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Essays of Travel-Part24_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON(1850-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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'The Soldier's Funeral,' in the declamation of which I was held to



have surpassed myself. 'Robert's voice,' said the master on this

memorable occasion, 'is not strong, but impressive': an opinion



which I was fool enough to carry home to my father; who roasted me

for years in consequence. I am sure one should not be so deliciously



tickled by the humorous pieces:-

'What, crusty? cries Will in a taking,



Who would not be crusty with half a year's baking?'

I think this quip would leave us cold. The 'Isles of Greece' seem



rather tawdry too; but on the 'Address to the Ocean,' or on 'The

Dying Gladiator,' 'time has writ no wrinkle.'



'Tis the morn, but dim and dark,

Whither flies the silent lark?' -



does the reader recall the moment when his eye first fell upon these

lines in the Fourth Reader; and 'surprised with joy, impatient as the



wind,' he plunged into the sequel? And there was another piece, this

time in prose, which none can have forgotten; many like me must have



searched Dickens with zeal to find it again, and in its proper

context, and have perhaps been conscious of some inconsiderable



measure of disappointment, that it was only Tom Pinch who drove, in

such a pomp of poetry, to London.



But in the Reader we are still under guides. What a boy turns out

for himself, as he rummages the bookshelves, is the real test and



pleasure. My father's library was a spot of some austerity; the

proceedings of learned societies, some Latin divinity, cyclopaedias,



physical science, and, above all, optics, held the chief place upon

the shelves, and it was only in holes and corners that anything



really legible existed as by accident. The PARENT'S ASSISTANT, ROB

ROY, WAVERLEY, and GUY MANNERING, the VOYAGES OF CAPTAIN WOODS



ROGERS, Fuller's and Bunyan's HOLY WARS, THE REFLECTIONS OF ROBINSON

CRUSOE, THE FEMALE BLUEBEARD, G. Sand's MARE AU DIABLE - (how came it



in that grave assembly!), Ainsworth's TOWER OF LONDON, and four old

volumes of Punch - these were the chief exceptions. In these latter,



which made for years the chief of my diet, I very early fell in love

(almost as soon as I could spell) with the Snob Papers. I knew them



almost by heart, particularly the visit to the Pontos; and I remember

my surprise when I found, long afterwards, that they were famous, and



signed with a famous name; to me, as I read and admired them, they

were the works of Mr. Punch. Time and again I tried to read ROB ROY,



with whom of course I was acquainted from the TALES OF A GRANDFATHER;

time and again the early part, with Rashleigh and (think of it!) the



adorable Diana, choked me off; and I shall never forget the pleasure

and surprise with which, lying on the floor one summer evening, I



struck of a sudden into the first scene with Andrew Fairservice.

'The worthy Dr. Lightfoot' - 'mistrysted with a bogle' - 'a wheen



green trash' - 'Jenny, lass, I think I ha'e her': from that day to

this the phrases have been unforgotten. I read on, I need scarce



say; I came to Glasgow, I bided tryst on Glasgow Bridge, I met Rob

Roy and the Bailie in the Tolbooth, all with transporting pleasure;



and then the clouds gathered once more about my path; and I dozed and

skipped until I stumbled half-asleep into the clachan of Aberfoyle,



and the voices of Iverach and Galbraith recalled me to myself. With

that scene and the defeat of Captain Thornton the book concluded;



Helen and her sons shocked even the little schoolboy of nine or ten

with their unreality; I read no more, or I did not grasp what I was



reading; and years elapsed before I consciously met Diana and her

father among the hills, or saw Rashleigh dying in the chair. When I



think of that novel and that evening, I am impatient with all others;

they seem but shadows and impostors; they cannot satisfy the appetite



which this awakened; and I dare be known to think it the best of Sir

Walter's by nearly as much as Sir Walter is the best of novelists.



Perhaps Mr. Lang is right, and our first friends in the land of

fiction are always the most real. And yet I had read before this GUY



MANNERING, and some of WAVERLEY, with no such delighted sense of

truth and humour, and I read immediately after the greater part of



the Waverley Novels, and was never moved again in the same way or to

the same degree. One circumstance is suspicious: my critical



estimate of the Waverley Novels has scarce changed at all since I was

ten. ROB ROY, GUY MANNERING, and REDGAUNTLET first; then, a little



lower; THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL; then, after a huge gulf, IVANHOE and

ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN: the rest nowhere; such was the verdict of the



boy. Since then THE ANTIQUARY, ST. RONAN'S WELL, KENILWORTH, and THE




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