a public' will settle the
question--as a writer in whose works stand revealed a lovable, sincere,
and brave soul and an unsleeping vigilance of artistic effort.

The most beautiful thing he has done--to my mind--is his epitaph. There
are but eight lines of it, but I know nothing finer in its way:

Under the wide and starry sky
Lay me down and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will!

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be:
Home is the Sailor, home from sea,
And the Hunter home from the hill.

Sleep there, bright heart! In your waking hours you would have laughed
at the exaggerated praises which do you such poor service now!

IV.--LIVING MASTERS--MEREDITH AND HALL CAINE

There is a very old story to the effect that a party of gentlemen who
were compiling a dictionary described a crab as 'a small red animal
which walks backwards.' Apart from the facts that the crab is not
red, is not an animal, and does not walk backwards, the definition was
pronounced to be wholly admirable. I was reminded of this bit of ancient
history when, some time ago, I read a criticism on George Meredith from
the pen of Mr. George Moore. Mr. Moore represented his subject as a
shouting, gesticulating man in a crowd, who, in spite of great efforts
to be heard, remained unintelligible. As a description of a curiously
calm sage who soliloquises for his own amusement in a study this is
perfect. The enormous growth in the number