int that Stevenson more constantly and passionately emphasised
than any other it was that we must worship good for its own value and
beauty, without any reference whatever to victory or failure in space
and time. "Whatever we are intended to do," he said, "we are not
intended to succeed." That the stars in their courses fight against
virtue, that humanity is in its nature a forlorn hope, this was the very
spirit that through the whole of Stevenson's work sounded a trumpet to
all the brave. The story of Henry Durie is dark enough, but could anyone
stand beside the grave of that sodden monomaniac and not respect him? It
is strange that men should see sublime inspiration in the ruins of an
old church and see none in the ruins of a man.

The author has most extraordinary ideas about Stevenson's tales of blood
and spoil; he appears to think that they prove Stevenson to have had (we
use Mr. Baildon's own phrase) a kind of "homicidal mania." "He
[Stevenson] arrives pretty much at the paradox that one can hardly be
better employed than in taking life." Mr. Baildon might as well say that
Dr. Conan Doyle delights in committing inexplicable crimes, that Mr.
Clark Russell is a notorious pirate, and that Mr. Wilkie Collins thought
that one could hardly be better employed than in stealing moonstones
and falsifying marriage registers. But Mr. Baildon is scarcely alone in
this error: few people have understood properly the goriness of
Stevenson. Stevenson was essentially the robust schoolboy who draws
skeletons and gibbets in his Latin grammar. It was not that he took
pleasure in death, but that he took pleasure in life, in every muscular
and emphatic action of life, even if it were an action that took the
life of another.

Let us suppose that one gentleman throws a knife at another gentleman
and pins him to the wall. It is scarcely necessary to remark that there
are in this transaction two somewhat varying personal points of view.
The point of view of the man pinned is the tragic and moral point of
view, and this Stevenson showed clearly that he understood in such
stories as "The Master of Ballantrae" and "Weir of Hermiston." But there
is another view of the matter--that in which the whole act is an abrupt
and brilliant explosion of bodily vitality, like breaking a rock with a
blow of a hammer, or just clearing a five-barred gate. This is the
standpoint of romance, and it is the soul of "Treasure Island" and "The
Wrecker." It was not