By this time there could be
no doubt that Mr. Stevenson had a style of his own, modelled to some
extent on the essayists of the last century, but with touches of
Thackeray; with original breaks and turns, with a delicate
freakishness, in short, and a determined love of saying things as
the newspapers do not say them. All this work undoubtedly smelt a
trifle of the lamp, and was therefore dear to some, and an offence
to others. For my part, I had delighted in the essays, from the
first that appeared in Macmillan's Magazine, shortly after the
Franco-German war. In this little study, "Ordered South," Mr.
Stevenson was employing himself in extracting all the melancholy
pleasure which the Riviera can give to a wearied body and a mind
resisting the clouds of early malady,
"Alas, the worn and broken board,
How can it bear the painter's dye!
The harp of strained and tuneless chord,
How to the minstrel's skill reply!
To aching eyes each landscape lowers,
To feverish pulse each gale blows chill,
And Araby's or Eden's bowers
Were barren as this moorland hill," -
wrote Scott, in an hour of malady and depression. But this was not
the spirit of "Ordered South": the younger soul rose against the
tyranny of the body; and that familiar glamour which, in illness,
robs Tintoretto of his glow, did not spoil the midland sea to Mr.
Stevenson. His gallant and cheery stoicism were already with him;
and so perfect, if a trifle overstudied, was his style, that one
already foresaw a new and charming essayist.
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