the affable celebrity life-sized." Nor do I think he quite realized
how large a place he filled in the education, as in the affections, of
the younger men--the Barries and Kiplings, the Weymans, Doyles and
Crocketts--whose courses began after he had left these shores. An
artist gains much by working alone and away from chatter and criticism
and adulation: but his gain has this corresponding loss, that he must
go through his dark hours without support. Even a master may take
benefit at times--if it be only a physical benefit--from some closer
and handier assurance than any letters can give of the place held by
his work in the esteem of "the boys."

We must not make too much of what he wrote in this dark mood. A few
days later he was at work on _Weir of Hermiston_, laboring "at the
full pitch of his powers and in the conscious happiness of their
exercise." Once more he felt himself to be working at his best. The
result the world has not yet been allowed to see: for the while we are
satisfied and comforted by Mr. Colvin's assurances. "The fragment on
which he wrought during the last month of his life gives to my mind
(as it did to his own) for the first time the true measure of his
powers; and if in the literature of romance there is to be found work
more masterly, of more piercing human insight and more concentrated
imaginative wisdom, I do not know it."

On the whole, these letters from Vailima give a picture of a serene
and--allowance being made for the moods--a contented life. It is, I
suspect, the genuine Stevenson that we get in the following passage
from the letter of March, 1891:--

"Though I write so little, I pass all my hours of field-work in
continual converse and imaginary correspondence. I scarce pull up