PREFACE. : As I have always been an eager student of Robert Louis Stevenson's work, so it was with peculiar pleasure that I entered upon the study of his finished achievement, and of his personality and temperament as expressed in that achievement. For, such were the terms of my ambition and they may serve (at least) to define the limits of this essay. Beyond those limits it was not mine to adventure. That Mr Sidney Colvin has in preparation the authorised biography of Stevenson, is matter of common knowledge; and this consideration naturally prevented me from recording aught of the main facts of Stevenson's career, that has not been made public property already; and, for the same reason, I have abstained from making |