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The Art of Writing-Part6_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON(1850-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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papers. There he will get little harm, and, in the first at

least, some good.



Close upon the back of my discovery of Whitman, I came under

the influence of Herbert Spencer. No more persuasive rabbi



exists, and few better. How much of his vast structure will

bear the touch of time, how much is clay and how much brass,



it were too curious to inquire. But his words, if dry, are

always manly and honest; there dwells in his pages a spirit



of highly abstract joy, plucked naked like an algebraic

symbol but still joyful; and the reader will find there a



CAPUT MORTUUM of piety, with little indeed of its loveliness,

but with most of its essentials; and these two qualities make



him a wholesome, as his intellectualvigour makes him a

bracing, writer. I should be much of a hound if I lost my



gratitude to Herbert Spencer.

GOETHE'S LIFE, by Lewes, had a great importance for me when



it first fell into my hands - a strange instance of the

partiality of man's good and man's evil. I know no one whom



I less admire than Goethe; he seems a very epitome of the

sins of genius, breaking open the doors of private life, and



wantonly wounding friends, in that crowning offence of

WERTHER, and in his own character a mere pen-and-ink



Napoleon, conscious of the rights and duties of superior

talents as a Spanish inquisitor was conscious of the rights



and duties of his office. And yet in his fine devotion to

his art, in his honest and serviceable friendship for



Schiller, what lessons are contained! Biography, usually so

false to its office, does here for once perform for us some



of the work of fiction, reminding us, that is, of the truly

mingled tissue of man's nature, and how huge faults and



shining virtues cohabit and persevere in the same character.

History serves us well to this effect, but in the originals,



not in the pages of the popular epitomiser, who is bound, by

the very nature of his task, to make us feel the difference



of epochs instead of the essentialidentity of man, and even

in the originals only to those who can recognise their own



human virtues and defects in strange forms, often inverted

and under strange names, often interchanged. Martial is a



poet of no good repute, and it gives a man new thoughts to

read his works dispassionately, and find in this unseemly



jester's serious passages the image of a kind, wise, and

self-respecting gentleman. It is customary, I suppose, in



reading Martial, to leave out these pleasant verses; I never

heard of them, at least, until I found them for myself; and



this partiality is one among a thousand things that help to

build up our distorted and hystericalconception of the great



Roman Empire.

This brings us by a natural transition to a very noble book -



the MEDITATIONS of Marcus Aurelius. The dispassionate

gravity, the noble forgetfulness of self, the tenderness of



others, that are there expressed and were practised on so

great a scale in the life of its writer, make this book a



book quite by itself. No one can read it and not be moved.

Yet it scarcely or rarely appeals to the feelings - those



very mobile, those not very trusty parts of man. Its address

lies further back: its lesson comes more deeply home; when



you have read, you carry away with you a memory of the man

himself; it is as though you had touched a loyal hand, looked



into brave eyes, and made a noble friend; there is another

bond on you thenceforward, binding you to life and to the



love of virtue.

Wordsworth should perhaps come next. Every one has been



influenced by Wordsworth, and it is hard to tell precisely

how. A certain innocence, a rugged austerity of joy, a sight



of the stars, 'the silence that is in the lonely hills,'




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