Dear Mr. Sharp,
Yes, I was annoyed with you, but let us bury that; you have shown so much good nature under my refusal that I have blotted out the record.
And to show I have repented of my wrath: is your article written? If not, you might like to see early sheets of my volume of verse, not very good, but still—and the Scotch ones would amuse you I believe. And you might like also to see the plays I have written with Mr. Henley: let me know, and you shall have them as soon as I can manage.
Yours very truly,
Robert Louis Stevenson.
The notice I had seen already, and was pleased with.
After the appearance of the review of Underwoods, R. L. S. wrote again:
Dear Mr. Sharp,
What is the townsman’s blunder?—though I deny I am a townsman, for I have lived, on the whole, as much or more in the country: well, perhaps not so much. Is it that the thrush does not sing at night? That is possible. I only know most potently the blackbird (his cousin) does: many and many a late evening in the garden of that poem have I listened to one that was our faithful visitor; and the sweetest song I ever heard was past nine at night in the early spring, from a tree near the N. E. gate of Warriston cemetery. That I called what I believe to have been a merle by the softer name of mavis (and they are all turdi, I believe) is the head and front of my offence against literal severity, and I am curious to hear if it has really brought me into some serious error.
Your article is very true and very kindly put: I have never called my verses poetry: they are verse, the verse of a speaker not a singer; but that is a fair business like another. I am of your mind too in preferring much the Scotch verses, and in thinking “Requiem” the nearest thing to poetry that I have ever “clerkit.”