ut I will say that I do not remember ever to have heard
Mr Stevenson utter a word against any mortal, friend or foe. Even in
a case where he had, or believed himself to have, received some wrong,
his comment was merely humorous. Especially when very young, his
dislike of respectability and of the _bourgeois_ (a literary
tradition) led him to show a kind of contempt for virtues which,
though certainly respectable, are no less certainly virtuous. He was
then more or less seduced by the Bohemian legend, but he was
intolerant of the fudge about the rights and privileges of genius. A
man's first business, he thought, was 'keep his end up' by his work.
If, what he reckoned his inspired work would not serve, then by
something else. Of many virtues he was an ensample and an inspiring
force. One foible I admit: the tendency to inopportune benevolence.
Mr Graham Balfour says that if he fell into ill terms with a man he
would try to do him good by stealth. Though he had seen much of the
world and of men, this practice showed an invincible ignorance of
mankind. It is improbable, on the doctrine of chances, that he was
always in the wrong; and it is probable, as he was human, that he
always thought himself in the right. But as the other party to the
misunderstanding, being also human, would necessarily think himself in
the right, such secret benefits would be, as Sophocles says, 'the
gifts of foeman and unprofitable.' The secret would leak out, the
benefits would be rejected, the misunderstanding would be embittered.
This reminds me of an anecdote which is not given in Mr Graham
Balfour's biography. As a little delicate, lonely boy in Edinburgh,
Mr Stevenson read a book called _Ministering Children_. I have a
faint recollection of this work concerning a small Lord and Lady
Bountiful. Children, we know, like to 'play at' the events and
characters they have read about, and the boy wanted to play at being a
ministering child. He 'scanned his whole horizon' for somebody to
play with, and thought he had found his playmate. From the window he
observed street boys (in Scots 'keelies') enjoying themselves. But
one child was out of the sports, a little lame fellow, the son of a
baker. Here was a chance! After some misgivings Louis hardened his
heart, put on his cap, walked out--a refined little figure--approached
the objec