skill than has been done by the delineator of the "Master of Ballantrae"—a fact which must add another bright ray to that lustrous star of his fame, of which I have watched the course with a special interest and admiration ever since it began to show above the lofty, rugged outlines of Arthur's Seat, until it assumed the appearance of a fixed position in the firmament above a solitary and sunlit isle in the far-off Pacific sea.
1891.
BOOKS WHICH
INFLUENCED ME
[Note.—This was contributed as one of a series of articles that appeared in the "British Weekly" in 1887.]
THE editor has somewhat insidiously laid a trap for his correspondents, the question put appearing at first so innocent, truly cutting so deep. It is not, indeed, until after some reconnaisance and review that the writer awakens to find himself engaged upon something in the nature of autobiography; or, perhaps worse, upon a chapter in the life of that little, beautiful brother whom we once all had, and whom we have all lost and mourned: the man we ought to have been, the man we hoped to be. But when word has been passed (even to an editor) it should, if possible, be kept; and if sometimes I am wise and say too little, and sometimes weak and say too much, the blame must lie at the door of the person who entrapped me.
The most influential books, and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they re-arrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular change—that monstrous, consuming ego of ours being, for
