ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON




CHAPTER I - INTRODUCTION AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS



MY little effort to make Thoreau better known in England had one
result that I am pleased to think of. It brought me into personal
association with R. L. Stevenson, who had written and published in
THE CORNHILL MAGAZINE an essay on Thoreau, in whom he had for some
time taken an interest. He found in Thoreau not only a rare
character for originality, courage, and indefatigable independence,
but also a master of style, to whom, on this account, as much as
any, he was inclined to play the part of the "sedulous ape," as he
had acknowledged doing to many others - a later exercise, perhaps
in some ways as fruitful as any that had gone before. A recent
poet, having had some seeds of plants sent to him from Northern
Scotland to the South, celebrated his setting of them beside those
native to the Surrey slope on which he dwelt, with the lines -


"And when the Northern seeds are growing,
Another beauty then bestowing,
We shall be fine, and North to South
Be giving kisses, mouth to mouth."