s eye. He has
no revelation, no vision, nothing to disclose, and to produce an
impression uses words, words, words, makes daub, daub, daub, without
any definite purpose, and certainly without any real, or artistic, or
definite effect. To describe, one must first of all see, and if we
see anything the description of it will, as far as it is in us, come
as effortless and natural as the leaves on trees, or as 'the tender
greening of April meadows.' I, therefore, more than suspect that the
brilliancy which the average reader laughs at is not brilliancy. A
pot of flaming red paint thrown at a canvas does not make a picture."

Now there is vision for outward picture or separate incident, which may
exist quite apart from what may be called moral, spiritual, or even
loftily imaginative conception, at once commanding unity and commanding
it. There can be no doubt of Stevenson's power in the former line--the
earliest as the latest of his works are witnesses to it. _The Master of
Ballantrae_ abounds in picture and incident and dramatic situations and
touches; but it lacks true unity, and the reason simply is given by
Stevenson himself--that the "ending shames, perhaps degrades, the
beginning," as it is in the _Ebb-Tide_, with the cockney Huish,
"execrable." "We have great pictures by genius of the--to the prosaic
eye--invisible realities, as well as the outward form of the action."
True, but the "invisible realities" form that from which true unity is
derived, else their partial presence but makes the whole the more
incomplete and lop-sided, if not indeed, top-heavy, from light weight
beneath; and it is in the unity derived from this higher pervading, yet
not too assertive "invisible reality," that Stevenson most often fails,
and is, in his own words, "execrable"; the ending shaming, if not
degrading, the beginning--"and without the true sense of pleasurableness;
and therefore really imperfect _in essence_." Ah, it is to be feared
that Stevenson, viewing it in retrospect, was a far truer critic of his
own work, than many or most of his all too effusive and admiring
critics--from Lord Rosebery to Mr Marriott Watson.

Amid the too extreme deliverances of detractors and especially of
erewhile friends, become detractors or panegyrists, who disturb judgment
by overzeal, which is often but half-blindness, it is pleasant to come on
one who bears the balances in his hand, and will report faithfully as he