38 Sir Sidmy Colvin [Feb. 10, 



question it has become the fashion with a nervous generation to ask, 

 is the question, ' Will lie live ? ' There is no idler question, none more 

 hopelessly impossible and unprofitable to answer." But, at least, 

 added Sir Walter Raleigh, " he has made a brave beginning in that 

 race against Time which all must lose." Sixteen years have passed 

 since Sir Walter Ealeigh spoke, and of the progress of that race we 

 can now see more. That Stevenson holds his own gamely is proved 

 among other things by the fact that you have done me the honour to 

 ask me to speak of him here to-day. The score or so of years following 

 a famous writer's death are those most dangerous for his reputation. 

 They are those in which its decline begins if it is going to suffer early 

 decline at all. At present Stevenson's reputation has undergone no 

 such shake as has befallen those of writers far greater and far more 

 celebrated in their day. I hear, for instance, many clever young 

 people of to-day scoff at Teimyson : and I could beat them for it. 

 Our great Victorian Virgil was truly a Virgil, never doubt it, although 

 he was Victorian. George Eliot, whom the thoughtful readers of my 

 generation thought almost the greatest of novelists — George Eliot's 

 fame threatens to founder — I hope it never may — from the weight of 

 philosophical reflection and formula with which her imagination and 

 her wit and her profound sympathetic knowledge of English provin- 

 cial character were ballasted. Meantime, Stevenson's lighter bark 

 sails on more buoyantly than it ever did. The editions of his works 

 keep multiplying, a new generation of readers thinks even more of 

 him and loves him even better than did his own ; you can scarcely 

 take up any current newspaper or magazine without finding some 

 reference to his name, his dicta on life and letters, or the characters 

 of his creation. If I may speak for a moment from personal experi- 

 ence, the number of letters which reach me, simply as one of his 

 known friends, testifying not only to the delight, but to the strength 

 and courage and comfort in distress received from his work, so far 

 from diminishing, increases. In a word, it looks as if he, if any 

 recent writer, bade fair to become one of the classics, and not one of 

 the neglected but one of the loved and read classics, of our literature. 

 In the time that remains to us let us try and define to ourselves the 

 special qualities which give to Stevenson's work this power to charm 

 and help us, this distinction, this apparent promise of permanence. 



It is often asked, was he a truly great and original mind, or only 

 a skilful refurbisher of old forms and fashions in literature ? And 

 again, did he write any special or single great masterpiece, like the 

 masterpieces of the great novelists, which the world cannot be ex- 

 pected to let die ? Was he a great creator of characters, as Scott 

 was above all, or Dickens or Thackeray or Balzac, or any or the 

 acknowledged masters of fiction you please to name ? These 

 (juestions are not quite easy to answer : let us try. 



As to originality, that depends upon what you mean by the word. 

 If to be original is to startle, to stimulate and bewilder by paradoxes, 



