"GREATER THAN R.L.S."

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 312, 26 September 1908, Page 14

"GREATER THAN R.L.S."

; A correspondent writes to the London " Daily News ":— 1 Mr. R. A. Scott-James, in Jiis interesting review of W. E. Henley in the "Daily Nows," quotes the .following passage from Henley's "incomparable essay" on Hazjitt: . "I have in ray mind . . . two friends, both dead, of whom one, an artist in letters, lived to conquer the English-speaking world,' while the second, who should, I tliiijk, liavo been the greater writer, addicted himself to another art; took,to,letters late in life, and, having the largest and tho most liberal uttoranco I have known, ■ was constrained by the very process of composition so to nroduce himself that scarce a touch of his delightful, apprehensive, all-expressing spirit appeared upon liis page." • < Mr. Scott-James socks to identify, those ■ "two friends" with It. L, Stevenson, and Heillcy himself, and spins a very fine theory therefrom. Your reviewer is in error. The' " two friends " of whom Henley writes aro R. L. Stevenson and his cousin, R. A. SI. Stovenson, the author of another- "inconi--parable essay that oil Velasquez, Henley himself, has put the matter boyond all doubt in one of those Ex Libris papers which he contributed long ago to tile "Pall. Mall Magazine." Writing of R. A. SL Stevenson he says: " His truo gift was that of Talk; and he had it —Heavens! in what perfection! I think I havo hoard tho best talkers in my time; but among them there is but onp It. A. M. S. . . *, Had Lewis lived to reassert, himself, and Iliad it beoji possible for any one of us to sit and licecl while these two . ... talked of That which is, That which must be, and TJmt*which may 1)0, then should we havo hcan) about tho best that spoken speech can do." One of those two friends whom Henley mentions ill his Hazlitt essay had " addicted: himself to another 'art" than literature,, knd" "took to letters lato in life," succeeding after all in writing only, "like poor Poll.", This fits R. A. M. Stevenson exactly. Henley, in tho aforementioned "Ex Libris" paper, writes: "Stevenson (R.. A. M. S.) having failed in paint, began to express himself in words. '. . . It was my privilege to put him in the right way, t-o shape his -beginnings, to fin,d him outlets for the critical stuff that was seething and teeming insido him, even as it was my pain t-o superintend hjs efforts to write formal English, and so to sphool his hand that in tho oud tho Velasquez became; possible." Lot Mr. Scott-James compare this Ex Libris _ paper with the > Hazlitt essay, and he will see that tho words of the one are almost reduplicated in tho other, and that throughout the "two friends" are tho Stevenson whom we all know and his less famous cousin, who. was toiHenloy the more brilliant genius of the two.