Essays in the Art of Writing

s, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought. The words, if the book be

o, but the highwayman was my favourite dish. I can still hear that merry clatter of the hoofs along the moonlit lane; night and the coming of day are still related in my mind with the doings of John Rann or Jerry Abershaw;[4] and the words "postchaise," the "great North road,"[5] "ostler," and "nag" still sound in my ears like poetry. One and all, at least, and each with his particular fancy, we read story-books in childhood; not for eloquence or character or thought, but for some quality of the brute incident. That quality was not mere bloodshed or wonder. Although each of these was welcome in its place, the charm for the sake of which we read depended on something different from either. My elders used to read novels aloud; and I can still remember four different passages which I heard, before I was ten, with the same keen and lasting pleasure. One I discov

tive, but the latter is surely the more constant. Conduct is three parts of life,[8] they say; but I think they put it high. There is a vast deal in life and letters both which is not immoral, but simply a-moral; which either does not regard the human will at all, or deals with it in obvious and healthy relations; where the interest turns, not upon what a man shall choose to do, but on how he manages to do it; not on the passionate slips and hesitations of the

ain coasts are set apart for ship-wreck. Other spots again seem to abide their destiny, suggestive and impenetrable, "miching mallecho."[10] The inn at Burford Bridge,[11] with its arbours and green garden and silent, eddying river-though it is known already as the place where Keats wrote some of his Endymion and Nelson parted from his Emma-still seems to wait the coming of the appropriate legend. Within these ivied walls, behind these old green shutters, some further business smoulders, waiting for its hour. The old Hawes Inn at the Queen's Ferry makes a similar call upon my fancy. There it stands, apart from the town, beside the pier, in a climate of its own, half inland, half marine-in front, the ferry bubbling with the tide and the guard-ship swinging to her anchor; behind, the old garden with the trees. Americans seek it already for the sake of Lovel and Oldbuck, who dined there at the beginning of the Antiquary. But you need not tell me-that is not all; there is some story, unrecorded or not yet complete, which must express the meaning of that inn more fully. So

like notes in music. The threads of a story come from time to time together and make a picture in the web; the characters fall from time to time into some attitude to each other or to nature, which stamps the story home like an illustration. Crusoe[13] recoiling from the footprint, Achilles shouting over against the Trojans, Ulysses bending the great bow, Christian running with his fingers in his ears, these are each culminating moments in the legend, and each has been printed on the mind's eye forever. Other things we may forget; we may forget the words, although they are beautiful; we may forget the author's comment, although perhaps it was ingenious and true; but these epoch-making scenes, which put the last mark of truth upon a story and fill up, at one blow, our capacity for sympathetic pleasure, we so adopt into the very bosom of our mind that neither time nor tide can efface or weaken the impression. This, then, is the plastic part of literature: t

olation of the reader. The end of Esmond is a yet wider excursion from the author's customary fields; the scene at Castlewood is pure Dumas;[17] the great and wily English borrower has here borrowed from the great, unblushing French thief; as usual, he has borrowed admirably well, and the breaking of the sword rounds off the best of all his books with a manly, martial note. But perhaps nothing can more strongly illustrate the necessity for marking incident than to compare the living fame of Robinson Crusoe with the discredit of Clarissa Harlowe.[18] Clarissa is a book of a far more startling import, worked out, on a great canvas, with inimitable courage and unflagging art. It contains wit, character, passion, plot, conversations full of spirit and insight, letters sparkling with unstrained humanity; and if the death of the heroine be somewhat frigid and artificial, the last days of the hero strike the only note of what we now call Byronism,[19] between the Elizabethans and Byron himself. And yet a little story of a ship-wrecked sailor, with not a tenth part of the style nor a thousandth part of the wisdom, exploring none of the arcana of humanity and depri

the entertainment and is found enough. Dumas approaches perhaps nearest of any modern to these Arabian authors in the purely material charm of some of his romances. The early part of Monte Cristo, down to the finding of the treasure, is a piece of perfect story-telling; the man never breathed who shared these moving incidents without a tremor; and yet Faria is a thing of packthread and Dantès[20] little more than a name. The sequel is one long-drawn error, gloomy, bloody, unnatural and dull; but as for these early chapters, I do not believe there is another volume extant where you can breathe the same unmingled atmosphere of romance. It is very thin and light, to be sure, as on a high mountain; but it is brisk and clear and sunny in proportion. I saw the other day, with envy, an old and a very clever lady setting forth on a second or third voyage into Monte Cristo. Here are stories which powerfully affect the reader, which can be reperused at any age, and where the characters are no more than puppets. The bony fist of the showman visibly propels them; their springs are an open secret; t

that so bewitched my blacksmith. Nor is the fact surprising. Every single article the castaway recovers from the hulk is "a joy for ever"[24] to the man who reads of them. They are the things that should be found, and the bare enumeration stirs the blood. I found a glimmer of the same interest the other day in a new book, The Sailor's Sweetheart,[25] by Mr. Clark Russell. The whole business of the brig Morning Star is very rightly felt and spiritedly written; but the clothes, the books and the money satisfy the reader's mind like things to eat. We are dealing here with the old cut-and-dry legitimate interest of treasure trove. But even treasure trove can be made dull. There are few people who have not groaned under the plethora of goods that fell to the lot of the Swiss Family Robin

es, they are not us; the more clearly they are depicted, the more widely do they stand away from us, the more imperiously do they thrust us back into our place as a spectator. I cannot identify myself with Rawdon Crawley or with Eugène de Rastignac,[28] for I have scarce a hope or fear in common with them. It is not character but incident that woos us out of our reserve. Something happens as we desire to have it happen to ourselves; some situation, that we have long dallied with in fancy, is realised in the story with enticing and appropriate details. Then we forget the characters; then we push the hero aside; then we plunge into the tale in our own person and bathe in fresh experience; and then, and then only, do we say we have been reading a romance

ventures remain present to the mind, a new and green possession, not unworthy of that beautiful name, The Lady of the Lake,[29] or that direct, romantic opening,-one of the most spirited and poetical in literature,-"The stag at eve had drunk his fill." The same strength and the same weaknesses adorn and disfigure the novels. In that ill-written, ragged book, The Pirate,[30] the figure of Cleveland-cast up by the sea on the resounding foreland of Dunrossness-moving, with the blood on his hands and the Spanis

ecall it to my memory.' He took his flageolet from his pocket and played a simple melody. Apparen

he links of F

y the croo

y woods of

o fain w

d Bertram, 'it is

and the Dominie's recognition of Harry, are the four strong notes that continue to ring in the mind after the book is laid aside. The second point is still more curious. The reader will observe a mark of excision in the passage as quoted by me. Well, here is how it runs in the original: "a damsel, who, close behind a fine spring about half-way down the descent, and which had once supplied the castle with water, was engaged in bleaching linen." A man wh

weak, but frequently wrong in points of drama. In character parts, indeed, and particularly in the Scotch, he was delicate, strong and truthful; but the trite, obliterated features of too many of his heroes have already wearied two generations of readers. At times his characters will speak with something far beyond propriety with a true heroic note; but on the next p

delight, but he had hardly patience to describe it. He was a great day-dreamer, a seer of fit and beautiful and humorous visions, but hardly a great artist; hardly, in the manful sense, an art

O

ht. In the eternal conflict between Romanticism and Realism, Stevenson was heart and soul with the former, and fortunately he lived long enough to see the practical effects of his own precepts and influence. When he began to write, Realism in fiction seemed to have absolute control; when he died, a tremendous reaction in fav

anted me to try. In a way, I have found an answer to the question. But the subject was hardly fit for so chatty a paper, and it is all loose ends. If ever I do my book on the Art of Literature, I shall gather them together and be clear." (Lett

e to Browning's Pacchiarotto etc., Stanza XVIII:-

labar coast. A

rone in 1688, his supporters and those of his descendant

emiah (or Jerry) Abershaw was a highway robber, who infested the roads n

to the charm that these words had for him, for he began a romance with the title, The Great North Road,

h It? One of Bulwer-Lytton's

obliging correspondents to the

re and Dogma (1873) Matthew Arnold asserted with gre

rbour in Pilgrim's Progress, where Christian fell asleep, and lost his ro

meaning of the Dumb Show in the play-scene, Act III, Sc. 2

which are exceedingly important to the student of his art as a poet, were written from Burford Bridge in November 1817. See Colvin's edition of Keats's Letters, pp. 40-46.... "Emma" is Lady Hamilton, whom Admiral Nelson loved.... Queen's Ferry (properly Queensferry) is on the Firth of Forth, Scotland. See a few

o launch the boat with my own hands in Kidnapped. So

childishness; the true gentleman of the Iliad is Hector.... When Ulysses returned home in the Odyssey, he bent with ease the bow that had proved too much for all the suitors of his lonely and faithful wife Penelope.... Chri

Greek heavy-weigh

ad set in, and many of the most hardened realists were forced to write wild romances, or lose their grip on the public. At

nown book is probably Barchester Towers (1857).... Chronicling small beer is the "lame and impotent conclusion" with which Iago finishes his poem (Othello, Act II, Sc. I).... Rawdon Crawley's blow refers to the most memorable scene in Thackeray's great n

he scene Stevenson refers to is where Henry is finally cured of his love for Beatrix, and theatrically breaks his sword in the presence of the royal admirer (Book III, Chap. 13). Alexander Dumas (1803-1370), author of Monte

ame of Robinson Crusoe

rong contrast between

el. For remarks on Cla

r IV a

es dealing with mysteriously-sad heroes were written in imitation of Byron; and young authors wore low, rolling collars, and tried to look depressed. See Gautier's Histoire du Romantisme. Now the

s. Characters in Dumas'

ovels The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859) by George Meredith. Stevenson's idolatrous praise of this particular scene in the novel is curious, for no greater contrast in E

f this book for boyish minds; the details are given with such candour that it seems as if they

a note on George Sand's novel Cons

line of Keats's poem Endymion is "

itten many popular tales of the sea. His first success was The Wreck of the Grosvenor (18

schweizerische Robinson (1812) by J.D. Wyss (1743-1

immense number of romances, which, translated into many languages, have delighted young readers

stignac. A character i

ri

shed in 1810, is as Stevenson implies, not so mu

in 1821. It was the cause of Cooper's writing Th

ering. Also by Sco

has written a large number of sensational works of fiction, very popular with an uncritical class of readers. Perhaps her best-known book is Lady

leg. Mrs. Todgers is a character in Dick

Craigburnfoot. A characte