under hand; none of which I have ever heard equalled or even approached by any other talker. I am sure that he and I together have, in a brief, conspectory manner, turned over the stuff of a year's reading in one half-hour of talk. He was the most valuable man to talk to, above all in his younger days; for he twisted like a serpent, changed like the patterns in a kaleidoscope, transmigrated (it is the only word) from one point of view to another with a swiftness and completeness that left a stupid and merely logical mind panting in the rear; and so, in an incredibly brief space of time, helped you to view a question upon every side. In sheer trenchancy of mind, I have ever been his humble and distant follower. The multiplicity and swiftness of his apprehensions, if they do not bewilder, at least paralyse his mind. He is utterly without measure. He will spend a week in regulating the expenses of an imaginary navy; and then in ten minutes crush a subtle fallacy or create a new vein of criticism. We have perhaps only one moral quality in common: a desire to do justice to those with whom we are at enmity.

The next friend who came to me (I take them in the order of time) was, I think, Charles Baxter. I cannot characterise a personality so unusual in the little space that I can here afford. I have never known one of so mingled a strain. As a companion, when in spirits, he stands without an equal in my experience. He is the only man I ever heard of who could give and take in conversation with the wit and polish of style that we find in Congreve's comedies. He is likewise the only person I ever knew who could advise, or, to explain more perfectly my meaning, who could both make helpful suggestions and at the same time hold his tongue when he had none to offer.

"The next was James Walter Ferrier. It is only now when I come to describe them that I perceive how strange a crew were my associates; but Ferrier's strangeness was of a tragic character. The grandson of old Wilson, the son of Ferrier the metaphysician,

he was gifted with very considerable abilities; he was by nature the most complete and gentle gentleman (I must risk the pleonasm) I have known.

["I never knew any man so superior to himself. The best of him only came as a vision, like Corsica from the Corniche. He never gave his measure either morally or intellectually. The curse was on him. Even his friends did not know him but by fits. I have passed hours with him when he was so wise, good, and sweet, that I never knew the like of it in any other.]

"The fourth of these friends was Sir Walter Simpson, son of Sir James who gave chloroform to the world. He was, I think, the eldest of my associates; yet he must have been of a more deliberate growth, for when we encountered, I believe we were about equal in intellectual development. His was a slow fighting mind. You would see him, at times, wrestle for a minute at a time with a refractory jest, and perhaps fail to throw it at the end. I think his special character was a profound shyness, a shyness which was not so much exhibited in society as it ruled in his own dealings with himself. I have said his mind was slow, and in this he was an opposite and perhaps an antidote to Bob. I have known him battle a question sometimes with himself, sometimes with me, month after month for years; he had an honest stubbornness in thinking, and would neither let himself be beat nor cry victory.

The mere return of Bob changed at once and for ever the course of my life; I can give you an idea of my relief only by saying that I was at last able to breathe. The miserable isolation in which I had languished was no more in season, and I began to be happy. To have no one to whom you can speak your thoughts is but a slight trial; for a month or two at a time, I can support it almost without regret ; but to be young, to be daily making fresh discoveries and fabricating new theories of life, to be full of flimsy, whimsical, overpowering humours, that seem to leave you no alternative but to confide them or to die, and

not only not to have, but never to have had a confidant, is an astounding misery. I now understand it best by recognising my delight when that period was ended. I thought I minded for nothing when I had found my Faithful; my heart was like a bird's; I was done with the sullens for good; there was an end of green-sickness for my life as soon as I had got a friend to laugh with. Laughter was at that time our principal affair, and I doubt if we could have had a better.

"As Bob said, we did nothing obvious; the least joke was spiced to us by being imbedded in mountains of monotony."

Here the manuscript breaks off. Some notes on an earlier page enable us to learn in what direction it might have been continued. Whitman: humanity: L.J.R.1: love of mankind: sense of inequality: justification of art: decline of religion: I take to the New Testament: change startling: growing desire for truth: Spencer: should have done better with the New Test."

Thus the coming of happiness was due partly to his friends and partly to his reading. To the list of the former there is still an addition to be made the name of Fleeming Jenkin. It was in 1868 that Jenkin came to Edinburgh as Professor of Engineering, and it was first in the character of a truant that Stevenson came under his notice. The professor was fifteen years older than his pupil-a difference in age which is often

1 At this point it may be as well to refer to the L. J. R., that mysterious society." It consisted of six members, and its meetings, of which only five took place, were held at a public-house situated, I believe, in Advocates' Close, which had apparently been visited by Burns. Its complete name was concealed with a mystery as deep and not less important than that which broods over the Greek letter societies of American colleges. Its principles, generally speaking, were liberty of thought and freedom from prejudice. The abolition of the House of Lords was, it is said, one of its tenets.

difficult to surmount. But besides his boundless energy and vitality, there was about Jenkin a perpetual boyishness, which showed itself not least in this, that his development continued to the end of his life. His delight in all that was high-minded and heroic, his fiery enthusiasm, his extraordinary readiness and spirit, were just the qualities to win and to stimulate the younger man. Moreover, at the time that Stevenson fell under his influence, the detachment and independence of Jenkin's religious views rendered that influence of far greater weight than if he had been content to yield a lifeless assent to established observances and conventional creeds. Stevenson was in revolt, or meditating an outbreak. Here was a man, ready to question everything, exercising a clear-sighted judgment, and yet full of earnestness and piety, who saw life very simple," who did not love refinements, but was a friend to much conformity in unessentials." And about Jenkin there were these further points which distinguished him from Stevenson's other friends, and gave him a great advantage. He was the only one who had already fought the battle of life, and not only was victorious but knew how to carry his success. Moreover, he was the first of Stevenson's friends who was already married. Perhaps the most charming passages in the Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin are those which suggest rather than describe the infinite tenderness and romance which marriage brought into his life and made his house all it was to those who frequented it. Mrs. Jenkin, writing in 1895, says that her husband loved Louis best of all his friends, and Stevenson, when he came to write Jenkin's biography, records what mingled pain and pleasure it was to dig into the past of a dead friend, and find him, at every spadeful, shine brighter."

Of his first introduction to Mrs. Jenkin, she has herself given an account. Late on a winter afternoon in 1868 she paid her first visit to 17 Heriot Row, and there found Mrs. Stevenson sitting by the firelight,

apparently alone. They began to talk, when "suddenly, from out of a dark corner beyond the fireplace, came a voice, peculiar, vibrating: a boy's voice, I thought at first. Oh' said Mrs. Stevenson, 'I forgot that my son was in the room. Let me introduce him to you.' The voice went on: I listened in perplexity and amazement. Who was this son who talked as Charles Lamb wrote ? this young Heine with the Scottish accent? I stayed long, and when I came away the unseen converser came down with me to the front-door to let me out. As he opened it, the light of the gas-lamp outside ('For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door,' he sings) fell on him, and I saw a slender, brown, long-haired lad, with great dark eyes, a brilliant smile, and a gentle, deprecating bend of the head. A boy of sixteen,' I said to myself. But he was eighteen, looking then, as he always did, younger than his age. I asked him to come and see us. He said, 'Shall I come to-morrow?' I said 'Yes,' and ran home. As I sat down to dinner I announced, 'I have made the acquaintance of a poet!' He came on the morrow, and from that day forward we saw him constantly. From that day forward too, our affection and our admiration for him, and our delight in his company, grew.”

Thus much of his friends and their influence. There was also the other continual and stimulating influence of books, and though Stevenson was never a scholar in the strict and more arid sense, few men ever brought so great an enthusiasm to the studies of their choice. His ardour was now at its height. Twenty years later he wrote: I have really enjoyed this book as I almost as I-used to enjoy books when I was going twenty-twenty-three; and these are the years for

reading."

Books were the proper remedy: books of vivid human import, forcing upon the minds of young men the issues, pleasures, busyness, importance, and immediacy of that life in which they stand; books of smiling or heroic temper, to excite or to console;