1_st_. War to the adjective. 2_nd_. Death to the optic nerve. Admitted we live in an age of the optic nerve in literature. For how many centuries did literature get along without a sign of it? However, I’ll consider your letter. How exquisite is your character of the critic in _Essays in London_! I doubt if you have done any single thing so satisfying as a piece of style and of insight.—Yours ever, R. L. S. TO CHARLES BAXTER 1_st_ _January_ ’94. MY DEAR CHARLES,—I am delighted with your idea, and first, I will here give an amended plan and afterwards give you a note of some of the difficulties. [Plan of the Edinburgh edition—14 vols.] . . . It may be a question whether my _Times_ letters might not be appended to the ‘Footnote’ with a note of the dates of discharge of Cedercrantz and Pilsach. I am particularly pleased with this idea of yours, because I am come to a dead stop. I never can remember how bad I have been before, but at any rate I am bad enough just now, I mean as to literature; in health I am well and strong. I take it I shall be six months before I’m heard of again, and this time I could put in to some advantage in revising the text and (if it were thought desirable) writing prefaces. I do not know how many of them might be thought desirable. I have written a paper on _Treasure Island_, which is to appear shortly. _Master of Ballantrae_—I have one drafted. _The Wrecker_ is quite sufficiently done already with the last chapter, but I suppose an historic introduction to _David Balfour_ is quite unavoidable. _Prince Otto_ I don’t think I could say anything about, and _Black Arrow_ don’t want to. But it is probable I could say something to the volume of _Travels_. In the verse business I can do just what I like better than anything else, and extend _Underwoods_ with a lot of unpublished stuff. _Apropos_, if I were to get printed off a very few poems which are somewhat too intimate for the public, could you get them run up in some luxuous manner, so that fools might be induced to buy them in just a sufficient quantity to pay expenses and the thing remain still in a manner private? We could supply photographs of the illustrations—and the poems are of Vailima and the family—I should much like to get this done as a surprise for Fanny. R. L. S. TO H. B. BAILDON _Vailima_, _January_ 15_th_, 1894.