Of the Eleven referred to, Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson was sent in at
eighth wicket down to face this cunning "delivery":--"He experiments
too long; he is still a boy wondering what he is going to be. With
Cowley's candor he tells us that he wants to write something by which
he may be for ever known. His attempts in this direction have been in
the nature of trying different ways, and he always starts off
whistling. Having gone so far without losing himself, he turns back to
try another road. Does his heart fail him, despite his jaunty bearing,
_or is it because there is no hurry?_ ... But it is quite time the
great work was begun."

I have taken the liberty to italicise a word or two, because in them
Mr. Barrie supplied an answer to his question. "The lyf so short, the
craft so long to lerne!" is not an exhortation to hurry: and in Mr.
Stevenson's case, at any rate, there was not the least need to hurry.
There was, indeed, a time when Mr. Stevenson had not persuaded himself
of this. In _Across the Plains_ he tells us how, at windy Anstruther
and an extremely early age, he used to draw his chair to the table and
pour forth literature "at such a speed, and with such intimations of
early death and immortality, as I now look back upon with wonder.
Then it was that I wrote _Voces Fidelium_, a series of dramatic
monologues in verse; then that I indited the bulk of a Covenanting
novel--like so many others, never finished. Late I sat into the night,
toiling (as I thought) under the very dart of death, toiling to leave
a memory behind me. I feel moved to thrust aside the curtain of the
years, to hail that poor feverish idiot, to bid him go to bed and clap
_Voces Fidelium_ on the fire before he goes, so clear does he appear
to me, sitting there between his candles in the rose-scented room and
the late night; so ridiculous a picture (to my elderly wisdom) does