_Providence and the Guitar_ is also one of his best stories. _Prince Otto_, the first draft of which was written at Monterey, is the peculiar but very beautifully written story of a prince with no fancy for princedom and no talent for governing, who leaves his vain young wife and his unscrupulous prime minister in power and goes roaming among his subjects only to hear some far from complimentary opinions of himself. In the end both prince and princess learn love and wisdom and find happiness in spite of the revolution that drives them from their tiny kingdom. It is a fanciful tale, the charm of which lies less in the rather vague characters, who have the haziness of motive and of personality of the figures in some old play, than in the absolute perfection of style and of description that make it a book to read and re-read with infinite pleasure.
Mr Stevenson says, in its dedicatory preface, that he meant to make of it a masterpiece; if he did not succeed in doing so, as a story, he certainly gave in it a picture of the woods so true to nature and so exquisite in style and in expression that it will live as among his best work.
Good as this earlier writing was he had not yet found in it his full inspiration, and it hardly appealed to so wide a public as the fresh and delightful stories of adventure to which he finally turned his attention. In connection with Mr Stevenson's fiction, it is interesting to note that in his boyhood he greatly enjoyed the stories of a novelist called Smythe, who at that time contributed to the _London Journal_, and whose work had its influence on the boy's future tales. Smythe's novels were full of stirring adventures, and many lads of that day, besides the aspiring novelist, were much impressed by them, and can even now recall incidents in them read so long ago as 1868!
He had applied for work to Mr Henderson, the Scotch editor of _Young Folks_, and to the acceptance of this application the world owes _Treasure Island_ and the charming stories which followed it. The editor of _Young Folks_, who offered to take a story from him, showed him a treasure-hunting tale by Mr Peace, and asked him to give him something on the same lines. The result was _The Sea Cook_, which appeared in the paper in the autumn of 1881, and was not very highly paid for. It was written under the nom-de-plume of Captain North to give the idea the author was a sailor; it was not given a very important place in the paper and it had no very marked success as a serial. It was, with very little alteration, published by Messrs Cassell & Co. in 1883, under the name of _Treasure Island_, and it had an instant and well-deserved success. It is an excellent book for boys, full of stirring adventure, in the old-time fashion of fifty years ago, but it is much more; it is a book that grown-up folk, whose taste is still fresh enough to enjoy a good tale of the sea, delight in as heartily as the juniors. It was written while the Stevenson family were staying for a time at Braemar, and Mr Thomas Stevenson gave his son valuable help in it from his own experiences at sea while on his cruises of inspection round the coasts.