Transcribed from the 1896 Chatto & Windus edition by DavidPrice,
FAMILIAR STUDIES
OF
MEN AND BOOKS
BY
ROBERT LOUISSTEVENSON
ELEVENTHEDITION
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICADILLY
1896
TO
THOMAS STEVENSON
CIVILENGINEER
BY WHOSE DEVICES THE GREAT SEA LIGHTS INEVERY QUARTER
OF THE WORLD NOW SHINE MOREBRIGHTLY
THIS VOLUME IS IN LOVE ANDGRATITUDE
DEDICATED BY HIS SON
THE AUTHOR
PREFACE
BY WAY OF CRITICISM.
These studies are collected fromthe monthly press. One appeared in the NewQuarterly, one in Macmillan’s, and the rest inthe Cornhill Magazine. To the Cornhill I owea double debt of thanks; first, that I was received there in thevery best society, and under the eye of the very best of editors;and second, that the proprietors have allowed me to republish soconsiderable an amount of copy.
These nine worthies have been brought together from manydifferent ages and countries. Not the most erudite of mencould be perfectly prepared to deal with so many and such varioussides of human life and manners. To pass a true judgmentupon Knox and Burns implies a grasp upon the very deepest strainof thought in Scotland,—a country far more essentiallydifferent from England than many parts of America; for, in asense, the first of these men re-created Scotland, and the secondis its most essentially national production. To treat fitlyof Hugo and Villon would involve yet wider knowledge, not only ofa country foreign to the author by race, history, and religion,but of the growth and liberties of art. Of the twoAmericans, Whitman and Thoreau, each is the type of something notso much realised as widely sought after among the lategenerations of their countrymen; and to see them clearly in anice relation to the society that brought them forth, an authorwould require a large habit of life among modern Americans. As for Yoshida, I have already disclaimed responsibility; it wasbut my hand that held the pen.
In truth, these are but the readings of a literaryvagrant. One book led to another, one study toanother. The first was published with trepidation. Since no bones were broken, the second was launched with greaterconfidence. So, by insensible degrees, a young man of ourgeneration acquires, in his own eyes, a kind of roving judicialcommission through the ages; and, having once escaped the perilsof the Freemans and the Furnivalls, sets himself up to right thewrongs of universal history and criticism. Now, it is onething to write with enjoyment on a subject while the story is hotin your mind from recent reading, coloured with recent prejudice;and it is quite another business to put these writings coldlyforth again in a bound volume. We are most of us attachedto our opinions; that is one of the “naturalaffections” of which we hear so much in youth; but few ofus are altogether free from pa