Look up the poem, I pray you, Stevensonians, and ask yourself if he isn't all there.
And I say it is not a man of no character, and it is not a man of no genius for vital characterization neither, that can stamp, clear-cut, a figure like that of "R. L. S." into the consciousness of three generations. Try it, O superior "modern" young men! We are waiting for you.
I ask you if you can find a single one of these thirty-two volumes in which "R. L. S." is not effectively present. In running through his letters and his essays on the art of fiction I came repeatedly upon a certain ideal for the writer of romance: namely, that each chapter should (1) advance the story, (2) develop the character, and (3) embody the theme.
Now Stevenson wrote out the romance of life in many chapters, with astonishing technical versatility. There are poems, essays, criticism, descriptive sketches, travel books, plays, biography, history, short stories, novels and letters; and within most of these forms there is as much variety of form, mood, and substance as appears when one contemplates the large divisions of the complete works. Yet in each main division and in each subdivision, I, for one, feel that he advances his story, develops his character and embodies his theme. Compare him with any author of his bulk that you choose, where will you find such unity in variety, such centrality and emphasis with so little of repetition?
What is the controlling informing spirit throughout the mass? Style, of course. Not style, as his critics allege, conceived as a mere foppishness in words. Style for him is not mainly in the words but in the "web" or "pattern" which the synthetic stylist weaves in order to hold fast "a far more deep and stimulating view of
