A meeting was held in Edinburgh . on Thursday to.
further the movement for a memorial to Mr. Stevenson. Mr. Arthur Balfour wrote that in his opinionStevenson was. "one of the greatest—if not the very greatest—of our writers whose career lies wholly within the second half of the- present century." Lord Rosebery, who. moved the chief resolution,, said some excellent. things about Mr. Stevenson's books. For. example, he described the "Master of Ballantrae " as "the conflict of a scoundrel against a maniac narrated by a coward,"—a wonderfully true and concise description of that, lurid book. Excellent too was Lord Rosebery's account of Stevenson's style and of the irony which is to be found in his works. But though Lord Rosebery's address was capital reading and full of pleasantly pat recollections of Mr. Steven-. son's novels, we cannot help feeling that it erred, as' almost allour modern criticism errs, in being too purely laudatory in tone. Mr. Stevenson was a fascinating writer, but it is im- possible to rank him with Scott. Sir Walter may have been, and probably was, infinitely less successful in the manipula- tion of that verbal mosaic which we call style, but he touched the heart as Mr. Stevenson never does.
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