ladies of Queen Proserpina's court used to leave in the cradles of
Border keeps or of peasants' cottages. Of the Scot he has little
but the power of touching us with a sense of the supernatural, and a
decided habit of moralising; for no Scot of genius has been more
austere with Robert Burns. On the other hand, one element of Mr.
Stevenson's ethical disquisitions is derived from his dramatic
habit. His optimism, his gay courage, his habit of accepting the
world as very well worth living in and looking at, persuaded one of
his critics that he was a hard-hearted young athlete of iron frame.
Now, of the athlete he has nothing but his love of the open air: it
is the eternal child that drives him to seek adventures and to
sojourn among beach-combers and savages. Thus, an admiring but far
from optimistic critic may doubt whether Mr. Stevenson's content
with the world is not "only his fun," as Lamb said of Coleridge's
preaching; whether he is but playing at being the happy warrior in
life; whether he is not acting that part, himself to himself. At
least, it is a part fortunately conceived and admirably sustained:
a difficult part too, whereas that of the pessimist is as easy as
whining.

Mr. Stevenson's work has been very much written about, as it has
engaged and delighted readers of every age, station, and character.
Boys, of course, have been specially addressed in the books of
adventure, children in "A Child's Garden of Verse," young men and
maidens in "Virginibus Puerisque,"--all ages in all the curiously
varied series of volumes. "Kidnapped" was one of the last books
which the late Lord Iddesleigh read; and I trust there is no harm in
mentioning the pleasure which Mr. Matthew Arnold took in the same
story. Critics of every sort have been kind to Mr. Stevenson, in
spite of the fact that the few who first became acquainted with his