Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/259

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ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
245

topics, have been most unreservedly accepted, it is a mistake to claim incompatible merits. The 'Bohemian'—taking Stevenson's version of the character—the man who looks from the outside upon the ordinary humdrum citizen, may be a very fascinating personage; but he really lacks something. Delighted with the exceptional and the picturesque, he has less insight into the more ordinary and, after all, most important springs of action. The excitable temperament, trying to stir every moment of life with some thrill of vivid feeling, and dreaming adventures to fill up every interstice of active occupation, is hardly compatible with much reflection. The writer, whose writing is the outcome of long experience, who has brooded long and patiently over the problems of life, who has tried to understand the character of his fellows and to form tenable ideals for himself, may not have accepted any systematic philosophy; but he represents the impression made by life upon a thoughtful mind, and has formed some sort of coherent and often professedly interesting judgment upon its merits. He is sometimes a bore, it is true; but sometimes, too, we have experience which is ripe without being mouldy. The rapid, vivid 'Sprite,' the natural Bohemian