connection, it is true, has other dangers. The tie may be broken, and the rupture, it appears, cancels all obligations to reticence. No one can then lay on the lash like the old friend who knows the weak places and has, or fancies that he has, an injury to resent. But even fidelity to old ties is not necessarily blinding. No one can read Mr. Colvin's notes upon his friend's letters without admitting that his friendship has sharpened his insight. To him belongs the credit of having been the first, outside the home circle, to recognise Stevenson's genius and to give encouragement when encouragement was most needed. The keen interest enabled him to interpret both the personal and the artistic characteristics of his friend with a clearness which satisfies us of the essential fidelity of the portrait. If we differ from the valuation which he puts upon certain qualities, he gives essential help to perceiving them. We often learn more from the partisan than from the candid historian; and in criticism, as well as in history, candour may be an alias for insensibility.
It was to Mr. Colvin that I owe what is perhaps my chief claim to such respect as readers of a periodical may concede to an editor. Through his good offices, Stevenson became one of my
