In the highest achievements of the art of words, the dramatic and the pictorial, the moral and romantic interest, rise and fall together by a common and organic law. Situation is animated with passion, passion clothed upon with situation. Neither exists for itself, but each inheres indissolubly with the other. This is high art; and not only the highest art possible in words, but the highest art of all, since it combines the greatest mass and diversity of the elements of truth and pleasure. Such are epics, and the few prose tales that have the epic weight.—R. L. Stevenson, A Gossip on Romance.
The stories of Stevenson exhibit a double union, as admirable as it is rare. They exhibit the union of splendid material with the most delicate skill in language; and they exhibit the union of thrilling events with a remarkable power of psychological analysis.—William Lyon Phelps, Essays on Modern Novelists.
Mr. Stevenson enjoys the reputation of being the modern representative of the romantic school of fiction. There are others of high repute, for romanticism is now the vogue, but there is hardly any other whose name we would care to link with that of Walter Scott.—William H. Sheran, Handbook of Literary Criticism.
Perhaps the first quality in Mr. Stevenson’s works, now so many and so various, which strikes a reader, is the buoyancy, the survival of the child in him. He has told the world often, in prose and verse, how vivid are his memories of his own infancy.... The peculiarity of Mr. Stevenson is not only to have been a fantastic child, and to retain, in maturity, that fantasy ripened into imagination: he has also kept up the habit of dramatising everything, of playing, half consciously, many parts, of making the world “an unsubstantial fairy place....” It is the eternal child that drives him to seek adventures and to sojourn among beach-combers and savages.—Andrew Lang, Essays in Little.
It has been stated that the finer qualities of Stevenson are called out by the psychological romance on native soil. He did some brilliant and engaging work of foreign setting and motive.... Judged as art, “The Bottle Imp” and “The Beach of Falesa” are among the triumphs of ethnic interpretation, let alone their more external charms of story. And another masterpiece of foreign setting, “A Lodging for the Night,” is further proof of Stevenson’s ability to use other than Scotch motives for the materials of his art.... Few novelists of any race have beaten this wandering Scot in the power of representing character and envisaging it, and there can hardly be successful characterization without this allied power of creating atmosphere.—Richard Burton, Masters of the English Novel.
Not until 1877, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s first published narrative, does any Englishman of real caliber show both desire and ability to do something new with the short story. This narrative was “A Lodging for the Night,” published in Temple Bar for October.... “A Lodging for the Night” is as clearly and consciously an impressionistic short story as George Meredith’s contemporary novelettes are not of that category; the two stories which followed (“Will o’ the Mill” and “The Sire de Malétroit’s Door”) would assure the most timid critic of our generation that here was a master in this department of fiction.... There is “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” that short story thrown over into the form of a detective romance.... Or there is “Markheim,” a story less powerful in execution, but more excellent in workmanship, and an almost ideal example of the impressionistic short story. Flaubert might have written the description of the curiosity shop as the murderer saw it, with its accusing clock-voices, its wavering shadows, from the inner door “a long slit of daylight like a pointing finger.” And Flaubert would have praised the skilful gradation of incident and description, whereby conscience gains and gains in the struggle for Markheim’s mind. But Hawthorne would have been prouder still of the plot—a weak man with a remnant of high ideals suddenly realizing that his curve is plotted and can lead him only downwards.... How like to Hawthorne’s usual way is Stevenson’s determination to make, at all costs, a moral issue the outcome of his story!... “Will o’ the Mill” is like a twice-told tale not only in theme; its whole effect is Hawthornesque. “A Lodging for the Night” has for its kernel a question of ethics.—H. S. Canby, The Short Story in English.
FURTHER REFERENCES FOR READING ON STEVENSON
Mr. Stevenson’s Methods in Fiction, A. Conan Doyle (1890); Robert Louis Stevenson, An Elegy, Richard Le Gallienne (1895); Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Raleigh (1895); Vailima Letters, to Sidney Colvin (1895); Adventures in Criticism, A. T. Quiller-Couch (1896); Critical Kit-Kats, Edmund W. Gosse (1896); Studies in Two Literatures, Arthur Symons (1897); Life of Robert Louis Stevenson, Graham Balfour (1901); Stevenson’s Attitude to Life, J. F. Genung (1901); Memories of Vailima, Isobel Strong and Lloyd Osbourne (1903); Robert Louis Stevenson, W. R. Nicoll and G. K. Chesterton.
FOR ANALYSIS