With a letter-writer of this character, as it seems to me, a judicious reader desires to be left as much alone as possible. What he wants is to relish the correspondence by itself, or with only just so much in the way of notes and introductions as may serve to make allusions and situations clear. Two volumes, then, of letters so edited, to be preceded by a separate introductory volume of narrative and critical memoir, or _étude_—such was to be the memorial to my friend which I had planned, and hoped by this time to have ready. Unfortunately, the needful leisure has hitherto failed me, and might fail me for some time yet, to complete the separate volume of biography. That is now, at the wish of the family, to be undertaken by Stevenson’s cousin and my friend, Mr. Graham Balfour. Meanwhile the _Letters_, with introductions and notes somewhat extended from the original plan, are herewith presented as a substantive work by themselves. The book will enable those who know and love their Stevenson already to know him more intimately, and, as I hope, to love him more. It contains, certainly, much that is most essentially characteristic of the man. To some, perhaps, that very lack of art as a correspondent of which we have found him above accusing himself may give the reading an added charm and flavour. What he could do as an artist we know—what a telling power and heightened thrill he could give to all his effects, in so many different modes of expression and composition, by calculated skill and the deliberate exercise of a perfectly trained faculty. This is the quality which nobody denies him, and which so deeply impressed his fellow-craftsmen of all kinds. I remember the late Sir John Millais, a shrewd and very independent judge of books, calling across to me at a dinner-table, ‘You know Stevenson, don’t you?’ and then going on, ‘Well, I wish you would tell him from me, if he cares to know, that to my mind he is the very first of living artists. I don’t mean writers merely, but painters and all of us: nobody living can see with such an eye as that fellow, and nobody is such a master of his tools.’ Now in his letters, excepting a few written in youth, and having more or less the character of exercises, and a few in after years which were intended for the public eye, Stevenson the deliberate artist is scarcely forthcoming at all. He does not care a fig for order or logical sequence or congruity, or for striking a key of expression and keeping it, but becomes simply the most spontaneous and unstudied of human beings. He will write with the most distinguished elegance on one day, with simple good sense and good feeling on a second, with flat triviality on another, and with the most slashing, often ultra-colloquial, vehemence on a fourth, or will vary through all these moods and more in one and the same letter. He has at his command the whole vocabularies of the English and Scottish languages,