1895.] on Robei't Louis Stevenson. 593 



This is the device that gives fascination to the figures of Richelieu 

 in ' Marion Delorme ' and of Captain Flint in ' Treasure Island.' 



" The majesty of death to be exemplified in a beggar, who, after 

 being seen humble and cringing in the streets of a city for many 

 years, at length by some means or other gets admittance into a rich 

 man's mansion, and there dies — assuming state, and striking awe into 

 the breasts of those who had looked down upon him." 



These are all excellent instances of the sort of idea that gives life 

 to a romance — of acts or attitudes that stamp themselves upon the 

 mind's eye. Some of them appeal chiefly to the mind's eye, others 

 are of value chiefly as symbols. But, for the most part, the romantic 

 kernel of a story is neither pure picture nor pure allegory, it can 

 neither be painted nor moralised. It makes its most irresistible 

 appeal neither to the eye that searches for form and colour, nor to 

 the reason that seeks for abstract truth, but to the blood, to all that- 

 dim instinct of danger, mystery, and sympathy in things that is 

 man's oldest inheritance — to the superstitions of the heart. Romance 

 vindicates the supernatural against science, and rescues it from the 

 palsied tutelage of morality. 



Stevenson's work is a gallery of romantic effects that haunt the 

 memory. Some of these are directly pictorial : the fight in the round- 

 house on board the brig Covenant; the duel between the two brothers 

 of Ballantrae in the island of light thrown up by the candles from 

 that abyss of windless night ; the flight of the Princess Seraphina 

 through the dark mazes of the wood, — all these, although they carry 

 with them subtleties beyond the painter's art, yet have something of 

 picture in them. But others make entrance to the corridors of the 

 mind by blind and secret ways, and there awaken the echoes of 

 primeval fear. The cry of the parrot — "Pieces of eight" — the 

 tapping of the stick of the blind pirate Pew as he draws near the inn 

 parlour, and the similar effects of inexplicable terror wrought by the 

 introduction of the blind catechist in ' Kidnapped,' and of the disguise 

 of a blind leper in ' The Black Arrow,' are beyond the reach of any 

 but the literary form of romantic art. The last appearance of Pew, in 

 the play of 'Admiral Guinea,' written in collaboration with Mr. W. E. 

 Henley, is perhaps the masterpiece of all the scenes of terror. The 

 blind ruffian's scream of panic fear, when he puts his groping hand 

 into the burning flame of the candle in the room where he believed 

 that he was unseen, and so realises that his every movement is 

 being silently watched, is indeed " the horrors come alive." 



The animating principle or idea of Stevenson's longer stories is 

 never to be found in their plot, which is generally built carelessly 

 and disjointedly enough around the central romantic situation or 

 conception. The main situation in 'The Wrecker' is a splendid 

 product of romantic inspiration, but the structure of the story is 

 incoherent and ineffective, so that some of the best passages in the 

 book —the scenes in Paris, for instance — have no business there at all. 

 The story in ' Kidnapped ' and ' Catriona ' wanders on in a single 



