other, parables and tales of mystery, boys’ stories of adventure, memoirs; nor let lyrical and meditative verse both English and Scottish, and especially nursery verse, a new vein for genius to work in, be forgotten.” With some reservation this may be conceded, and this is as far as eulogy can legitimately be stretched. But, unhappily, some of Stevenson’s admirers have made themselves and their idol ridiculous, by raising him to a position his claims to which are preposterous. If he be measured with his contemporaries the comparison will generally be in his favour--he certainly did best what hundreds can do well. His essays have distinction and excellence; his novels, travels, and short tales, though scarcely entitled to the praise of originality, as they strike no new notes and are mere variants of the work of Scott, Kingston, Ballantyne, De Quincey and Poe, bear the impress of genius as distinguished from mere talent, and reflect a very charming personality; his verse, too, is pleasing and skilful. But when we are told that he will stand the third in a trio with Burns and Scott, and when we have to listen to serious appeals to Edinburgh to raise a statue to him beside the author of _Marmion_ and the Waverley Novels, all who truly appreciate his work may well tremble for the reaction which is certain to succeed such extravagant overestimation. The truth is that poor Stevenson, himself one of the simplest, sincerest and most modest of men, got involved with a clique who may be described as manufacturers of factitious reputations,--the circulators of a false currency in criticism. In these days of appeals to the masses it is as easy to write up the sort of works which are addressed to them--popular essays, tales and novels--as it is to write up the commodities of quack doctors and the shares of bogus companies. The production of popular literature is now a trade, and in some cases this kind of puffery is the work of deliberate fraud, originating from various motives. In many cases it simply springs from ignorance and critical incompetence, current criticism being, to a considerable extent, in the hands of very young men who, having neither the requisite knowledge nor the proper training, are unable to judge a writer comparatively. In other cases it is to be attributed to good nature and the tendency in the genial appreciation of real merit to indulge in extravagant expression. But the result is the same. A reputation, so grotesquely out of proportion to what is really merited that sober people are inclined to suspect that all is imposture, is gradually inflated. Eulogy kindles eulogy; hyperbole is heaped on hyperbole; a ludicrous importance is attached to every trifle which falls, or which ever has fallen, from this Press-created Fetish. While he is alive he is encouraged, or rather importuned, to force his power of production to keep pace with the demand for everything bearing his signature; when he is dead the very