It needed an austere artistic
conscience to make Henry, the younger brother, so unlovable with all
his excellence, and to keep the lady so true, yet so much in shadow.
This is the best woman among Mr. Stevenson's few women; but even she
is almost always reserved, veiled as it were.
The old Lord, again, is a portrait as lifelike as Scott could have
drawn, and more delicately touched than Scott would have cared to
draw it: a French companion picture to the Baron Bradwardine. The
whole piece reads as if Mr. Stevenson had engaged in a struggle with
himself as he wrote. The sky is never blue, the sun never shines:
we weary for a "westland wind." There is something "thrawn," as the
Scotch say, about the story; there is often a touch of this sinister
kind in the author's work. The language is extraordinarily artful,
as in the mad lord's words, "I have felt the hilt dirl on his
breast-bone." And yet, one is hardly thrilled as one expects to be,
when, as Mackellar says, "the week-old corpse looked me for a moment
in the face."
Probably none of Mr. Stevenson's many books has made his name so
familiar as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde." I read it first in
manuscript, alone, at night; and, when the Butler and Mr. Urmson
came to the Doctor's door, I confess that I threw it down, and went
hastily to bed. It is the most gruesome of all his writings, and so
perfect that one can complain only of the slightly too obvious
moral; and, again, that really Mr.
Pages:
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57