Many such lines prove our writer's emancipation from servitude to the Calverley fetish, a fetish that, I am convinced, has done harm to many young men of parts. It is pretty, in youth, to play with style as a puppy plays with a bone, to cut teeth upon it. But words are, after all, a poor thing without matter. J.K.S.'s emancipation has come somewhat late; but he has depths in him which he has not sounded yet, and it is quite likely that when he sounds them he may astonish the world rather considerably. Now, if we may interpret the last poem in his book, he is turning towards prose. "I go," he says-- "I go to fly at higher game: At prose as good as I can make it; And though it brings nor gold nor fame, I will not, while I live, forsake it." It is no disparagement to his verse to rejoice over this resolve of his. For a young man who begins with epic may end with good epic; but a young man who begins with imitating Calverley will turn in time to prose if he means to write in earnest. And J.K.S. may do well or ill, but that he is to be watched has been evident since the days when he edited the _Reflector_.[B] FOOTNOTES: [A] I am bound to admit that the only authority for this is a note written into the text of Aubrey's _Lives_. [B] The reader will refer to the date at the head of this paper:-- "Heu miserande puer! signa fata aspera rumpas, Tu Marcellus eris. * * * * * Sed nox atra caput tristi circumvolat umbra." ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON April 15, 1893. The "Island Nights' Entertainments." I wish Mr. Stevenson had given this book another title. It covers but two out of the three stories in the volume; and, even so, it has the ill-luck to be completely spoilt by its predecessor, the _New Arabian Nights_.