One of his books, The Child's Garden of Verses, is different in kind from the rest. It has no prototype, and is by far the most original thing that he did. The unsophisticated and gay little volume is a work of the greatest value. Stevenson seems to have remembered the impressions of his childhood with accuracy, and he has recorded them without affectation, without sentimentality, without exaggeration. In depicting children he draws from life. He is at home in the mysteries of their play and in the inconsequent operations of their minds, in the golden haze of impressions in which they live. The references to children in his essays and books show the same understanding and sympathy. There is more than mere literary charm in what he says here. In the matter of childhood we must study him with respect. He is an authority.
The slight but serious studies in biography--alas! too few--which Stevenson published, ought also to be mentioned, because their merit is apt to be overlooked by the admirers of his more ambitious works. His understanding of two such opposite types of men as Burns and Thoreau is notable, and no less notable are the courage, truth, and penetration with which he dealt with them. His essay on Burns is the most comprehensible word ever said of Burns. It makes us love Burns less, but understand him more.
The problems suggested by Stevenson are more important than his work itself. We have in him that rare combination,--a man whose theories and whose practice are of a piece. His doctrines are the mere description of his own state of mind while at work.
The quality which every one will agree in conceding to Stevenson is lightness of touch. This quality is a result of his extreme lucidity, not only of thought, but of intention. We know what he means, and we are sure that we grasp his whole meaning at the first reading. Whether he be writing a tale of travel or humorous essay, a novel of adventure, a story of horror, a morality, or a fable; in whatever key he plays,--and he seems to have taken delight in showing mastery in many,--the reader feels safe in his hands, and knows that no false note will be struck. His work makes no demands upon the attention. It is food so thoroughly peptonized that it is digested as soon as swallowed and leaves us exhilarated rather than fed.