He had a pretty full translation of Schiller's _AEsthetic Letters_, which we read together, as well as the second part of _Faust_, in Gladstone Terrace, he helping me with the German. There is no keepsake I should more value than the MS. of that translation. They were the best days I ever had with him, little dreaming all would so soon be over. It needs a blow like this to convict a man of mortality and its burthen. I always thought I should go by myself; not to survive. But now I feel as if the earth were undermined, and all my friends have lost one thickness of reality since that one passed. Those are happy who can take it otherwise; with that I found things all beginning to dislimn. Here we have no abiding city, and one felt as though he had--and O too much acted. But if you tell me, he did not feel my silence. However, he must have done so; and my guilt is irreparable now. I thank God at least heartily that he did not resent it. Please remember me to Sir Alexander and Lady Grant, to whose care I will address this. When next I am in Edinburgh I will take flowers, alas! to the West Kirk. Many a long hour we passed in graveyards, the man who has gone and I--or rather not that man--but the beautiful, genial, witty youth who so betrayed him.--Dear Miss Ferrier, I am yours most sincerely, ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. TO W. E. HENLEY This refers to some dispute which had arisen with an editor (I forget whom) concerning the refusal of an article on Salvini. The nickname "Fastidious Brisk," from Ben Jonson's _Every Man out of his Humour_, was applied by Mr. Henley to Stevenson--very inappropriately as I always thought. _La Solitude, Hyeres, Autumn_ 1883. MY DEAR LAD,--You know your own business best; but I wish your honesty were not so warfaring. These conflicts pain Lucretian sitters on the shore; and one wonders--one wonders--wonders and whimpers. I do not say my attitude is noble; but is yours conciliatory? I revere Salvini, but I shall never see him--nor anybody--play again. That is all a matter of history, heroic history, to me. Were I in London, I should be the liker Tantalus--no more. But as for these quarrels: in not many years shall we not all be clay-cold and safe below ground, you with your loud-mouthed integrity, I with my fastidious briskness--and--with all their faults and merits, swallowed in silence. It seems to me, in ignorance of cause, that when the dustman has gone by, these quarrellings will prick the conscience. Am I wrong? I am a great sinner; so, my brave friend, are you; the others also. Let us a little imitate the divine patience and the divine sense of humour, and smilingly tolerate those faults and virtues that have so brief a period and so intertwined a being.