586 Professor Walter Baleigli [May 17, 



But ye ? — O ye who linger still 

 Here in your fortress on the hiil, 

 With placid face, with tranquil breath, 

 The unsought volunteers of death, 

 Our cheerful General on high 

 With careless looks may pass you by ! " 



And the fact of death, which has damped and darkened the writings 

 of so many minor poets, does not cast a pallor on his conviction. 

 Life is of value, only because it can be spent, or given ; and the 

 love of God coveted the position, and assumed mortality. If a man 

 treasure and hug his life, one thing only is certain, that he will be 

 robbed some day, and cut the pitiable and futile figure of one who 

 has been saving candle-ends in a house that is on fire. Better than 

 this to have a foolish spendthrift blaze and the loving cup going 

 round. Stevenson speaks almost with a personal envy of the conduct 

 of the four marines of the Wager. There was no room for them in 

 the boat, and they were left on a desert island to a certain death. 

 " They were soldiers, they said, and knew well enough it was their 

 business to die ; and as their comrades pulled away, they stood upon 

 the beach, gave three cheers, and cried, ' God bless the king ! ' 

 Now, one or two of those who were in the boat escaped, against all 

 likelihood, to tell the story. That was a great thing for us " — even 

 when life is extorted it may be given nobly, with ceremony and 

 courtesy. So strong was Stevenson's admiration for heroic graces 

 like these that in the requiem that appears in his poems he speaks 

 of an ordinary death as of a hearty exploit, and draws his figures 

 from lives of adventure and toil : — 



" Under the wide and starry sky 

 Dig the grave and let me lie. 

 Glad did I live and gladly die, 



And I laid me down with a will. 

 This be the verse you grave for me : 

 Here he lies where he longed to be, 

 Home is the sailor, home from the sea, 



And the hunter home from the hill." 



This man should surely have been honoured with the pomp and 

 colour and music of a soldier's funeral. 



The most remarkable feature of the work he has left is its singular 

 combination of style and romance. It has so happened, and the 

 accident has gained almost the strength of a tradition, that the most 

 assiduous followers of romance have been careless stylists. They 

 have trusted to the efficacy of their situation and incident, and have 

 too often cared little about the manner of its presentation. By an 

 odd piece of irony, style has been left to the cultivation of those who 

 have little or nothing to tell. Sir Walter Scott himself, with all his 

 splendid romantic and tragic gifts, often, in Stevenson's perfectly 

 just phrase, " fobs us off with languid and inarticulate twaddle." He 

 wrote carelessly and genially, and then breakfasted, and began the 



