1911] on Robert Louis Stevenson. 37 



like a Scottish clan, of native servants. Then his entanglement in 

 the maze of island politics, his hospitalities, his responsibilities, and 

 throuirli and above all the nnceasing, the ever-growing passion and 

 assidnity of work. Some of that work was no doubt partly wasted 

 on material he had not yet fully grasped. Such, at least to my mind, 

 was the series of chapters on the South Seas, composed with incredible 

 labour ; though I am bound to tell you that a more authorised judge, 

 a many-voyaged master-mariner as well as a gifted master-writer — 

 no less a person than Mr. Joseph Conrad — disagrees with me and 

 likes the South Sea l)ook better than " Treasure Island." Such a 

 waste, again, I should say, was the " Footnote to History," dealing 

 in scrupulous detail with the broils, blunders, and intrigues of local 

 politicians on that petty and remote scene. On the other hand his 

 new experiences yielded him much material for his only long novel 

 of modern life, " The Wrecker," as well as a story, the " Beach of 

 Falesa," which breathes, as those say who know the islands best, the 

 very quintessence of the island life and character : they yielded, in 

 tlie " Ebb-tide," some of the most hateful characters and some of 

 the grimmest, but at the same time most vivid and intense, chapters 

 that he ever produced. But it was still Scotland and the thoughts 

 and memories of his home, growing in his exile ever deeper, richer, 

 more charged with emotion and shot through with imagination — it 

 was these that still best inspired him. First came " Catriona," the 

 exquisite if not perfectly well-fitting sequel to " Kidnapped " ; then 

 one project after another conceived and begun but not finished — 

 " Heathercat," the young chevalier, " St. Ives," and lastly " Weir of 

 Hermiston." In this last romance, so far as it was carried, all 

 Stevenson's gifts seemed raised to a new and higher power. It seems 

 as though all his writings up to this date, his forty-fourth year — the 

 age, remember, at which Scott wrote " Waverley " — it seems as if 

 they had all been only so much experiment, only so much preluding 

 on his instrument, and that the day of his full power had only now 

 dawned. But that dawn was never to pass into full noon. His 

 physical powers were not equal to the tension of his mind and 

 spirit. The soothing climate of the South Pacific had relieved and 

 gone far to cure the old paralysing weakness, the old menace from 

 the lungs. But one day, without warning, while he was rallying his 

 wife on the gloomy forebodings that beset her, a blood-vessel broke 

 in his brain, and suddenly, in the midst of his noblest work and 

 happiest projects, he was dead. 



The news of that death reached London, as I have said, in mid- 

 December. You, the Managers of this Institution, showed your sense 

 of its importance by inviting, in the course of the following May, a 

 brilliant young critic as he was then — Sir Walter Raleigh, Professor of 

 English Literature at Oxford, as he is now — to speak of Stevenson 

 to your members in this hall. Among many wise and just things 

 said by the speaker was this : " When a popular writer dies, the 



