t, having had some seeds of plants sent to him from
Northern Scotland to the South, celebrated his setting of them beside
those native to the Surrey slope on which he dwelt, with the lines--

"And when the Northern seeds are growing,
Another beauty then bestowing,
We shall be fine, and North to South
Be giving kisses, mouth to mouth."

So the Thoreau influence on Stevenson was as if a tart American
wild-apple had been grafted on an English pippin, and produced a wholly
new kind with the flavours of both; and here wild America and England
kissed each other mouth to mouth.

The direct result was the essay in _The Cornhill_, but the indirect
results were many and less easily assessed, as Stevenson himself, as we
shall see, was ever ready to admit. The essay on Thoreau was written in
America, which further, perhaps, bears out my point.

One of the authorities, quoted by Mr Hammerton, in _Stevensoniana_ says
of the circumstances in which he found our author, when he was busily
engaged on that bit of work:

"I have visited him in a lonely lodging in California, it was previous
to his happy marriage, and found him submerged in billows of
bed-clothes; about him floated the scattered volumes of a complete set
of Thoreau; he was preparing an essay on that worthy, and he looked at
the moment like a half-drowned man, yet he was not cast down. His
work, an endless task, was better than a straw to him. It was to
become his life-preserver and to prolong his years. I feel convinced
that without it he must have surrendered long since. I found
Stevenson a man of the frailest physique, though most unaccountably
tenacious of life; a man whose pen was indefatigable, whose brain was
never at rest, who, as far as I am able to judge, looked upon
everybody and everything from a supremely intellectual point of view."
{1}

We remember the common belief in Yorkshire and other parts that a man
could not die so long as he could stand up--a belief on which poor
Branwell Bronte was fain to act and to illustrate, but R. L. Stevenson
illustrated it, as this writer shows, in a better, calmer, and healthier
way, despite his lack of health.

On some little points of fact, however, Stevenson was wrong; and I wrote
to the Editor of _The Spectator_ a letter, titled, I think, "Thoreau's
Pity and Humour," which he inserted. This brought me a private letter
from Stevenson, who expressed the wish t