Robert Louis Stevenson
- Pages
- about 39
- Category
- History
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 42 min at 250 wpm
From the opening
THE GREATER PART OF THIS
ESSAY WAS GIVEN AS A LECTURE
AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION
ON THE 17TH OF MAY
1895
When a popular writer dies, the question it has become the fashion with a
nervous generation to ask is the question, 'Will he live?' There was no
idler question, none more hopelessly impossible and unprofitable to
answer. It is one of the many vanities of criticism to promise
immortality to the authors that it praises, to patronise a writer with
the assurance that our great-grandchildren, whose time and tastes are
thus frivolously mortgaged, will read his works with delight. But 'there
is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth
all things: our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and
sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors.' Let us make sure
that our sons will care for Homer before we pledge a more distant
generation to a newer cult.
Nevertheless, without handling the prickly question of literary
immortality, it is easy to recognise that the literary reputation of
Robert Louis Stevenson is made of good stuff. His fame has spread, as
lasting fame is wont to do, from the few to the many. Fifteen years ago
his essays and fanciful books of travel were treasured by a small and
discerning company of admirers; long before he chanced to fell the
British public with Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde he
had shown himself a delicate marksman. And although large editions are
nothing, standard editions, richly furnished and complete, are worthy of
remark. Stevenson is one of the very few authors in our literary history
who have been honoured during their lifetime by the appearance of such an
edition; the best of his public, it would seem, do not only wish to read
his works, but to possess them, and all of them, at the cost of many
pounds, in library form.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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