s has overtaken him and it.

From the whole business--since "free, gratis, for nothing," I offered him
as good advice as any lawyer in the three kingdoms could have done for
large payment, and since he never deemed it worth while, even to tell me
the results of his reference to _Familiar Studies_, I here and now say
deliberately that his conduct to me was scarcely so courteous and
grateful and graceful as it might have been. How different--very
different--the way in which the late R. L. Stevenson rewarded me for a
literary service no whit greater or more essentially valuable to him than
this service rendered to Lord Rosebery might have been to him.

This chapter would most probably not have been printed, had not Mr Coates
re-issued the inadequate and most misleading paragraph about Mr Stevenson
and style in his Lord Rosebery's _Life and Speeches_ exactly as it was
before, thus perpetuating at once the error and the wrong, in spite of
all my trouble, warnings, and protests. It is a tragicomedy, if not a
farce altogether, considering who are the principal actors in it. And
let those who have copies of the queer prohibited book cherish them and
thank me; for that I do by this give a new interest and value to it as a
curiosity, law-inhibited, if not as high and conscientious
literature--which it is not.

I remember very well about the time Lord Rosebery spoke on Burns, and
Stevenson, and London, that certain London papers spoke of his
deliverances as indicating more knowledge--fuller and exacter
knowledge--of all these subjects than the greatest professed experts
possessed. That is their extravagant and most reckless way, especially
if the person spoken about is a "great politician" or a man of rank. They
think they are safe with such superlatives applied to a brilliant and
clever peer (with large estates and many interests), and an ex-Prime
Minister! But literature is a republic, and it must here be said, though
all unwillingly, that Lord Rosebery is but an amateur--a superficial
though a clever amateur after all, and their extravagances do not change
the fact. I declare him an amateur in Burns' literature and study
because of what I have said elsewhere, and there are many points to add
to that if need were. I have proved above from his own words that he was
crassly and unpardonably ignorant of some of the most important points in
R. L. Stevenson's development when he delivered that address in Edinburgh
on Steven