things that Stevenson nearly killed himself to express.

Mr Baildon, for example, is perpetually lecturing Stevenson for his
'pessimism'; surely a strange charge against the man who has done more
than any modern artist to make men ashamed of their shame of life. But
he complains that, in 'The Master of Ballantrae' and 'Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde,' Stevenson gives evil a final victory over good. Now if there was
one point that Stevenson more constantly and passionately emphasised
than any other it was that we must worship good for its own value and
beauty, without any reference whatever to victory or failure in space
and time. 'Whatever we are intended to do,' he said, 'we are not
intended to succeed.' That the stars in their courses fight against
virtue, that humanity is in its nature a forlorn hope, this was the very
spirit that through the whole of Stevenson's work sounded a trumpet to
all the brave. The story of Henry Durie is dark enough, but could anyone
stand beside the grave of that sodden monomaniac and not respect him? It
is strange that men should see sublime inspiration in the ruins of an
old church and see none in the ruins of a man.

The author has most extraordinary ideas about Stevenson's tales of blood
and spoil; he appears to think that they prove Stevenson to have had (we
use Mr Baildon's own phrase) a kind of 'homicidal mania.' 'He
(Stevenson) arrives pretty much at the paradox that one can hardly be
better employed than in taking life.' Mr Baildon might as well say that
Dr Conan Doyle delights in committing inexplicable crimes, that Mr Clark
Russell is a notorious pirate, and that Mr Wilkie Collins thought that
one could hardly be better employed than in stealing moonstones and
falsifying marriage registers. But Mr Baildon is scarcely alone in this
error: few people have understood properly the goriness of Stevenson.
Stevenson was essentially the robust schoolboy who draws skeletons and