As to his literary likings, they appear in his own confessions. He
revelled in Dickens, but, about Thackeray--well, I would rather have
talked to somebody else! To my amazement, he was of those (I think) who
find Thackeray "cynical." "He takes you into a garden, and then pelts
you with"--horrid things! Mr. Stevenson, on the other hand, had a free
admiration of Mr. George Meredith. He did not so easily forgive the
_longueus_ and lazinesses of Scott, as a Scot should do. He read French
much; Greek only in translations.
Literature was, of course, his first love, but he was actually an
advocate at the Scottish Bar, and, as such, had his name on a brazen door-
plate. Once he was a competitor for a Chair of Modern History in
Edinburgh University; he knew the romantic side of Scottish history very
well. In his novel, "Catriona," the character of James Mohr Macgregor is
wonderfully divined. Once I read some unpublished letters of Catriona's
unworthy father, written when he was selling himself as a spy (and lying
as he spied) to the Hanoverian usurper. Mr. Stevenson might have written
these letters for James Mohr; they might be extracts from "Catriona."
In turning over old Jacobite pamphlets, I found a forgotten romance of
Prince Charles's hidden years, and longed that Mr. Stevenson should
retell it. There was a treasure, an authentic treasure; there were real
spies, a real assassin; a real, or reported, rescue of a lovely girl from
a fire at Strasbourg, by the Prince.
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