And here we come to the division: not only do I believe that literature should give joy, but I see a universe, I suppose, eternally different from yours: a solemn, a terrible, but a very joyous and noble universe; where suffering is not at least wantonly inflicted, though it falls with dispassionate partiality, but where it may be and generally is nobly borne; where above all (this I believe: probably you don't: I think he may, with cancer) _any brave man may make_ out a life which shall be happy for himself, and, by so being, beneficent to those about him. And if he fails, why should I hear him weeping? I mean if I fail, why should I weep? why should _you_ hear _me_? Then to me morals, the conscience, the affections, and the passions are, I will own frankly and sweepingly, so infinitely more important than the other parts of life, that I conceive men rather triflers who become immersed in the latter; and I will always think the man who keeps his lip stiff, and makes 'a happy fireside clime,' and carries a pleasant face about to friends and neighbours, infinitely greater in the abstract than an atrabilious Shakespeare or a backbiting Kant or Darwin. No offence to any of these gentlemen: two of whom probably (one for certain) came up to my standard. And now enough said: it were hard if a poor man could not criticise another without having so much ink shed against him. But I shall still regret you should have written on an hypothesis you knew to be untenable, and that you should thus have made your paper, for those who do not know me, essentially unfair. The rich, foxhunting squire speaks with one voice; the sick man of letters with another.—Yours very truly, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. (_Prometheus-Heine in minimis._) _P.S._—Here I go again. To me, the medicine bottles on my chimney and the blood on my handkerchief are accidents; they do not colour my view of life, as you would know, I think, if you had experience of sickness; they do not exist in my prospect; I would as soon drag them under the eyes of my readers as I would mention a pimple I might chance to have (saving your presence) on my ——. What does it prove? what does it change? it has not hurt, it has not changed me in any essential part; and I should think myself a trifler and in bad taste if I introduced the world to these unimportant privacies. But again there is this mountain-range between us: _that you do not believe me_. It is not flattering, but the fault is probably in my literary art. * * * * * SKERRYVORE, BOURNEMOUTH, October 28, 1885.