The _Burns_ herein mentioned is an article undertaken in the early
summer of the same year for the Encyclopaedia Britannica. In the end
Stevenson's work was thought to convey a view of the poet too frankly
critical, and too little in accordance with the accepted Scotch
tradition; and the publishers, duly paying him for his labours,
transferred the task to Professor Shairp. The volume here announced
on the three Scottish eighteenth-century poets unfortunately never
came into being. The _Charles of Orleans_ essay appeared in the
Cornhill Magazine for December of the following year; that on Villon
(with the story on the same theme, _A Lodging for the Night_) not
until the autumn of 1877. The essay on Beranger referred to at the
end of the letter was one commissioned and used by the editor of the
Encyclopaedia; _Spring_ was a prose poem, of which the manuscript,
sent to me at Cambridge, was unluckily lost in the confusion of a
change of rooms.
[_Edinburgh, Autumn 1875._]
MY DEAR COLVIN,--Thanks for your letter and news. No--my _Burns_ is not
done yet, it has led me so far afield that I cannot finish it; every
time I think I see my way to an end, some new game (or perhaps wild
goose) starts up, and away I go. And then, again, to be plain, I shirk
the work of the critical part, shirk it as a man shirks a long jump. It
is awful to have to express and differentiate _Burns_ in a column or
two. O golly, I say, you know, it _can't_ be done at the money. All the
more as I'm going to write a book about it. _Ramsay, Fergusson, and
Burns: an Essay_ (or _a critical essay?_ but then I'm going to give
lives of the three gentlemen, only the gist of the book is the
criticism) by Robert Louis Stevenson, Advocate. How's that for cut and
dry? And I _could_ write this book. Unless I deceive myself, I could
even write it pretty adequately. I feel as if I was really in it, and
knew the game thoroughly. You see what comes of trying to write an essay
on Burns in ten columns.
Meantime, when I have done Burns, I shall finish Charles of Orleans (who
is in a good way, about the fifth month, I should think, and promises to
be a fine healthy child, better than any of his elder brothers for a
while); and then perhaps a Villon, for Villon is a very essential part
of my _Ramsay-Fergusson-Burns_; I mean, is a note in it, and will recur
again and again for comparison and illustration; then, perhaps, I may
try Fontainebleau, by the way. But so soon as Charles of Orleans is
polished off, and immortalised for ever, he and his pipings, in a solid
imperishable shrine of R. L. S., my true aim and end will be this little
book. Suppose I could jerk you out 100 Cornhill pages; that would easy
make 200 pages of decent form; and then thickish paper--eh? would that
do? I dare say it could be made bigger; but I know what 100 pages of
copy, bright consummate copy, imply behind the scenes of weary
manuscribing; I think if I put another nothing to it, I should not be
outside the mark; and 100 Cornhill pages of 500 words means, I fancy
(but I never was good at figures), means 50,000 words. There's a
prospect for an idle young gentleman who lives at home at ease! The
future is thick with inky fingers. And then perhaps nobody would
publish. _Ah nom de dieu!_ What do you think of all this? will it
paddle, think you?