But if Stevenson does not care to philosophize over Nature--herein
parting company with Thoreau as well as Hardy--he can moralize on
occasion, and with infinite relish too.
"Something of the Shorter Catechist," as his friend Henley so acutely
said. There is the Moralist in his essays, in some of the short
stories--_Jekyll and Hyde_ is a morality in disguise, and unblushingly so
is _A Christmas Sermon_.
Some of his admirers have deplored this tendency in Stevenson; have
shaken their heads gloomily over his Scottish ancestry, and spoken as
apologetically about the moralizing as if it had been kleptomania.
Well, there it is as glaring and apparent as Borrow's big green gamp or
De Quincey's insularity. "What business has a Vagabond to moralize?"
asks the reader. Yet there is a touch of the Moralist in every Vagabond
(especially the English-speaking Vagabond), and its presence in Stevenson
gives an additional piquancy to his work. The _Lay Morals_ and the
_Christmas Sermon_ may not exhilarate some readers greatly, but there is
a fresher note, a larger utterance in the _Fables_. And even if you do
not care for Stevenson's "Hamlet" and "Shorter Catechist" moods, is it
wise, even from the artistic point of view, to wish away that side of his
temperament? Was it the absence of the "Shorter Catechist" in Edgar
Allan Poe that sent him drifting impotently across the world, brilliant,
unstable, aspiring, grovelling; a man of many fine qualities and
extraordinary intensity of imagination, but tragically weak where he
ought to have been strong? And was it the "Shorter Catechist" in
Stevenson that gave him that grip-hold of life's possibilities, imbued
him with his unfailing courage, and gave him as Artist a strenuous
devotion to an ideal that accompanied him to the end? Or was it so
lamentable a defect as certain critics allege? I wonder.
VI
RICHARD JEFFERIES
"Noises of river and of grove
And moving things in field and stall
And night birds' whistle shall be all
Of the world's speech that we shall hear."