ing that
such natures, say as Huish, the cockney, in the _Ebb-Tide_ on the one
side, and Prince Otto on the other are possible, it is yet absolutely
demanded that they should not stand _alone_, but have their due
complement and balance present in the piece also to deter and finally to
tell on them in the action. If "a knave or villain," as George Eliot
aptly said, is but a fool with a circumbendibus, this not only wants to
be shown, but to have that definite human counterpart and corrective; and
this not in any indirect and perfunctory way, but in a direct and
effective sense. It is here that Stevenson fails--fails absolutely in
most of his work, save the very latest--fails, as has been shown, in _The
Master of Ballantrae_, as it were almost of perverse and set purpose, in
lack of what one might call ethical decision which causes him to waver or
seem to waver and wobble in his judgment of his characters or in his
sympathy with them or for them. Thus he fails to give his readers the
proper cue which was his duty both as man and artist to have given. The
highest art and the lowest are indeed here at one in demanding moral
poise, if we may call it so, that however crudely in the low, and however
artistically and refinedly in the high, vice should not only not be set
forth as absolutely triumphing, nor virtue as being absolutely,
outwardly, and inwardly defeated. It is here the same in the melodrama
of the transpontine theatre as in the tragedies of the Greek dramatists
and Shakespeare. "The evening brings a' 'hame'" and the end ought to
show something to satisfy the innate craving (for it is innate, thank
Heaven! and low and high alike in moments of _elevated impression_,
acknowledge it and bow to it) else there can scarce be true _denouement_
and the sense of any moral rectitude or law remain as felt or
acknowledged in human nature or in the Universe itself.

Stevenson's toleration and constant sermonising in the essays--his desire
to make us yield allowances all round is so far, it may be, there in
place; but it will not work out in story or play, and declares the need
for correction and limitation the moment that he essays artistic
presentation--from the point of view of art he lacks at once artistic
clearness and decision, and from the point of view of morality seems
utterly loose and confusing. His artistic quality here rests wholly in
his style--mere style, and he is, alas! a castaway as regards discernment
an