counter-irritant. His 'view of life,' he says, 'is essentially the comic and the romantically comic.' He loves, as he explains, the comedy 'which keeps the beauty and touches the terrors of life'; which tells its story 'not with the one eye of pity but with the two of pity and mirth.' We should arrange our little drama so that, without ignoring the tragic element, the net outcome may be a state of mind in which the terror becomes, as danger became to Nelson, a source of joyous excitement.
What I have so far said has more direct application to the essayist than to the novelist; and to most readers, I suppose, the novelist is the more interesting of the two. As an essayist, however, Stevenson becomes an unconscious critic of the stories. The essays define the point of view adopted by the story-teller. One quality is common to all his writings. The irrepressible youthfulness must be remembered, to do justice to the essays. We must not ask for deep thought employed upon long experience; or expect to be impressed, as we are impressed in reading Bacon, by aphorisms in which the wisdom of a lifetime seems to be concentrated. We admire the quick feeling, the dexterity and nimbleness of intellect. The thought of 'Crabbed Age and Youth' is
