more abundantly to ‘London,’ a weekly review newly founded under the editorship of Mr. Glasgow Brown, an acquaintance of Edinburgh Speculative days. In the former year, 1876, began the brilliant series of essays on life and literature in the ‘Cornhill Magazine’ which were afterwards collected with others in the volumes called severally ‘Virginibus Puerisque’ and ‘Familiar Studies of Men and Books.’ They were continued in 1877, and in greater number throughout 1878. His first published stories were: ‘A Lodging for the Night’ (Temple Bar, October 1877); ‘The Sire de Malétroit's Door’ (Temple Bar, January 1878); and ‘Will o' the Mill’ (Cornhill Magazine, January 1878).
The year 1878 was to Stevenson one of great productiveness. In May was issued his first book, ‘The Inland Voyage,’ containing the account of his canoe trip, and written in a pleasant fanciful vein of humour -nd reflection, but with the style a little over-mannered. Besides six or eight characteristic essays of the ‘Virginibus Puerisque’ series, there appeared in ‘London’ (edited by Mr. Henley) the set of fantastic modern tales called the ‘New Arabian Nights,’ conceived in a very spirited and entertaining vein of the realistic-unreal, as well as the story of ‘Providence and the Guitar;’ and in the ‘Portfolio’ the ‘Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh,’ republished at the end of the year in book form. During the autumn and winter of this year he wrote ‘Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes,’ and was much engaged in the planning of plays in collaboration with Mr. Henley, of which one, ‘Deacon Brodie,’ was finished in the spring of 1879. This was also the date of the essay ‘On some Aspects of Burns.’ In the same spring he drafted in Edinburgh, but afterwards laid by, four chapters on ethics (a study to which he once referred as being always his ‘veiled mistress’) under the name of ‘Lay Morals.’ In few men have the faculties been so active on the artistic and the ethical sides at once, and this fragment is of especial interest in the study of its author's mind and character.
By his various published writings Stevenson had made little impression as yet on the general reader. But the critical had recognised in him a new artist of the first promise in English letters, who aimed at, and often achieved, those qualities of sustained precision, lucidity, and grace of style which are characteristic of the best French prose, but in English rare in the extreme. He had known how to stamp all he wrote with the impress of a vivid personal charm; had shown himself a master of the apt and animated phrase; and whether in tale or parable, essay or wayside musing, had touched on vital points of experience and feeling with the observation and insight of a true poet and humourist.
The year 1879 was a critical one in Stevenson's life. In France he had met an American lady, Mrs. Osbourne (née Van de Grift), whose domestic circumstances were not fortunate, and who was living with her daughter and young son in the art-student circles of Paris and Fontainebleau. At the beginning of 1879 she returned to California. In June Stevenson determined to follow. He travelled by emigrant ship and train, partly for economy, partly for the sake of the experience. The journey and its discomforts proved disastrous to his health, but did not interrupt his industry. Left entirely to his own resources, he stayed for eight months partly at Monterey and partly at San Francisco. During a part of these months he was at death's door from a complication of pleurisy, malarial fever, and exhaustion of the system, but managed nevertheless to write the story of ‘The Pavilion on the Links,’ two or three essays for the ‘Cornhill Magazine,’ the greater part of a Californian story, ‘A Vendetta in the West’ (never published), a first draft of the romance of ‘Prince Otto,’ and the two parts of the ‘Amateur Emigrant’ (not published till some years later). He also tried to get work on the local press, and some contributions were printed in the ‘Monterey Independent;’ but on the whole his style was not thought up to Californian standards. In the spring of 1880 he was married to Mrs. Osbourne, who had obtained some months before a divorce from her husband. She nursed him through the worst of his illness, and in May they went for the sake of health to lodge at a deserted mining station above Calistoga, in the Californian coast range. The story of this sojourn is told in the ‘Silverado Squatters.’
Later, Stevenson brought his wife home in August 1880. She was to him a perfect companion, taking part keenly and critically in his work, sharing all his gipsy tastes and love of primitive and natural modes of life, and being, in spite of her own precarious health, the most devoted and efficient of nurses in the anxious times which now ensued.
For the next seven or eight years Stevenson's life seemed to hang by a thread. Chronic lung disease had declared itself, and the slightest exposure or exertion was apt to bring on a prostrating attack of cough, hæmorrhage, and fever. The trial was manfully
