mited his field of dramatic interest, where the subject should have
been made pre-eminently in aid of this effect. Even in Long John Silver
we see it, as in various others of his characters, though there, owing to
the demand for adventure, and action contributory to it, the defect is
not so emphasised. The sense as of a projection of certain features of
the writer into all and sundry of his important characters, thus imparts,
if not an air of egotism, then most certainly a somewhat constrained, if
not somewhat artificial, autobiographical air--in the very midst of
action, questions of ethical or casuistical character arise, all
contributing to submerging individual character and its dramatic
interests under a wave of but half-disguised autobiography. Let
Stevenson do his very best--let him adopt all the artificial disguises he
may, as writing narrative in the first person, etc., as in _Kidnapped_
and _Catriona_, nevertheless, the attentive reader's mind is constantly
called off to the man who is actually writing the story. It is as
though, after all, all the artistic or artificial disguises were a mere
mask, as more than once Thackeray represented himself, the mask partially
moved aside, just enough to show a chubby, childish kind of transformed
Thackeray face below. This belongs, after all, to the order of
self-revelation though under many disguises: it is creation only in its
manner of work, not in its essential being--the spirit does not so to us
go clean forth of itself, it stops at home, and, as if from a remote and
shadowy cave or recess, projects its own colour on all on which it looks.

This is essentially the character of the _mystic_; and hence the
justification for this word as applied expressly to Stevenson by Mr
Chesterton and others.

"The inner life like rings of light
Goes forth of us, transfiguring all we see."

The effect of these early days, with the peculiar tint due to the
questionings raised by religious stress and strain, persists with
Stevenson; he grows, but he never escapes from that peculiar something
which tells of childish influences--of boyish perversions and troubled
self-examinations due to Shorter Catechism--any one who would view
Stevenson without thought of this, would view him only from the
outside--see him merely in dress and outer oddities. Here I see definite
and clear heredity. Much as he differed from his worthy father in many
things, he was like him in this--the o