SIR,—Two years ago in a country library I came across
the article by Robert Louis Stevenson to which your corre- spondent refers in a letter under the above heading in the Spectator of December 26th. It was, as well as I can remem- ber, in a Contemporary of the early "eighties," and I have never seen it reprinted in editions of his work. The sound- sequence to which Stevenson wished to draw attention is P, F, V, and he illustrates it with Milton's exquisite sentence : "I cannot Praise a FugitiVe and cloistered Virtue, unexer- cised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat." I remember that "R. L. S." praised the sibilants of the middle sentence and the short sharp cadence of the concluding phrase. He also quoted as an example of " Shakespeare's unique technique " the lines :—
" The barge she sat in, like a burnish'd throne, Burn'd on the water: the poop was beaten gold ; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were love-sick with them."
—I am, Sir, &c., B. M. P.
[We believe that our correspondent will find the article in question in the "Edinburgh" edition of Stevenson's works. —ED. Spectator.]
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