The mechanical construction of M. Scribe I had learnt from M. Duval; the naturalistic school had taught me to scorn tricks, and to rely on the action of the sentiments rather than on extraneous aid for the bringing about of a denouement; and I thought of all this as I read “Disenchantment” by Miss Mabel Robinson, and it occurred to me that my knowledge would prove valuable when my turn came to write a novel, for the mise en place, the setting forth of this story, seemed to me so loose, that much of its strength had dribbled away before it had rightly begun.  But the figure of the Irish politician I accept without reserve.  It seems to me grand and mighty in its sorrowfulness.  The tall, dark-eyed, beautiful Celt, attainted in blood and brain by generations of famine and drink, alternating with the fervid sensuousness of the girl, her Saxon sense of right alternating with the Celt’s hereditary sense of revenge, his dreamy patriotism, his facile platitudes, his acceptance of literature as a sort of bread basket, his knowledge that he is not great nor strong, and can do nothing in the world but love his country; and as he passes his thirtieth year the waxing strong of the disease, nervous disease complex and torturous; to him drink is at once life and death; an article is bread, and to calm him and collect what remains of weak, scattered thought, he must drink.  The woman cannot understand that caste and race separate them; and the damp air of spent desire, and the grey and falling leaves of her illusions fill her life’s sky.  Nor is there any hope for her until the husband unties the awful knot by suicide.

I will state frankly that Mr. R.L.  Stevenson never wrote a line that failed to delight me; but he never wrote a book.  You arrive at a strangely just estimate of a writer’s worth by the mere question:  “What is he the author of?” for every writer whose work is destined to live is the author of one book that outshines the other, and, in popular imagination, epitomises his talent and position.  What is Shakespeare the author of?  What is Milton the author of?  What is Fielding the author of?  What is Byron the author of?  What is Carlyle the author of?  What is Thackeray the author of?  What is Zola the author of?  What is Mr. Swinburne the author of?  Mr. Stevenson is the author of shall I say, “Treasure Island,” or what?

I think of Mr. Stevenson as a consumptive youth weaving garlands of sad flowers with pale, weak hands, or leaning to a large plate-glass window, and scratching thereon exquisite profiles with a diamond pencil.