_Esmond_ (say) and _Great
Expectations_, of _Redgauntlet_ and _Old Mortality_, _of La Reine
Margot_ and _Bragelonne_, of _David Copperfield_ and _A Tale of Two
Cities_; while if good writing and some other things be in my
appetite, are there not always Hazlitt and Lamb--to say nothing of
that globe of miraculous continents; which is known to us as
Shakespeare? There is his style, you will say, and it is a fact that
it is rare, and _in the last_ times better, because much simpler than
in the first. But, after all, his style is so perfectly achieved that
the achievement gets obvious: and when achievement gets obvious, is it
not by way of becoming uninteresting? And is there not something to
be said for the person who wrote that Stevenson always reminded him of
a young man dressed the best he ever saw for the Burlington Arcade?
{10} Stevenson's work in letters does not now take me much, and I
decline to enter on the question of his immortality; since that,
despite what any can say, will get itself settled soon or late, for
all time. No--when I care to think of Stevenson it is not of R. L.
Stevenson--R. L. Stevenson, the renowned, the accomplished--executing
his difficult solo, but of the Lewis that I knew and loved, and
wrought for, and worked with for so long. The successful man of
letters does not greatly interest me. I read his careful prayers and
pass on, with the certainty that, well as they read, they were not
written for print. I learn of his nameless prodigalities, and recall
some instances of conduct in another vein. I remember, rather, the
unmarried and irresponsible Lewis; the friend, the comrade, the
_charmeur_. Truly, that last word, French as it is, is the only one
that is worthy of him. I shall ever remember him as that. The
impression of his writings disappears; the impression of himself and
his talk is ever a possession. . . . Forasmuch as he was primarily a
talker, his printed works, like these of others after his kind, are
but a sop for posterity. A last dying speech and confession (as it
were) to show that not for nothing were they held rare fellows in
their day."

Just a month or two before Mr Henley's self-revealing article appeared in
the _Pall Mall Magazine_, Mr Chesterton, in the _Daily News_, with almost
prophetic forecast, had said:

"Mr Henley might write an excellent study of Steven