Again, it is said that in every poet there must be something of the woman—the receptivity, the emotional nature. If to be impressionable in the extreme, quick in sympathy and feeling, ardent in attachment, and full of pity for the weak and suffering, is to be womanly, Stevenson was certainly all those; he was even like a woman in being _ἀρτίδακρυς_, easily moved to tears at the touch of pity or affection, or even at any specially poignant impression of art or beauty. But yet, if any one word were to be chosen for the predominant quality of his character and example, I suppose that word would be manly. In all his habits and instincts he was the least effeminate of men; and effeminacy, or aught approaching sexlessness, was perhaps the only quality in man with which he had no patience. In his gentle and complying nature there were strains of iron tenacity and will. He had both kinds of physical courage—the active, delighting in danger, and the passive, unshaken in endurance. In the moral courage of facing situations and consequences, of cheerful self-discipline and readiness to pay for faults committed, of outspokenness, admitting no ambiguous relations and clearing away the clouds from human intercourse, I have not known his equal. His great countryman Scott, as this book will prove, was not more manfully free from artistic jealousy or the least shade of irritability under criticism, or more modestly and unfeignedly inclined to exaggerate the qualities of other people’s work and to underrate those of his own. His severest critic was always himself; the next most severe, those of his own household and intimacy, whose love made them jealous lest he should fall short of his best; for he lived in an atmosphere of love, indeed, but not of flattery. Of the humorous and engaging parts of vanity and egoism, which led him to make infinite talk and fun about himself, and use his own experiences as a key for unlocking the confidences of others, Stevenson had plenty; but of the morose and fretful parts never a shade. ‘A little Irish girl,’ he wrote once during a painful crisis of his life, ‘is now reading my book aloud to her sister at my elbow; they chuckle, and I feel flattered.—Yours, R. L. S. _P.S._ Now they yawn, and I am indifferent. Such a wisely conceived thing is vanity.’ If only vanity so conceived were commoner! And whatever might be the abstract and philosophical value of that somewhat grimly stoical conception of the universe, of conduct and duty, at which in mature years he had arrived, want of manliness is certainly not its fault. Nor is any such want to be found in the practice which he founded on or combined with it; in his invincible gaiety and sweetness under sufferings and deprivations the most galling to him; in the temper which made his presence in health or sickness a perpetual sunshine to those about him. Take the kind of maxims of life which he was accustomed to forge for himself and to act