THE " SWANSTON " STEVENSON.* ALL lovers of Robert Louis

Stevenson and his work will wel- come this charming, well-printed, and easily handled collection, of which the first ten volumes are now published. On a

future occasion we may say something as to the new matter, for there is to be a certain amount of new material in the present edition. For the present we shall confine ourselves to the characteristic and most attractive Introduc- tion by Mr. Andrew Lang. • Mr. Lang tells us that, though

he did not see a very great amount of Stevenson, he knew him comparatively early, and that his love for the man and

admiration for his work were maintained throughout. "I can," he says, " but contribute the personal views of one who knew,

loved, and esteemed his junior that is already a classic, but who never was of the inner circle of his intimates." That, however, is not at all a bad standpoint for a critic, and the love and sympathy were evidently returned, for did not Mr. Stevenson- address one of the most fascinating of his personal poems to " Dear Andrew with the brindled hair "

Scattered up and down the Introduction and interwoven with his appreciation of the man are one or two delightful

anecdotes.

"Throughout life he always played his part, as in childhood, with full conscious and picturesque effect, as did the great Montrose and the English Admirals, in whom• he notes this dramatic trait. He was not a poseur; he was merely sensitively conscious of himself and of life as an art. As a little boy with curls and a velvet tunic he read Ministering Children and yearned to be a ministering child. An opportunity seemed to present itself ; the class of boys called 'keelies' by the more comfortable boys in Edinburgh used to play in the street under the windows Of his father's house. One lame boy, a baker's son, could only look on. Here was a chance to minister ! Louis, with a beating heart, walked out on his angelic mission. "Little boy, would you like to play with me ? ' he asked. 'You go to — I ' was the answer of the independent son of the hardy baker. It is difficult to pass from the enchanted childhood of this eternal child, with its 271* Works of Robert Louis Stevenson. With an Introduction by Andrew Zang. The Swanton Edition." In 25 vole, price 6e, net per vol., subscribed in sets only. London; Matto sad Windus, imaginative playing at everything, broken only by fevers whereof' the dreams were the nightmares of unconscious genius. He has. told of all this as only he could tell it."

What Mr. Lang has to say about Stevenson's style is ins every sense judicious. We agree with him in thinking that, in spite of Stevenson's attempt to make us believe the reverse,- he, Stevenson, succeeded in style because " he had a very keen,. natural perception of things" ; in fact "had a genius of his own, and that these graces came to him, though he says they did not, by nature." Mr. Lang goes on to hazard the sugges- tion that "Prince Otto" seems to him in places over-written. So no doubt it is, but, then, could not Stevenson have replied that he could not have got the particular atmosphere which he wanted to get without over-writing? Assuming that you undertook to paint in the style of the most finished French painters of the eighteenth century, how could you accomplish your design without over-painting ? But, as Mr. Lang sayw finely, " though Stevenson now and then ran near the rock of preciosity he very seldom piled up his barque on that reef."' "His style is, to the right reader, a perpetual feast, a dreiping,- roast,' and his style cannot be parodied."

Some of Stevenson's literary plans, like those of Milton,, are extraordinarily suggestive and attractive. Milton, it may be remembered, planned to write a play in which, the Morning Star was to be one of the characters; and also an epic on the Arthurian legend. Stevenson actually contemplated a Life of Hazlitt and another of the.Doke of Wellington. Just as Mr. Peeksniff said he- should like to have seen Mrs. Todgers's idea of a wooden leg,. so we confess we should greatly like to have seen Mr. Steven- son's Life of the Duke of Wellington. We say this not out. of any foolish or quizzical belief that it would have been a. monstrosity. On the contrary, it would, we may feel sure, have been a marvellous pen portrait of the man, possibly a. match to Goya's famous canvas. On the whole, however,. Stevenson's time was better bestowed.

Incidentally, and in regard to the fascinating subject of " Kidnapped," Mr. Andrew Lang interpolates the following remark :—

" The story centres on the Appin murder cf 1751, about which he had made inquiries in the neighbourhood of Rannoch, where: Alan Breck skulked after the shooting of Campbell of Glenure in. the hanoing wood south of Ballachulish. Stevenson could not learn who the other man' was—the real murderer in the romance. I know, but respect the Celtic secret. The fatal gun was found,. very many years after the deed, by an old woman in a hollow tree,. and it was not the gun of James- Stewart. I have a friend whose great-great-grandfather was standing_ beside James of the Glens watching the digging of potatoes. A horse was heart approaching at such a pace that James said, Whoever the rider is, the horse is not his own.' As he galloped past the rider shouted : Glenure is shot ! " Who did it I don't know, but I am the man that will hang for it,' said James too truly."

Before we leave Mr. Lang's delightful causerie we should like to register our endorsement of his criticism of The Wrecker. In regard to the crux of how to get rid of the

• who were such compromising witnesses Mr. Lang makes the admirable suggestion, "I would have marooned them." That certainly would have been better than the cruel absurdity of making a mild artist consent to a most bloody, unnecessary, and abominable massacre. We cannot better conclude this notice than by quoting the last two paragraphs of the Intro- duction :—

"There was a very pleasant trait in Stevenson's character which,. perhaps, does not display itself in most of his writings—his great affection for children. In A Child's Garden of Verse, delightful as it is, and.not to be read without 'a great inclination to cry,' the child is himself, the child 'that is gone.' But in an early letter he writes : Rids is what is the matter with me. . . Children are too good to be true.' He had a natural infatuation, so to say, for children as children, which many men of the pen overcome with no apparent difficulty. He could not overcome it; little boys and little girls were his delight, and he was theirs. At Molokai, the Leper Island, he played croquet with the little girls ; refusing to wear gloves lest he should remind them of their con- dition. Sensitive and weak in body as he was, Nelson was not more fearless. It was equally characteristic of another quality of his, the open hand, that he gave a grand piano to these leper children. He says :

'But the nearest friends are the auldest friends, And the grave's the place to seek them.'

Among the nearest and the oldest friends of his I never was, but to few friends, nearer and older, does my desiderium go back so frequently; simply because almost every day brings something newly learned or known which would have appealed most to his unequalled breadth of knowledge, and interest, and sympathy."