however artfully intruded, are, alien to the full
result, the unity which is finally craved: Stevenson fails, when he does
fail, distinctly from excess of egotistic regards; he is, as Henley has
said, in the French sense, too _personnel_, and cannot escape from it.
And though these personal regards are exceedingly interesting and indeed
fascinating from the point of view of autobiographical study, they are,
and cannot but be, a drawback on fiction or the disinterested revelation
of life and reality. Instead, therefore, of "the visible world," as the
only thing seen, Stevenson's defect is, that between it and him lies a
cloud strictly self-projected, like breath on a mirror, which dims the
lines of reality and confuses the character marks, in fact melting them
into each other; and in his sympathetic regards, causing them all to
become too much alike. Scott had more of the power of healthy
self-withdrawal, creating more of a free atmosphere, in which his
characters could freely move--though in this, it must be confessed, he
failed far more with women than with men. The very defects poor Carlyle
found in Scott, and for which he dealt so severely with him, as sounding
no depth, are really the basis of his strength, precisely as the absence
of them were the defects of Goethe, who invariably ran his characters
finally into the mere moods of his own mind and the mould of his errant
philosophy, so that they became merely erratic symbols without hold in
the common sympathy. Whether _Walverwandschaften_, _Wilhelm Meister_, or
_Faust_, it is still the same--the company before all is done are
translated into misty shapes that he actually needs to label for our
identification and for his own. Even Mr G. H. Lewes saw this and could
not help declaring his own lack of interest in the latter parts of
Goethe's greatest efforts. Stevenson, too, tends to run his characters
into symbols--his moralist-fabulist determinations are too much for
him--he would translate them into a kind of chessmen, moved or moving on
a board. The essence of romance strictly is, that as the characters will
not submit themselves to the check of reality, the romancer may
consciously, if it suits him, touch them at any point with the magic wand
of symbol, and if he finds a consistency in mere fanciful invention it is
enough. Tieck's _Phantasus_ and George MacDonald's _Phantastes_ are
ready instances illustrative of this. But it is very different with the
sto