is often no more than a nervous habit of body, like twiddling the
thumbs, and to record each particular remark is as much as to
describe each particular twiddle. Or in its more intellectual
uses, when speech is employed, for instance, to conceal our
thoughts, how often is it a world too wide for the shrunken nudity
of the thought it is meant to veil, and thrown over it, formless,
flabby, and black - like a tarpaulin! It is pleasant to see
thought and feeling dressed for once in the trim, bright raiment
Stevenson devises for them.

There is an indescribable air of distinction, which is, and is not,
one and the same thing with style, breathing from all his works.
Even when he is least inspired, his bearing and gait could never be
mistaken for another man's. All that he writes is removed by the
width of the spheres from the possibility of commonplace, and he
avoids most of the snares and pitfalls of genius with noble and
unconscious skill.

If he ever fell into one of these - which may perhaps be doubted -
it was through too implicit a confidence in the powers of style.
His open letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde in vindication of Father
Damien is perhaps his only literary mistake. It is a matchless
piece of scorn and invective, not inferior in skill to anything he
ever wrote. But that it was well done is no proof that it should
have been done at all. 'I remember Uzzah and am afraid,' said the
wise Erasmus, when he was urged to undertake the defence of Holy
Church; 'it is not every one who is permitted to support the Ark of
the Covenant.' And the only disquietude suggested by Stevenson's
letter is a doubt whether he really has a claim to be Father
Damien's defender, whether Father Damien had need of the assistance