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STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER

fascination, Stevenson should only have achieved full recognition by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. That book, we are told, was also written in a fit of inspiration, suggested by dreaming a 'fine bogey tale.' The public liked it because it became an allegory—a circumstance, I fear, which does not attract me. But considered as a 'bogey tale,' able to revive the old thrill of delicious horror in one who does not care for psychical research, it has the same power of carrying one away by its imaginative intensity. These masterpieces in their own way suggest one remark. Mr. Balfour points out that Stevenson did an enormous quantity of work, considering not only his ill-health, but the fact that he often worked very slowly, that he destroyed many sketches, and that he rewrote some articles as often as seven or eight times. Thanks to his 'dire industry,' as he said himself, he had 'done more with smaller gifts' (one must excuse the modest formula), 'than almost any man of letters in the world.' This restless energy, however, did not mean persistent labour upon one task; but a constant alternation of tasks. When inspiration failed him for one book, he took up another, and waited for the fit to return. One result is that there is often a want