of Robert Louis Stevenson from most of those who knew him. It is a
most grave and dreadfulaccusation, and it is not minimised by Mr

Henley's acknowledgment that Stevenson was a good fellow. We all
know the air of false candour which lends a disputant so much

advantage in debate. In Victor Hugo's tremendousindictment of
Napoleon le Petit we remember the telling allowance for fine

horsemanship. It spreads an air of impartiality over the most
mordant of Hugo's pages. It is meant to do that. An insignificant

praise is meant to show how a whole Niagara of blame is poured on
the victim of invective in all sincerity, and even with a touch of

reluctance.
"Mr Henley, despite his absurdities of ''Tis' and 'it were,' is a

fairly competentliterary craftsman, and he is quite gifted enough
to make a plain man's plain meaning an evident thing if he chose to

do it. But if for the friend for whom 'first and last he did
share' he can only show us the figure of one 'who was at bottom an

excellent fellow,' and who had 'an entire contempt' for the
consequences of his own acts, he presents a picture which can only

purposely be obscured. . . .
"All I know of Robert Louis Stevenson I have learned from his

books, and from one unexpected impromptu letter which he wrote to
me years ago in friendly recognition of my own work. I add the

testimonies of friends who may have been of less actual service to
him than Mr Henley, but who surely loved him better and more

lastingly. These do not represent him as the victim of an
overweening personal vanity, nor as a person reckless of the

consequences of his own acts, nor as a Pecksniff who consoled
himself for moral failure out of the Shorter Catechism. The books

and the friends amongst them show me an erratic yet lovable
personality, a man of devotion and courage, a loyal, charming, and

rather irresponsible person whose very slight faults were counter-
balanced many times over by very solid virtues....

"To put the thing flatly, it is not a heroism to cling to mere
existence. The basest of us can do that. But it is a heroism to

maintain an equable and unbrokencheerfulness in the face of death.
For my own part, I never bowed at the literaryshrine Mr Henley and

his friends were at so great pains to rear. I am not disposed to
think more loftily than I ever thought of their idol. But the Man

- the Man was made of enduringvalour and childlike charm, and
these will keep him alive when his detractors are dead and buried."

As to the Christian name, it is notorious that he was christened
Robert Lewis - the Lewis being after his maternalgrandfather - Dr

Lewis Balfour. Some attempt has been made to show that the Louis
was adopted because so many cousins and relatives had also been so

christened; but the most likely explanation I have ever heard was
that his father changed the name to Louis, that there might be no

chance through it of any notion of association with a very
prominent noisy person of the name of Lewis, in Edinburgh, towards

whom Thomas Stevenson felt dislike, if not positive animosity.
Anyhow, it is clear from the entries in the register of pupils at

the Edinburgh Academy, in the two years when Stevenson was there,
that in early youth he was called Robert only; for in the school

list for 1862 the name appears as Robert Stevenson, without the
Lewis, while in the 1883 list it is given as Lewis Robert

Stevenson. Clearly if in earlier years Stevenson was, in his
family and elsewhere, called ROBERT, there could have then arisen

no risk of confusion with any of his relatives who bore the name of
Lewis; and all this goes to support the view which I have given

above. Anyhow he ceased to be called Robert at home, and ceased in
1863 to be Robert on the Edinburgh Academy list, and became Lewis

Robert. Whether my view is right or not, he was thenceforward
called Louis in his family, and the name uniformly spelt Louis.

What blame on Stevenson's part could be attached to this family
determination it is hard to see - people are absolutely free to

spell their names as they please, and the matter would not be worth
a moment's attention, or the waste of one drop of ink, had not Mr

Henley chosen to be very nasty about the name, and in the PALL MALL
MAGAZINE article persisted in printing it Lewis as though that were

worthy of him and of it. That was not quite the unkindest cut of
all, but it was as unkind as it was trumpery. Mr Christie Murray

neatly set off the trumpery spite of this in the following passage:
"Stevenson, it appears, according to his friend's judgment, was

'incessantly and passionately interested in Stevenson,' but most of
us are incessantly and passionately interested in ourselves. 'He

could not be in the same room with a mirror but he must invite its
confidences every time he passed it.' I remember that George Sala,

who was certainly under no illusion as to his own personal aspect,
made public confession" target="_blank" title="n.招供；认错；交待">confession of an identical foible. Mr Henley may not

have an equal affection for the looking-glass, but he is a very
poor and unimaginative reader who does not see him gloating over

the god-like proportions of the shadow he sends sprawling over his
own page. I make free to say that a more self-conscious person

than Mr Henley does not live. 'The best and most interesting part
of Stevenson's life will never get written - even by me,' says Mr

Henley.
"There is one curious little mark of animus, or one equally curious

affectation - I do not profess to know which, and it is most
probably a compound of the two - in Mr Henley's guardedly spiteful

essay which asks for notice. The dead novelist signed his second
name on his title-pages and his private correspondence 'Louis.' Mr

Henley spells it 'Lewis.' Is this intended to say that Stevenson
took an ornamenting liberty with his own baptismal appellation? If

so, why not say the thing and have done with it? Or is it one of
Mr Henley's wilful ridiculosities? It seems to stand for some sort

of meaning, and to me, at least, it offers a jarring hint of small
spitefulness which might go for nothing if it were not so well

borne out by the general tone of Mr Henley's article. It is a
small matter enough, God knows, but it is precisely because it is

so very small that it irritates."
CHAPTER XXVI - HERO-VILLAINS

IN truth, it must indeed be here repeated that Stevenson for the
reason he himself gave about DEACON BRODIE utterly fails in that

healthy hatred of "fools and scoundrels" on which Carlyle somewhat
incontinently dilated. Nor does he, as we have seen, draw the line

between hero and villain of the piece, as he ought to have done;
and, even for his own artistic purposes, has it too much all on one

side, to express it simply. Art demands relief from any one phase
of human nature, more especially of that phase, and even from what

is morbid or exceptional. Admitting that such natures, say as
Huish, the cockney, in the EBB-TIDE on the one side, and Prince

Otto on the other are possible, it is yet absolutely demanded that
they should not stand ALONE, but have their due complement and

balance present in the piece also to deter and finally to tell on
them in the action. If "a knave or villain," as George Eliot aptly

said, is but a fool with a circumbendibus, this not only wants to
be shown, but to have that definite human counterpart and

corrective; and this not in any indirect and perfunctory way, but
in a direct and effective sense. It is here that Stevenson fails -

fails absolutely in most of his work, save the very latest - fails,
as has been shown, in THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, as it were almost

of perverse and set purpose, in lack of what one might call ethical
decision which causes him to waver or seem to waver and wobble in

his judgment of his characters or in his sympathy with them or for
them. Thus he fails to give his readers the proper cue which was

his duty both as man and artist to have given. The highest art and
the lowest are indeed here at one in demanding moral poise, if we

may call it so, that however crudely in the low, and however
artistically and refinedly in the high, vice should not only not be

set forth as absolutely triumphing, nor virtue as being absolutely,
outwardly, and inwardly defeated. It is here the same in the

melodrama of the transpontine theatre as in the tragedies of the
Greek dramatists and Shakespeare. "The evening brings a' 'hame'"

and the end ought to show something to satisfy the innate craving
(for it is innate, thank Heaven! and low and high alike in moments

of ELEVATED IMPRESSION, acknowledge it and bow to it) else there
can scarce be true DENOUEMENT and the sense of any moral rectitude

or law remain as felt or acknowledged in human nature or in the
Universe itself.

Stevenson's toleration and constant sermonising in the essays - his
desire to make us yield allowances all round is so far, it may be,

there in place; but it will not work out in story or play, and