"Such a thing as a Author?" returned John, derisively. "And who
better'n me? And the p'int is, if the Author made you, he made Long
John, and he made Hands, and Pew, and George Merry--not that George is
up to much, for he's little more'n a name; and he made Flint, what
there is of him; and he made this here mutiny, you keep such a work
about; and he had Tom Redruth shot; and--well, if that's a Author,
give me Pew!"

"Don't you believe in a future state?" said Smollett. "Do you think
there's nothing but the present sorty-paper?"

" I don't rightly know for that," said Silver, "and I don't see what
it's got to do with it, anyway. What I know is this: if there is sich
a thing as a Author, I'm his favourite chara'ter. He does me fathoms
better'n he does you--fathoms, he does. And he likes doing me. He
keeps me on deck mostly all the time, crutch and all; and he leaves
you measling in the hold, where nobody can't see you, nor wants to,
and you may lay to that! If there is a Author, by thunder, but he's
on my side, and you may lay to it!"

"I see he's giving you a long rope," said the Captain. . . .

Stevenson's stories--one and all--are too closely the illustrations by
characters of which his essays furnish the texts. You shall not read the
one wholly apart from the other without losing something--without losing
much of the quaint, often childish, and always insinuating personality of
the writer. It is this if fully perceived which would justify one
writer, Mr Zangwill, if I don't forget, in saying, as he did say, that
Stevenson would hold his place by his essays and not by his novels. Hence
there is a unity in all, but a unity found in a root which is ultimately
inimical to what is strictly free dramatic creation--creation, broad,
natural and unmoral in the highest sense just as nature is, as it is to
us, for example, when we speak of Shakespeare, or even Scott, or of
Cervantes or Fielding. If Mr Henley in his irruptive if not spiteful
_Pall Mall Magazine_ article had made this clear from the high critical
ground, then some of his derogatory remarks would not have been quite so
personal and offensive as they are.

Stevenson's bohemianism was always restrained and coloured by this. He
is a casuistic moralist, if not a Shorter Catechist, as Mr Henley put it
in his clever sonnet. He is constantly asking himself about moral laws
and how they work themselves ou