simple, would have been subdued in face of the great facts of life;

if not lost, swallowed up in the grandeur, pathos, and awe of the
tragedy clearly realised and presented.

CHAPTER XVIII - EARLIER DETERMINATIONS AND RESULTS
STEVENSON'S earlier determination was so distinctly to the

symbolic, the parabolic, allegoric, dreamy and mystical - to
treatment of the world as an array of weird or half-fanciful

existences, witnessing only to certain dim spiritual facts or
abstract moralities, occasionally inverted moralities - "tail

foremost moralities" as later he himself named them - that a strong
Celtic strain in him had been detected and dwelt on by acute

critics long before any attention had been given to his genealogy
on both sides of the house. The strong Celtic strain is now amply

attested by many researches. Such phantasies as THE HOUSE OF ELD,
THE TOUCHSTONE, THE POOR THING, and THE SONG OF THE MORROW,

published along with some fables at the end of an edition of DR
JEKYLL AND MR HYDE, by Longman's, I think, in 1896, tell to the

initiated as forcibly as anything could tell of the presence of
this element, as though moonshine, disguising and transfiguring,

was laid over all real things and the secret of the world and life
was in its glamour: the shimmering and soft shading rendering all

outlines indeterminate, though a great idea is felt to be present
in the mind of the author, for which he works. The man who would

say there is no feeling for symbol - no phantasy or Celtic glamour
in these weird, puzzling, and yet on all sides suggestive tales

would thereby be declared inept, inefficient - blind to certain
qualities that lie near to grandeur in fanciful literature, or the

literature of phantasy, more properly.
This power in weird and playful phantasy is accompanied with the

gift of impersonating or embodying mere abstract qualities or
tendencies in characters. The little early sketch written in June

1875, titled GOOD CONTENT, well illustrates this:
"Pleasure goes by piping: Hope unfurls his purple flag; and meek

Content follows them on a snow-white ass. Here, the broad sunlight
falls on open ways and goodly countries; here, stage by stage,

pleasant old towns and hamlets border the road, now with high sign-
poles, now with high minster spires; the lanes go burrowing under

blossomed banks, green meadows, and deep woods encompass them
about; from wood to wood flock the glad birds; the vane turns in

the variable wind; and as I journey with Hope and Pleasure, and
quite a company of jolly personifications, who but the lady I love

is by my side, and walks with her slim hand upon my arm?
"Suddenly, at a corner, something beckons; a phantom finger-post, a

will o' the wisp, a foolish challenge writ in big letters on a
brand. And twisting his red moustaches, braggadocio Virtue takes

the perilous way where dim rain falls ever, and sad winds sigh.
And after him, on his white ass, follows simpering Content.

"Ever since I walk behind these two in the rain. Virtue is all a-
cold; limp are his curling feather and fierce moustache. Sore

besmirched, on his jackass, follows Content."
The record, entitled SUNDAY THOUGHTS, which is dated some five days

earlier is naive and most characteristic" target="_blank" title="a.特有的 n.特性">characteristic, touched with the
phantastic moralities and suggestions already indicated in every

sentence; and rises to the fine climax in this respect at the
close.

"A plague o' these Sundays! How the church bells ring up the
sleeping past! I cannot go in to sermon: memories ache too hard;

and so I hide out under the blue heavens, beside the small kirk
whelmed in leaves. Tittering country girls see me as I go past

from where they sit in the pews, and through the open door comes
the loud psalm and the ferventsolitary voice of the preacher. To

and fro I wander among the graves, and now look over one side of
the platform and see the sunlit meadow where the grown lambs go

bleating and the ewes lie in the shadow under their heaped fleeces;
and now over the other, where the rhododendrons flower fair among

the chestnut boles, and far overhead the chestnut lifts its thick
leaves and spiry blossom into the dark-blue air. Oh, the height

and depth and thickness of the chestnut foliage! Oh, to have wings
like a dove, and dwell in the tree's green heart!

. . . . . . . .
"A plague o' these Sundays! How the Church bells ring up the

sleeping past! Here has a maddening memory broken into my brain.
To the door, to the door, with the naked lunatic thought! Once it

is forth we may talk of what we dare not entertain; once the
intriguing thought has been put to the door I can watch it out of

the loophole where, with its fellows, it raves and threatens in
dumb show. Years ago when that thought was young, it was dearer to

me than all others, and I would speak with it always when I had an
hour alone. These rags that so dismally trick forth its madness

were once the splendid livery my favour wrought for it on my bed at
night. Can you see the device on the badge? I dare not read it

there myself, yet have a guess - 'BAD WARE NICHT' - is not that the
humour of it?

. . . . . . . . .
"A plague o' these Sundays! How the Church bells ring up the

sleeping past! If I were a dove and dwelt in the monstrous
chestnuts, where the bees murmur all day about the flowers; if I

were a sheep and lay on the field there under my comelyfleece; if
I were one of the quiet dead in the kirkyard - some homespun farmer

dead for a long age, some dull hind who followed the plough and
handled the sickle for threescore years and ten in the distant

past; if I were anything but what I am out here, under the sultry
noon, between the deep chestnuts, among the graves, where the

fervent voice of the preacher comes to me, thin and solitary,
through the open windows; IF I WERE WHAT I WAS YESTERDAY, AND WHAT,

BEFORE GOD, I SHALL BE AGAIN TO-MORROW, HOW SHOULD I OUTFACE THESE
BRAZEN MEMORIES, HOW LIVE DOWN THIS UNCLEAN RESURRECTION OF DEAD

HOPES!"
Close associated with this always is the moralising faculty, which

is assertive. Take here the cunning sentences on SELFISHNESS AND
EGOTISM, very Hawthornian yet quite original:

"An unconscious, easy, selfish person shocks less, and is more
easily loved, than one who is laboriously and egotistically

unselfish. There is at least no fuss about the first; but the
other parades his sacrifices, and so sells his favours too dear.

Selfishness is calm, a force of nature; you might say the trees
were selfish. But egotism is a piece of vanity; it must always

take you into its confidence; it is uneasy, troublesome, seeking;
it can do good, but not handsomely; it is uglier, because less

dignified, than selfishness" target="_blank" title="n.自私；不顾别人">selfishness itself."
If Mr Henley had but had this clear in his mind he might well have

quoted it in one connection against Stevenson himself in the PALL
MALL MAGAZINE article. He could hardly have quoted anything more

apparently apt to the purpose.
In the sphere of minor morals there is no more important topic.

Unselfishness" target="_blank" title="n.自私；不顾别人">selfishness is too often only the most exasperating form of
selfishness" target="_blank" title="n.自私；不顾别人">selfishness. Here is another very characteristic" target="_blank" title="a.特有的 n.特性">characteristic bit:

"You will always do wrong: you must try to get used to that, my
son. It is a small matter to make a work about, when all the world

is in the same case. I meant when I was a young man to write a
great poem; and now I am cobbling little prose articles and in

excellent good spirits. I thank you. . . . Our business in life is
not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits."

Again:
"It is the mark of good action that it appears inevitable in the

retrospect. We should have been cut-throats to do otherwise. And
there's an end. We ought to know distinctly that we are damned for

what we do wrong; but when we have done right, we have only been
gentlemen, after all. There is nothing to make a work about."

The moral to THE HOUSE OF ELD is incisive writ out of true
experience - phantasy there becomes solemn, if not, for the nonce,

tragic:-
"Old is the tree and the fruit good,

Very old and thick the wood.
Woodman, is your courage stout?

Beware! the root is wrapped about