races—­anything that assumes the necessity for the extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated—­no matter by what name you call it—­no matter whether a fakir, or a monk, or a deacon believes it—­if received, ought to produce insanity in every well-regulated mind.”

There’s a fine bit of breezy polemics for the dreary fifties—­a fine bit of moral courage too for the University professor who ventured to say it.

I put him above Lamb as an essayist, because there is a flavour of actual knowledge and of practical acquaintance with the problems and affairs of life, which is lacking in the elfin Londoner.  I do not say that the latter is not the rarer quality.  There are my “Essays of Elia,” and they are well-thumbed as you see, so it is not because I love Lamb less that I love this other more.  Both are exquisite, but Wendell Holmes is for ever touching some note which awakens an answering vibration within my own mind.

The essay must always be a somewhat repellent form of literature, unless it be handled with the lightest and deftest touch.  It is too reminiscent of the school themes of our boyhood—­to put a heading and then to show what you can get under it.  Even Stevenson, for whom I have the most profound admiration, finds it difficult to carry the reader through a series of such papers, adorned with his original thought and quaint turn of phrase.  Yet his “Men and Books” and “Virginibus Puerisque” are high examples of what may be done in spite of the inherent unavoidable difficulty of the task.

But his style!  Ah, if Stevenson had only realized how beautiful and nervous was his own natural God-given style, he would never have been at pains to acquire another!  It is sad to read the much-lauded anecdote of his imitating this author and that, picking up and dropping, in search of the best.  The best is always the most natural.  When Stevenson becomes a conscious stylist, applauded by so many critics, he seems to me like a man who, having most natural curls, will still conceal them under a wig.  The moment he is precious he loses his grip.  But when he will abide by his own sterling Lowland Saxon, with the direct word and the short, cutting sentence, I know not where in recent years we may find his mate.  In this strong, plain setting the occasional happy word shines like a cut jewel.  A really good stylist is like Beau Brummell’s description of a well-dressed man—­so dressed that no one would ever observe him.  The moment you begin to remark a man’s style the odds are that there is something the matter with it.  It is a clouding of the crystal—­a diversion of the reader’s mind from the matter to the manner, from the author’s subject to the author himself.