Emerson and Other Essays

by John Jay Chapman

There is a tincture of Carlyle in this mixture. There are a good many pages of Gothic type in the later essays, for Stevenson thought it the proper tone in which to speak of death, duty, immortality, and such subjects as that. He derived this impression from the works of Sir Thomas Browne. But the solemnity of Sir Thomas Browne is like a melodious thunder, deep, sweet, unconscious, ravishing.

"Time sadly overcometh all things and is now dominant and sitteth upon a sphinx and looketh upon Memphis and old Thebes, while his sister Oblivion reclineth semi-somnous upon a pyramid, gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of Titanian erections, and turning old glories into dreams. History sinketh beneath her cloud. The traveller as he passeth through these deserts asketh of her 'who builded them?' And she mumbleth something, but what it is he heareth not."

The frenzy to produce something like this sadly overcomes Stevenson, in his later essays. But perhaps it were to reason too curiously to pin Stevenson down to Browne. All the old masters stalk like spectres through his pages, and among them are the shades of the moderns, even men that we have dined with.

According to Stevenson, a certain kind of subject requires a certain "treatment," and the choice of his tone follows his title. These "treatments" are always traditional, and even his titles tread closely on the heels of former titles. He can write the style of Charles Lamb better than Lamb could do it himself, and his Hazlitt is very nearly as good. He fences with his left hand as well as with his right, and can manage two styles at once like Franz Liszt playing the allegretto from the 7th symphony with an air of Offenbach twined about it.

It is with a pang of disappointment that we now and then come across a style which we recognize, yet cannot place.

People who take enjoyment in the reminiscences awakened by conjuring of this kind can nowhere in the world find a master like Stevenson. Those persons belong to the bookish classes. Their numbers are insignificant, but they are important because they give countenance to the admiration of others who love Stevenson with their hearts and souls.

The reason why Stevenson represents a backward movement in literature, is that literature lives by the pouring into it of new words from speech, and new thoughts from life, and Stevenson used all his powers to exclude both from his work. He lived and wrote in the past. That this Scotchman should appear at the end of what has been a very great period of English literature, and summarize the whole of it in his two hours' traffic on the stage, gives him a strange place in the history of that literature. He is the Improvisatore, and nothing more. It is impossible to assign him rank in any line of writing. If you shut your eyes to try and place him, you find that you cannot do it. The effect he produces while we are reading him vanishes as we lay down the book, and we can recall nothing but a succession of flavors. It is not to be expected that posterity will take much interest in him, for his point and meaning are impressional. He is ephemeral, a shadow, a reflection. He is the mistletoe of English literature whose roots are not in the soil but in the tree.

But enough of the nature and training of Stevenson which fitted him to play the part he did. The cyclonic force which turned him from a secondary London novelist into something of importance and enabled him to give full play to his really unprecedented talents will be recognized on glancing about us.

We are now passing through the age of the Distribution of Knowledge. The spread of the English-speaking race since 1850, and the cheapness of printing, have brought in primers and handbooks by the million. All the books of the older literatures are being abstracted and sown abroad in popular editions. The magazines fulfil the same function; every one of them is a penny cyclopedia. Andrew Lang heads an army of organized workers who mine in the old literature and coin it into booklets and cash.

The American market rules the supply of light literature in Great Britain. While Lang culls us tales and legends and lyrics from the Norse or Provensal, Stevenson will engage to supply us with tales and legends of his own—something just as good. The two men serve the same public.