Stevenson certainly had that share of genius which belongs to the man who can take infinite pains. Add to this a beautiful personal character, and an almost perfect receptivity. Add again the power of sympathetic realisation in a purely literary sense, and you have the man. Let me make my last addition clear. It is a common habit of his to think as his literary favourites would have thought He could think like Lamb. He could think like Defoe. He could even fuse two minds in this way, and make, as it were, a composite mind for himself to think with. His intellect was of a very rare and delicate sort, and whilst he was essentially a reproducer, he was in no sense an imitator, or even for a single second a plagiarist. He had an alembic of his own which made old things new. His best possession was that very real sense of proportion which was at the root of all his humour. ‘Why doesn’t God explain these things to a gentleman like me?’ There, a profound habitual reverence of mind suddenly encounters with a ludicrous perception of his own momentary self-importance. The two electric opposites meet, and emit that flash of summer lightning. Stevenson gave rare honour to his work, and the artist who shows his self-respect in that best of ways will always be respected by the world. He has fairly won our affection and esteem, and we give them ungrudgingly. In seeming to belittle him I have taken an ungrateful piece of work in hand. But in the long run a moderately just estimate of a good man’s work is of more service to his reputation than a strained laudation can be. It is not the critics, and it is not I, who will finally measure his proportions. He seems to me to stand well in the middle of the middle rank of accepted writers. He will not live as an inventor, for he has not invented. He will not live as one of those who have opened new fields of thought. He will not live amongst those who have explored the heights and the deeps of the spirit of man. He may live--‘the stupid and ignorant pig of a public’ will settle the question--as a writer in whose works stand revealed a lovable, sincere, and brave soul and an unsleeping vigilance of artistic effort. The most beautiful thing he has done--to my mind--is his epitaph. There are but eight lines of it, but I know nothing finer in its way: Under the wide and starry sky Lay me down and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will! This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be: Home is the Sailor, home from sea, And the Hunter home from the hill. Sleep there, bright heart! In your waking hours you would have laughed at the exaggerated praises which do you such poor service now! IV.--LIVING MASTERS--MEREDITH AND HALL CAINE