himself as he wrote. The sky is never blue, the sun never shines:
we weary for a "westland wind." There is something "thrawn," as the
Scotch say, about the story; there is often a touch of this sinister
kind in the author's work. The language is extraordinarily artful,
as in the mad lord's words, "I have felt the hilt dirl on his
breast-bone." And yet, one is hardly thrilled as one expects to be,
when, as Mackellar says, "the week-old corpse looked me for a moment
in the face."

Probably none of Mr. Stevenson's many books has made his name so
familiar as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde." I read it first in
manuscript, alone, at night; and, when the Butler and Mr. Urmson
came to the Doctor's door, I confess that I threw it down, and went
hastily to bed. It is the most gruesome of all his writings, and so
perfect that one can complain only of the slightly too obvious
moral; and, again, that really Mr. Hyde was more of a gentleman than
the unctuous Dr. Jekyll, with his "bedside manner."

So here, not to speak of some admirable short stories like "Thrawn
Janet," is a brief catalogue--little more--of Mr. Stevenson's
literary baggage. It is all good, though variously good; yet the
wise world asks for the masterpiece. It is said that Mr. Stevenson
has not ventured on the delicate and dangerous ground of the novel,
because he has not written a modern love story. But who has? There
are love affairs in Dickens, but do we remember or care for them?
Is it the love affairs that we remember in Scott? Thackeray may
touch us with Clive's and Jack Belsize's misfortunes, with Esmond's
melancholy passion, and amuse us with Pen in so many toils, and
interest us in the little heroine of the "Shabby Genteel Story."
But it is not by virtue of those episodes that Thackeray is so