The reader goes on with a sense of impoverishment, of unnecessary sacrifice; he has been robbed by footpads, and goes scouting for his lost article! Again, in the second Epode, these fine verses would surely sound much finer if they began, 'As a hardy climber who has set his heart,' than with the jejune 'As hardy climber.' I do not know why you permit yourself this license with grammar; you show, in so many pages, that you are superior to the paltry sense of rhythm which usually dictates it - as though some poetaster had been suffered to correct the poet's text. By the way, I confess to a heartfelt weakness for AURICULAS. - Believe me the very grateful and characteristic pick-thank, but still sincere and affectionate,
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.
Letter: TO W. H. LOW.
VAILIMA, JANUARY 15th, 1894.
MY DEAR LOW, - . . . Pray you, stoop your proud head, and sell yourself to some Jew magazine, and make the visit out. I assure you, this is the spot for a sculptor or painter. This, and no other - I don't say to stay there, but to come once and get the living colour into them. I am used to it; I do not notice it; rather prefer my grey, freezing recollections of Scotland; but there it is, and every morning is a thing to give thanks for, and every night another - bar when it rains, of course.
About THE WRECKER - rather late days, and I still suspect I had somehow offended you; however, all's well that ends well, and I am glad I am forgiven - did you not fail to appreciate the attitude of Dodd? He was a fizzle and a stick, he knew it, he knew nothing else, and there is an undercurrent of bitterness in him. And then the problem that Pinkerton laid down: why the artist can DO NOTHING ELSE? is one that continually exercises myself. He cannot: granted. But Scott could. And Montaigne. And Julius Caesar. And many more. And why can't R. L. S.? Does it not amaze you? It does me. I think of the Renaissance fellows, and their all-round human sufficiency, and compare it with the ineffable smallness of the field in which we labour and in which we do so little. I think DAVID BALFOUR a nice little book, and very artistic, and just the thing to occupy the leisure of a busy man; but for the top flower of a man's life it seems to me inadequate. Small is the word; it is a small age, and I am of it. I could have wished to be otherwise busy in this world. I ought to have been able to build lighthouses and write DAVID BALFOURS too. HINC ILLAE LACRYMAE. I take my own case as most handy, but it is as illustrative of my quarrel with the age. We take all these pains, and we don't do as well as Michael Angelo or Leonardo, or even Fielding, who was an active magistrate, or Richardson, who was a busy bookseller. J'AI HONTE POUR NOUS; my ears burn.
I am amazed at the effect which this Chicago exhibition has produced upon you and others. It set Mrs. Fairchild literally mad - to judge by her letters. And I wish I had seen anything so influential. I suppose there was an aura, a halo, some sort of effulgency about the place; for here I find you louder than the rest. Well, it may be there is a time coming; and I wonder, when it comes, whether it will be a time of little, exclusive, one-eyed rascals like you and me, or parties of the old stamp who can paint and fight, and write and keep books of double entry, and sculp, and scalp. It might be. You have a lot of stuff in the kettle, and a great deal of it Celtic. I have changed my mind progressively about England, practically the whole of Scotland is Celtic, and the western half of England, and all Ireland, and the Celtic blood makes a rare blend for art. If it is stiffened up with Latin blood, you get the French. We were less lucky: we had only Scandinavians, themselves decidedly artistic, and the Low-German lot. However, that is a good starting-point, and with all the other elements in your crucible, it may come to something great very easily. I wish you would hurry up and let me see it. Here is a long while I have been waiting for something GOOD in art; and what have I seen? Zola's DEBACLE and a few of Kipling's tales. Are you a reader of Barbey d'Aurevilly? He is a never-failing source of pleasure to me, for my sins, I suppose.