However it was made, and whencesoever the material or suggestion
borrowed, he came by a very admirable instrument for the telling of
stories. Those touches of archaism that are so frequent with him,
the slightly unusual phrasing, or unexpected inversion of the order
of words, show a mind alert in its expression, and give the sting
of novelty even to the commonplaces of narrative or conversation.
A nimble literary tact will work its will on the phrases of current
small-talk, remoulding them nearer to the heart's desire,
transforming them to its own stamp. This was what Stevenson did,
and the very conversations that pass between his characters have an
air of distinction that is all his own. His books are full of
brilliant talk - talk real and convincing enough in its purport and
setting, but purged of the languors and fatuities of actual
commonplace conversation. It is an enjoyment like that to be
obtained from a brilliant exhibition of fencing, clean and
dexterous, to assist at the talking bouts of David Balfour and Miss
Grant, Captain Nares and Mr. Dodd, Alexander Mackellar and the
Master of Ballantrae, Prince Otto and Sir John Crabtree, or those
wholly admirable pieces of special pleading to be found in A
LODGING FOR THE NIGHT and THE SIRE DE MALETROIT'S DOOR. But people
do not talk like this in actual life- ' 'tis true, 'tis pity; and
pity 'tis, 'tis true.' They do not; in actual life conversation is
generally so smeared and blurred with stupidities, so invaded and
dominated by the spirit of dulness, so liable to swoon into
meaninglessness, that to turn to Stevenson's books is like an
escape into mountain air from the stagnant vapours of a morass.
The exact reproduction of conversation as it occurs in life can
only be undertaken by one whose natural dulness feels itself
incommoded by wit and fancy as by a grit in the eye. Conversation