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Robert Louis Stevenson-Part18_Alexander H.Japp(1839-1905)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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New-England romancer passed in the stillness of the night:

"'What though his work unfinished lies? Half bent



The rainbow's arch fades out in upper air,

The shining cataracthalf-way down the height



Breaks into mist; the haunting strain, that fell

On listeners unaware,



Ends incomplete, but through the starry night

The ear still waits for what it did not tell.'"



Dr Edward Eggleston finely sounded the personal note, and told of

having met Stevenson at a hotel in New York. Stevenson was ill



when the landlord came to Dr Eggleston and asked him if he should

like to meet him. Continuing, he said:



"He was flat on his back when I entered, but I think I never saw

anybody grow well in so short a time. It was a soul rather than a



body that lay there, ablaze with spiritual fire, good will shining

through everywhere. He did not pay me any compliment about my



work, and I didn't pay him any about his. We did not burn any of

the incense before each other which authors so often think it



necessary to do, but we were friends instantly. I am not given to

speedy intimacies, but I could not help my heart going out to him.



It was a wonderfully invested soul, no hedges or fences across his

fields, no concealment. He was a romanticist; I was - well, I



don't know exactly what. But he let me into the springs of his

romanticism then and there.



"'You go in your boat every day?' he asked. 'You sail? Oh! to

write a novel a man must take his life in his hands. He must not



live in the town.' And so he spoke, in his broad way, of course,

according to the enthusiasm of the moment.



"I can't sound any note of pathos here to-night. Some lives are so

brave and sweet and joyous and well-rounded, with such a



completeness about them that death does not leave imperfection. He

never had the air of sitting up with his own reputation. He let



his books toss in the waves of criticism and make their ports if

they deserve to. He had no claptrap, no great cause, none of the



disease of pruriency which came into fashion with Flaubert and Guy

de Maupassant. He simply told his story, with no condescension,



taking the readers into his heart and his confidence."

CHAPTER XX - EGOTISTIC ELEMENT AND ITS EFFECTS



FROM these sources now traced out by us - his youthfulness of

spirit, his mystical bias, and tendency to dream - symbolisms



leading to disregard of common feelings - flows too often the

indeterminateness of Stevenson's work, at the very points where for



direct interest there should be decision. In THE MASTER OF

BALLANTRAE this leads him to try to bring the balances even as



regards our interest in the two brothers, in so far justifying from

one point of view what Mr Zangwill said in the quotation we have



given, or, as Sir Leslie Stephen had it in his second series of the

STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER:



"The younger brother in THE MASTER OF BALLANTRAE, who is black-

mailed by the utterly reprobate master, ought surely to be



interesting instead of being simply sullen and dogged. In the

later adventures, we are invited to forgive him on the ground that



his brain has been affected: but the impression upon me is that he

is sacrificed throughout to the interests of the story [or more



strictly for the working out of the problem as originally conceived

by the author]. The curious exclusion of women is natural in the



purely boyish stories, since to a boy woman is simply an

incumbrance upon reasonable modes of life. When in CATRIONA



Stevenson introduces a love story, it is still unsatisfactory,

because David Balfour is so much the undeveloped animal that his



passion is clumsy, and his charm for the girl unintelligible. I

cannot feel, to say the truth, that in any of these stories I am



really among living human beings with whom, apart from their




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