on the Bass Rock in CATRIONA, the supernatural terrors that hover
and mutter over the island of THE MERRY MEN - these imaginations
are plainly generated by the scenery against which they are thrown;
each is in some sort the genius of the place it inhabits.

In his search for the treasures of romance, Stevenson adventured
freely enough into the realm of the supernatural.

When he is handling the superstitions of the Scottish people, he
allows his humorous enjoyment of their extravagance to peep out
from behind the solemn dialect in which they are dressed. The
brief tale of THRAWN JANET, and Black Andy's story of Tod Lapraik
in CATRIONA, are grotesque imaginations of the school of TAM O'
SHANTER rather than of the school of Shakespeare, who deals in no
comedy ghosts. They are turnip-lanterns swayed by a laughing
urchin, proud of the fears he can awaken. Even THE STRANGE CASE OF
DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE and the story of THE BOTTLE IMP are
manufactured bogeys, that work on the nerves and not on the heart,
whatever may be said by those who insist on seeing allegory in what
is only dream-fantasy. The supernatural must be rooted deeper than
these in life and experience if it is to reach an imposing stature:
the true ghost is the shadow of a man. And Stevenson shows a sense
of this in two of his very finest stories, the exquisite idyll of
WILL O' THE MILL and the grim history of MARKHEIM. Each of these
stories is the work of a poet, by no means of a goblin-fancier.
The personification of Death is as old as poetry; it is wrought
with moving gentleness in that last scene in the arbour of Will's
inn. The wafted scent of the heliotropes, which had never been
planted in the garden since Marjory's death, the light in the room
that had been hers, prelude the arrival at the gate of the