Glad to hear Henley’s prospects are fair: his new volume is the work of a real poet. He is one of those who can make a noise of his own with words, and in whom experience strikes an individual note. There is perhaps no more genuine poet living, bar the Big Guns. In case I cannot overtake an acknowledgment to himself by this mail, please let him hear of my pleasure and admiration. How poorly—compares! He is all smart journalism and cleverness: it is all bright and shallow and limpid, like a business paper—a good one, _s’entend_; but there is no blot of heart’s blood and the Old Night: there are no harmonics, there is scarce harmony to his music; and in Henley—all of these; a touch, a sense within sense, a sound outside the sound, the shadow of the inscrutable, eloquent beyond all definition. The First London Voluntary knocked me wholly.—Ever yours affectionately, my dear Charles, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. Kind memories to your father and all friends. TO W. E. HENLEY _Vailima Plantation_, _Upolu_, _Samoa_, _August_ 1_st_, 1892. MY DEAR HENLEY,—It is impossible to let your new volume pass in silence. I have not received the same thrill of poetry since G. M.’s _Joy of Earth_ volume and _Love in a Valley_; and I do not know that even that was so intimate and deep. Again and again, I take the book down, and read, and my blood is fired as it used to be in youth. _Andante con moto_ in the _Voluntaries_, and the thing about the trees at night (No. XXIV. I think) are up to date my favourites. I did not guess you were so great a magician; these are new tunes, this is an undertone of the true Apollo; these are not verse, they are poetry—inventions, creations, in language. I thank you for the joy you have given me, and remain your old friend and present huge admirer, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. The hand is really the hand of Esau, but under a course of threatened scrivener’s cramp. For the next edition of the Book of Verses, pray accept an emendation. Last three lines of Echoes No. XLIV. read— ‘But life in act? How should the grave Be victor over these, Mother, a mother of men?’ The two vocatives scatter the effect of this inimitable close. If you insist on the longer line, equip ‘grave’ with an epithet. R. L. S. TO E. L. BURLINGAME _Vailima_, _Upolu_, _August_ 1_st_, ’92.