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Robert Louis Stevenson-Part23_Alexander H.Japp(1839-1905)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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enough, but they do not, as a rule, make a place for themselves

either in our hearts or memories. If there is an exception it is



Elvira, in PROVIDENCE AND THE GUITAR; but we remember her chiefly

by the one picture of her falling asleep, after the misadventures



of the night, at the supper-table, with her head on her husband's

shoulder, and her hand locked in his with instinctive, almost



unconscious tenderness."

CHAPTER XXVII - MR G. MOORE, MR MARRIOTT WATSON AND OTHERS



FROM our point of view it will therefore be seen that we could not

have read Mr George Moore's wonderfully uncritical and misdirected



diatribe against Stevenson in THE DAILY CHRONICLE of 24th April

1897, without amusement, if not without laughter - indeed, we



confess we may here quote Shakespeare's words, we "laughed so

consumedly" that, unless for Mr Moore's high position and his



assured self-confidence, we should not trust ourselves to refer to

it, not to speak of writing about it. It was a review of THE



SECRET ROSE by W. B. Yeats, but it passed after one single touch to

belittling abuse of Stevenson - an abuse that was justified the



more, in Mr Moore's idea, because Stevenson was dead. Had he been

alive he might have had something to say to it, in the way, at



least, of fable and moral. And when towards the close Mr Moore

again quotes from Mr Yeats, it is still "harping on my daughter" to



undo Stevenson, as though a rat was behind the arras, as in HAMLET.

"Stevenson," says he, "is the leader of these countlesswriters who



perceive nothing but the visible world," and these are antagonistic

to the great literature, of which Mr Yeats's SECRET ROSE is a



survival or a renaissance, a literature whose watchword should be

Mr Yeats's significantphrase, "When one looks into the darkness



there is always something there." No doubt Mr Yeats's product all

along the line ranks with the great literature - unlike Homer,



according to Mr Moore, he never nods, though in the light of great

literature, poor Stevenson is always at his noddings, and more than



that, in the words of Leland's Hans Breitmann, he has "nodings on."

He is poor, naked, miserable - a mere pretender - and has no share



in the makings of great literature. Mr Moore has stripped him to

the skin, and leaves him to the mercy of rain and storm, like Lear,



though Lear had a solid ground to go on in self-aid, which

Stevenson had not; he had daughters, and one of them was Cordelia,



after all. This comes of painting all boldly in black and white:

Mr Yeats is white, R. L. Stevenson is black, and I am sure neither



one nor other, because simply of their self-devotion to their art,

could have subscribed heartily to Mr Moore's black art and white



art theory. Mr Yeats is hardly the truest modern Celtic artist I

take him for, if he can fully subscribe to all this.



Mr Marriott Watson has a little unadvisedly, in my view, too like

ambition, fallen on 'tother side, and celebrated Stevenson as the



master of the horrifying. (11) He even finds the EBB-TIDE, and

Huish, the cockney, in it richly illustrative and grand. "There



never was a more magnificent cad in literature, and never a more

foul-hearted little ruffian. His picture glitters (!) with life,



and when he curls up on the island beach with the bullet in his

body, amid the flames of the vitriol he had intended for another,



the reader's shudder conveys something also, even (!) of regret."

And well it may! Individual taste and opinion are but individual



taste and opinion, but the EBB-TIDE and the cockney I should be

inclined to cite as a specimen of Stevenson's all too facile make-






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