Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/228

This precocious sensitiveness developed into a clear appreciation of various qualities of style. Like other young men, he began by imitating; taking for models such curiously different writers as Hazlitt, Sir Thomas Browne, Defoe, Hawthorne, Montaigne, Beaudelaire, and Ruskin. In the ordinary cases imitation implies that the model is taken as a master. Milton probably meant, in youth, to be a second Spenser. But the variety of Stevenson's models implies an absence of strict discipleship. He was trying to discover the secret which gave distinction to any particular style; and without adopting the manner would know how to apply it on occasion for any desired effect. How impressionable he was is curiously shown by his statement towards the end of his life, that he would not read Livy for fear of the effect upon his style. He had long before acquired a style of his own so distinctive that such a danger would strike no one else. I will not dwell upon its merits. They have been set forth, far better than I could hope to do, in Professor Raleigh's admirable study. He is a critic who shares the perceptiveness of his author. I will only note one point. A 'stylist' sometimes becomes a mannerist; he acquires tricks of speech which intrude