The principal development of mid-nineteenth-century fiction had been, as we have seen, in the direction of the novel _proper_--the character-study of modern ordinary life. But, even as early as _Esmond_ and _Hypatia_, signs were not wanting that the romance, historical or other, was not going to be content with the rather pale copies of Scott, and the rococo-sentimental style of Bulwer, which had mainly occupied it for the last quarter of a century. Still, though we have mentioned other examples of the fifties and sixties, and have left ever so many more unmentioned, it was certainly not as popular[27] as its rival till, towards the end of the latter decade, Mr. Blackmore's _Lorna Doone_ gave it a fresh hold on the public taste. Some ten years later again there came to its aid a new recruit of very exceptional character, Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson. He was a member of the famous family of light-house engineers, and was educated for the Bar of Scotland, to which he was actually called. But law was as little to his taste as engineering, and he slowly gravitated towards literature--the slowness being due, not merely to family opposition or to any other of the usual causes (though some of these were at work), but to an intense and elaborate desire to work himself out a style of his own by the process of "sedulously aping" others. It may be very much doubted whether this process ever gave any one a style of perfect freedom: and it may be questioned further whether Stevenson ever attained such a style.
[27] Anthony Trollope, in one of the discursive passages in his early books, has left positive testimony to the distaste with which publishers regarded it.
But there could be no question that he did attain very interesting and artistic effects, and there happened to be at the time a reaction against what was called "slovenliness" and a demand for careful preparation and planned effect in prose-writing. Even so, however, it was not at once that Stevenson took to fiction. He began with essays, literary and miscellaneous, and with personal accounts of travel: and certain critical friends of his strongly urged him to continue in this way. During the years 1878 and 1879, in a short-lived periodical called _London_, which came to be edited by his friend the late Mr. Henley and had a very small staff, he issued certain _New Arabian Nights_ which caught the attention of one or two of his fellow-contributors very strongly, and made them certain that a new power in fiction-writing had arisen. It did not, however, at first much attract the public: and it was the kind of thing which never attracts publishers until the public forces their hands. For a time he had to wait, and to take what opportunity he could get of periodical publication, "boy's book"-writing, and the like. In fact _Treasure Island_ (1883), with which he at last made his mark, is to this day classed as a boy's book by some people who are miserable if they cannot classify. It certainly deals with pirates, and pieces of eight, and adventures by land and sea; but the manner of dealing--the style and narrative and the delineation of the chief character, the engaging villain John Silver--is about as little puerile as anything that can be imagined. From that time Stevenson's reputation was assured. Ill health, a somewhat restless disposition, and an early death prevented him from accomplishing any great bulk of work: and the merit of what he did varied. Latterly he took to a teasing process of collaboration, which his sincerest admirers could have willingly spared. But his last completed book, _Catriona_ (1893), seemed to some judges of at least considerable experience the best thing he had yet done, especially in one all-important respect--that he here conquered either an unwillingness to attempt or an inability to achieve the portraiture of feminine character, which his books had previously displayed. The general opinion, too, was that the unfinished _Weir of Hermiston_ (1897), which he left a fragment at his death, was the best and strongest thing he had done, while it showed in particular a distinct relinquishment, for something freer and more spontaneous, of the effective but also rather affected and decidedly laboured style in which he had hitherto written. For us, however, his style is of less importance than the fact that he applied it almost wholly to the carrying out of that rejuvenescence of romance of which we have been speaking, and which may be taken, as anybody pleases, either for a mere alternative to the domestic novel or as a definite revolt against it. It was speedily taken up by writers mostly still living, and so not to be dwelt on now.