English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Literature -- History and criticism
bewildered kindly conscience; but it is easy to like him. How admirable
is his undeflected belief in and affection for the Master! How excellent
and how Irish he is, when he buffoons himself out of his perils with the
pirates! The scenes are brilliant and living, as when the Master throws
the guinea through the Hall window, or as in the darkling duel in the
garden. It needed an austere artistic conscience to make Henry, the
younger brother, so unlovable with all his excellence, and to keep the
lady so true, yet so much in shadow. This is the best woman among Mr.
Stevenson's few women; but even she is almost always reserved, veiled as
it were.
The old Lord, again, is a portrait as lifelike as Scott could have drawn,
and more delicately touched than Scott would have cared to draw it: a
French companion picture to the Baron Bradwardine. The whole piece reads
as if Mr. Stevenson had engaged in a struggle with himself as he wrote.
The sky is never blue, the sun never shines: we weary for a "westland
wind." There is something "thrawn," as the Scotch say, about the story;
there is often a touch of this sinister kind in the author's work. The
language is extraordinarily artful, as in the mad lord's words, "I have
felt the hilt dirl on his breast-bone." And yet, one is hardly thrilled
as one expects to be, when, as Mackellar says, "the week-old corpse
looked me for a moment in the face."
Probably none of Mr. Stevenson's many books has made his name so familiar
as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde." I read it first in manuscript, alone, at
night; and, when the Butler and Mr. Urmson came to the Doctor's door, I
confess that I threw it down, and went hastily to bed. It is the most
gruesome of all his writings, and so perfect that one can complain only
of the slightly too obvious moral; and, again, that really Mr. Hyde was
more of a gentleman than the unctuous Dr. Jekyll, with his "bedside
manner."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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