From many different points of view discerning critics have celebrated the
autobiographic vein--the self-revealing turn, the self-portraiture, the
quaint, genial, yet really child-like egotistic and even dreamy element
that lies like an amalgam, behind all Stevenson's work. Some have even
said, that because of this, he will finally live by his essays and not by
his stories. That is extreme, and is not critically based or justified,
because, however true it may be up to a certain point, it is not true of
Stevenson's quite latest fictions where we see a decided breaking through
of the old limits, and an advance upon a new and a fresher and broader
sphere of interest and character altogether. But these ideas set down
truly enough at a certain date, or prior to a certain date, are wrong and
falsely directed in view of Stevenson's latest work and what it promised.
For instance, what a discerning and able writer in the _Edinburgh Review_
of July 1895 said truly then was in great part utterly inapplicable to
the whole of the work of the last years, for in it there was grasp, wide
and deep, of new possibilities--promise of clear insight, discrimination,
and contrast of character, as well as firm hold of new and great human
interest under which the egotistic or autobiographic vein was submerged
or weakened. The _Edinburgh Reviewer_ wrote:
"There was irresistible fascination in what it would be unfair to
characterise as egotism, for it came natural to him to talk frankly
and easily of himself. . . . He could never have dreamed, like Pepys,
of locking up his confidence in a diary. From first to last, in
inconsecutive essays, in the records of sentimental touring, in
fiction and in verse, he has embodied the outer and the inner
autobiography. He discourses--he prattles--he almost babbles about
himself. He seems to have taken minute and habitual introspection for
the chief study in his analysis of human nature, as a subject which
was immediately in his reach, and would most surely serve his purpose.
We suspect much of the success of his novels was due to the fact that
as he seized for a substructure on the scenery and situations which
had impressed him forcibly, so in the characters of the most different
types, there was always more or less of self-portraiture. The subtle
touch, eminently and unmistakably realistic, gave life to what might
otherwise have seemed a lay-figure. . . . He hesitated again and again
as to his destination; and under mistakes, advice of friends, doubted
his chances, as a story-writer, even after _Treasure Island_ had
enjoyed its special success. . . . We venture to think that, with his
love of intellectual self-indulgence, had he found novel-writing
really enjoyable, he would never have doubted at all. But there comes
in the difference between him and Scott, whom he condemns for the
slovenliness of hasty workmanship. Scott, in his best days, sat down
to his desk and let the swift pen take its course in inspiration that
seemed to come without an effort. Even when racked with pains, and
groaning in agony, the intellectual machinery was still driven at a
high pressure by something that resembled an irrepressible instinct.
Stevenson can have had little or nothing of that inspiriting afflatus.
He did his painstaking work conscientiously, thoughtfully; he erased,
he revised, and he was hard to satisfy. In short, it was his
weird--and he could not resist it--to set style and form before fire
and spirit."