Edition de Luxe. The Greenock Press. The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson. Graham Balfour. Two volumes. Scribners. The standard biography. The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson. Edited by Sidney Colvin. Two volumes. Scribners. Vailima Letters. Edited by Sidney Colvin. Two volumes. Scribners. Robert Louis Stevenson. T. Cope Cornford. Dodd, Mead and Company. This, and the two following, are brief, onevolume lives. Robert Louis Stevenson. (Famous Scots Series.) Margaret M. Black. Scribners. Robert Louis Stevenson. A Life in Criticism. H. Bellyse Baildon. A. Wessels & Co. Stevenson, Robert Louis. Sidney Colvin. A brief sketch in The Dictionary of National Biography. Robert Louis Stevenson. Walter Raleigh. Edwin Arnold. An appreciation. Stevenson's Attitude Toward Life. J. F. Genung. Thomas Y. Crowell. In the Track of R. L. Stevenson and Elsewhere in Old France. J. A. Hammerton. E. P. Dutton & Co. Contains one chapter on An Inland Voyage and one on Travels with a Donkey, and is freely illustrated with photographs of the scenes of Stevenson's journeys. See also essays and comments on Stevenson by Henry James in Partial Portraits; J. J. Chapman, in Emerson and Other Essays; J. M. Barrie, in An Edinburgh Eleven; Edmund Gosse, in Questions at Issue and Critical KitKats; and the various magazine articles accessible through the indexes to periodical literature. AUTHOR'S PREFACE To equip so small a book with a preface is, I am half afraid, to sin against proportion. But a preface is more than an author can resist, for it is the reward of his labors. When the foundation stone is laid, the architect appears with his plans, and struts for an hour before the public eye. So with the writer in his preface: he may have never a word to say, but he must show himself for a moment in the portico, hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanor. It is best, in such circumstance, to represent a delicate shade of manner between humility and superiority: as if the book had been written by some one else, and you had merely run over it and inserted what was good. But for my part I have not yet learned the trick to that perfection; I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth of my sentiments towards a reader; and if I meet him on the threshold, it is to invite him in with country cordiality. To say truth, I had no sooner finished reading this little book in proof than I was seized upon by a distressing apprehension. It occurred to me that I might not only be the first to read these pages, but the last as well; that I might have pioneered this very smiling tract of country all in vain, and find not a soul to follow my steps. The more I thought, the more I disliked the notion; until the distaste grew into a sort of panic terror, and I rushed into this Preface, which is no more than an advertisement for read ers. What am I to say for my book? Caleb and Joshua1 1 Caleb and Joshua. See Numbers XIII. 27 brought back from Palestine a formidable bunch of grapes; alas! my book produces naught so nourishing; and for the matter of that, we live in an age when people prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit. I wonder, would a negative be found enticing? For, from the negative point of view, I flatter myself this volume has a certain stamp. Although it runs to considerably upwards of two hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility of God's universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made a better one myself, I really do not know where my head can have been. I seemed to have forgotten all that makes it glorious to be man. 'Tis an omission that renders the book philosophically unimportant; but I am in hopes the eccentricity may please in frivolous circles. To the friend who accompanied me I owe many thanks already, indeed I wish I owed him nothing else; but at this moment I feel towards him an almost exaggerated tenderness. He, at least, will become my reader,-if it were only to follow his own travels alongside of mine. R. L. S. An Inland Voyage. The voyage was made from Antwerp, in Belgium, to a point on the French frontier near Maubeuge, and thence through France to Pointoise, a town seventeen miles northwest of Paris. "The inhabitants of Belgium are composed of two distinct races, almost as different from each other in racial characteristics as are the Germans from the French. The northern provinces, bordering mainly on the North Sea, are inhabited by the Flemings, a sturdy, blue-eyed, fair-haired people of Teutonic origin, somewhat akin to the Dutch. In fact, the language spoken by them closely resembles that of Holland, and the Dutch and Flemish read each other's newspapers, although they cannot very well understand each other's conversation. In this portion of Belgium-which_constitutes the real Flanders-are located the interesting old cities, Bruges and Ghent, as well as the great seaport, Antwerp. "In southern Belgium, however, which is the manufacturing part of the kingdom, lives an entirely different people, known as the Walloons. They are the descendants of the Gauls, and are, as a rule, of a high-strung, nervous temperament, with dark complexions and lively dispositions, like the French. These people speak not only French, but a dialect of the French language, known as the Walloon, which more closely resembles the old provençal of southern France than does the modern French itself."-John L. Stoddard. |