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       THE WORKS OF
  ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

     SWANSTON EDITION

        VOLUME III




  _Of this SWANSTON EDITION in Twenty-five
  Volumes of the Works of ROBERT LOUIS
  STEVENSON Two Thousand and Sixty Copies
  have been printed, of which only Two Thousand
  Copies are for sale._

  _This is No._ ..........


  [Illustration: SWANSTON COTTAGE, THE HOME OF R.L.S. FROM 1868 TO 1876]

  THE WORKS OF
  ROBERT LOUIS
   STEVENSON

  VOLUME THREE


  LONDON: PUBLISHED BY CHATTO AND
  WINDUS: IN ASSOCIATION WITH CASSELL
  AND COMPANY LIMITED: WILLIAM
  HEINEMANN: AND LONGMANS GREEN
  AND COMPANY MDCCCCXI

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




CONTENTS


  FAMILIAR STUDIES OF MEN AND BOOKS

                                                            PAGE

        PREFACE BY WAY OF CRITICISM                            5

     I. VICTOR HUGO'S ROMANCES                                19

    II. SOME ASPECTS OF ROBERT BURNS                          43

   III. WALT WHITMAN                                          77

    IV. HENRY DAVID THOREAU: HIS CHARACTER AND OPINIONS      101

     V. YOSHIDA-TORAJIRO                                     129

    VI. FRANÇOIS VILLON, STUDENT, POET, AND HOUSEBREAKER     142

   VII. CHARLES OF ORLEANS                                   171

  VIII. SAMUEL PEPYS                                         206

    IX. JOHN KNOX AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN                 230


  THE BODY-SNATCHER                                          277




FAMILIAR STUDIES OF MEN AND BOOKS


  TO
  THOMAS STEVENSON
  CIVIL ENGINEER

  BY WHOSE DEVICES THE GREAT SEA LIGHTS
  IN EVERY QUARTER OF THE WORLD NOW SHINE MORE BRIGHTLY

  THIS VOLUME IS IN LOVE AND GRATITUDE
  DEDICATED BY HIS SON

  THE AUTHOR




PREFACE BY WAY OF CRITICISM


These studies are collected from the monthly press. One appeared in the
_New Quarterly_, one in _Macmillan's_, and the rest in the _Cornhill
Magazine_. To the _Cornhill_ I owe a double debt of thanks; first, that
I was received there in the very best society, and under the eye of the
very best of editors; and second, that the proprietors have allowed me
to republish so considerable an amount of copy. These nine worthies have been brought together from many different ages
and countries. Not the most erudite of men could be perfectly prepared
to deal with so many and such various sides of human life and manners. To pass a true judgment upon Knox and Burns implies a grasp upon the
very deepest strain of thought in Scotland,--a country far more
essentially different from England than many parts of America; for, in a
sense, the first of these men re-created Scotland, and the second is its
most essentially national production. To treat fitly of Hugo and Villon
would involve yet wider knowledge, not only of a country foreign to the
author by race, history, and religion, but of the growth and liberties
of art. Of the two Americans, Whitman and Thoreau, each is the type of
something not so much realised as widely sought after among the late
generations of their countrymen; and to see them clearly in a nice
relation to the society that brought them forth, an author would require
a large habit of life among modern Americans. As for Yoshida, I have
already disclaimed responsibility; it was but my hand that held the pen. In truth, these are but the readings of a literary vagrant. One book
led to another, one study to another. The first was published with
trepidation. Since no bones were broken, the second was launched with
greater confidence. So, by insensible degrees, a young man of our
generation acquires, in his own eyes, a kind of roving judicial
commission through the ages: and, having once escaped the perils of the
Freemans and the Furnivalls, sets himself up to right the wrongs of
universal history and criticism. Now it is one thing to write with
enjoyment on a subject while the story is hot in your mind from recent
reading, coloured with recent prejudice; and it is quite another
business to put these writings coldly forth again in a bound volume. We
are most of us attached to our opinions; that is one of the "natural
affections" of which we hear so much in youth; but few of us are
altogether free from paralysing doubts and scruples. For my part, I have
a small idea of the degree of accuracy possible to man, and I feel sure
these studies teem with error. One and all were written with genuine
interest in the subject; many, however, have been conceived and finished
with imperfect knowledge; and all have lain, from beginning to end,
under the disadvantages inherent in this style of writing. Of these disadvantages a word must here be said. The writer of short
studies, having to condense in a few pages the events of a whole
lifetime, and the effect on his own mind of many various volumes, is
bound, above all things, to make that condensation logical and striking. For the only justification of his writing at all is that he shall
present a brief, reasoned, and memorable view. By the necessity of the
case, all the more neutral circumstances are omitted from his narrative;
and that of itself, by the negative exaggeration of which I have spoken
in the text, lends to the matter in hand a certain false and specious
glitter. By the necessity of the case, again, he is forced to view his
subject throughout in a particular illumination, like a studio artifice. Like Hales with Pepys, he must nearly break his sitter's neck to get the
proper shadows on the portrait. It is from one side only that he has
time to represent his subject. The side selected will either be the one
most striking to himself, or the one most obscured by controversy; and
in both cases that will be the one most liable to strained and
sophisticated reading. In a biography, this and that is displayed; the
hero is seen at home, playing the flute; the different tendencies of his
work come one after another into notice; and thus something like a true
general impression of the subject may at last be struck. But in the
short study, the writer, having seized his "point of view," must keep
his eye steadily to that. He seeks, perhaps, rather to differentiate
than truly to characterise. The proportions of the sitter must be
sacrificed to the proportions of the portrait; the lights are
heightened, the shadows overcharged; the chosen expression, continually
forced, may degenerate at length into a grimace; and we have at best
something of a caricature, at worst a calumny. Hence, if they be
readable at all and hang together by their own ends, the peculiar
convincing force of these brief representations. They take so little a
while to read, and yet in that little while the subject is so repeatedly
introduced in the same light and with the same expression, that, by
sheer force of repetition, that view is imposed upon the reader.