Ballantrae_.

"No thought have I now apart from it, and I have got along up to page
ninety-two of the draught with great interest. It is to me a most
seizing tale: there are some fantastic elements, the most is a dead
genuine human problem--human tragedy, I should say rather. It will be
about as long, I imagine, as _Kidnapped_. . . . I have done most of
the big work, the quarrel, duel between the brothers, and the
announcement of the death to Clementina and my Lord--Clementina,
Henry, and Mackellar (nicknamed Squaretoes) are really very fine
fellows; the Master is all I know of the devil; I have known hints of
him, in the world, but always cowards: he is as bold as a lion, but
with the same deadly, causeless duplicity I have watched with so much
surprise in my two cowards. 'Tis true, I saw a hint of the same
nature in another man who was not a coward; but he had other things to
attend to; the Master has nothing else but his devilry."

His wife grows seriously ill, and Stevenson has to turn to household
work.

"Lloyd and I get breakfast; I have now, 10.15, just got the dishes
washed and the kitchen all clean, and sit down to give you as much
news as I have spirit for, after such an engagement. Glass is a thing
that really breaks my spirit; and I do not like to fail, and with
glass I cannot reach the work of my high calling--the artist's."

In the midst of such domestic tasks and entanglements he writes _The
Master_, and very characteristically gets dissatisfied with the last
parts, "which shame, perhaps degrade, the beginning."

Of Mr Kipling this is his judgment--in the year 1890:

"Kipling is by far the most promising young man who has appeared
since--ahem--I appeared. He amazes me by his precocity and various
endowments. But he alarms me by his copiousness and haste. He should
shield his fire with both hands, 'and draw up all his strength and
sweetness in one ball.' ('Draw all his strength and all his sweetness
up into one ball'? I cannot remember Marvell's words.) So the
critics have been saying to me; but I was never capable of--and surely
never guilty of--such a debauch of production. At this rate his works
will soon fill the habitable globe, and surely he was armed for better
conflicts than these succinct sketches and flying leaves of verse? I
look on, I admire, I rejoice for myself; but in a kind of ambition