Too close imitation of the masters has its dangers for the novice. Apes and peacocks beset the way. Stevenson's prose style is highly synthesised and a mosaic of dead men's manner. He has no esoteric message beyond the expression of his sprite-like, whimsical personality, and this expression is, in the main, consummate. The lion in his pathway is the thinness of his intellectual processes; as in De Quincey's case, a master of the English language beyond compare, who in the region of pure speculation often goes sadly limping; his criticism of Kant proves it. But a music-maker in our written speech, Robert Louis Stevenson is the supreme mocking-bird in English literature. He overplayed the sedulous imitator. John Jay Chapman in a brilliant essay has traced the progress of this prose pilgrim, a professional stylist as well as a professional invalid. The American critic registers the variations in style and sensibility of the Scotsman, who did not always demonstrate in his writing the fundamental idea that the sole exponent of sensibility is analytic power. He drew freely on all his predecessors, and his personal charm exhibits the "glue of unanimity," as old Boëthius would say. Mr. Chapman quotes a passage supposedly from Sir Thomas Browne, beginning, "Time sadly overcometh all things," which is not to be found in his collected writings. Yet it is apropos because, like Stevenson's prose, it is from the crucible of an alchemist, though at the time Mr. Chapman quoted it was not known to be a clever Liverpudlian forgery. Since then, after considerable controversy, the paragraph in question has been shown as the fabrication of a Liverpool man of letters, whose name we have forgotten. But it suggests, does this false Browne, that good prose may be successfully simulated, though essentials be missing.