son--a thing very, very pardonable--seeing that he is run after
to do "speakings" of this sort; but to go on, in face of such warning and
protest, printing his most misleading errors is not pardonable, and the
legal recorded result is my justification and his condemnation, the more
surely that even that would not awaken him so far as to cause him to
restrain Mr Coates from reproducing in his _Life and Speeches_, just as
it was originally, that peccant passage. I am fully ready to prove also
that, though Chairman of the London County Council for a period, and
though he made a very clever address at one of Sir W. Besant's lectures,
there is much yet--very much--he might learn from Sir W. Besant's
writings on London. It isn't so easy to outshine all the experts--even
for a clever peer who has been Prime Minister, though it is very, very
easy to flatter Lord Rosebery, with a purpose or purposes, as did at
least once also with rarest tact, at Glasgow, indicating so many other
things and possibilities, a certain very courtly ex-Moderator of the
Church of Scotland.

CHAPTER XXXI--MR GOSSE AND MS. OF _TREASURE ISLAND_

Mr Edmund Gosse has been so good as to set down, with rather an air of
too much authority, that both R. L. Stevenson and I deceived ourselves
completely in the matter of my little share in the _Treasure Island_
business, and that too much credit was sought by me or given to me, for
the little service I rendered to R. L. Stevenson, and to the world, say,
in helping to secure for it an element of pleasure through many
generations. I have not _sought_ any recognition from the world in this
matter, and even the mention of it became so intolerable to me that I
eschewed all writing about it, in the face of the most stupid and
misleading statements, till Mr Sidney Colvin wrote and asked me to set
down my account of the matter in my own words. This I did, as it would
have been really rude to refuse a request so graciously made, and the
reader has it in the _Academy_ of 10th March 1900. Nevertheless, Mr
Gosse's statements were revived and quoted, and the thing seemed ever to
revolve again in a round of controversy.

Now, with regard to the reliability in this matter of Mr Edmund Gosse,
let me copy here a little note made at request some time ago, dealing
with two points. The first is this:

1. _Most assuredly_ I carried away from Braemar in my portmanteau, as R.
L. Stevenson says in _Idler's_ article and