which Stevenson really professed as an
object. He says of that glorious riot of horror, 'The Destroying Angel,'
in 'The Dynamiter,' that it is 'highly fantastic and putting a strain on
our credulity.' This is rather like describing the travels of Baron
Munchausen as 'unconvincing.' The whole story of 'The Dynamiter' is a
kind of humorous nightmare, and even in that story 'The Destroying
Angel' is supposed to be an extravagant lie made up on the spur of the
moment. It is a dream within a dream, and to accuse it of improbability
is like accusing the sky of being blue. But Mr Baildon, whether from
hasty reading or natural difference of taste, cannot in the least
comprehend the rich and romantic irony of Stevenson's London stories. He
actually says of that portentous monument of humour, Prince Florizel of
Bohemia, that, 'though evidently admired by his creator, he is to me on
the whole rather an irritating presence.' From this we are almost driven
to believe (though desperately and against our will) that Mr Baildon
thinks that Prince Florizel is to be taken seriously, as if he were a
man in real life. For ourselves, Prince Florizel is almost our favourite
character in fiction; but we willingly add the proviso that if we met
him in real life we should kill him.

The fact is, that the whole mass of Stevenson's spiritual and
intellectual virtues have been partly frustrated by one additional
virtue--that of artistic dexterity. If he had chalked up his great
message on a wall, like Walt Whitman, in large and straggling letters,
it would have startled men like a blasphemy. But he wrote his
light-headed paradoxes in so flowing a copy-book hand that everyone
supposed they must be copy-book sentiments. He suffered from his
versatility, not, as is loosely said, by not doing every department well
enough, but by doing every department too well. As child, cockney,
pirate, or Puritan, his disguises were so good that most people could
not see the same man under all. It is an unjust fact that if a man can
play the fiddle, give legal opinions, and black boots just tolerably, he
is called an Admirable Crichton, but if he does all three thoroughly
well, he is apt to be regarded, in the several departments, as a common
fiddler, a common lawyer, and a common boot-black. This is what has
happened in the case of Stevenson. If 'Dr Jekyll,' 'The Master of
Ballantrae,' 'The Child's Garden of Verses,' and 'Across the Plains' had
been each of them on