As to the fitting scale, then, on which to treat the memory of a man who fills five years after his death such a place as this in the public regard, the words ‘selection’ and ‘sketch’ have evidently to be given a pretty liberal interpretation. Readers, it must be supposed, will scarce be content without both a fairly full biography, and the opportunity of a fairly ample intercourse with the man as he was accustomed to reveal himself in writing to his familiars. As to form—Stevenson’s own words and the nature of the material alike seem to indicate that the _Life_ and the _Letters_ should be kept separate. There are some kinds of correspondence which can conveniently be woven into the body and texture of a biography, though indeed I think it is a plan to which biographers are much too partial. Nothing, surely, more checks the flow of a narrative than its interruption by stationary blocks of correspondence; nothing more disconcerts the reader than a too frequent or too abrupt alternation of voices between the subject of a biography speaking in his letters and the writer of it speaking in his narrative. At least it is only when letters are occupied, as Macaulay’s for instance were, almost entirely with facts and events, that they can without difficulty be handled in this way. But events and facts, ‘sordid facts,’ as he called them, were not very often suffered to intrude into Stevenson’s correspondence. ‘I deny,’ he writes, ‘that letters should contain news (I mean mine; those of other people should). But mine should contain appropriate sentiments and humorous nonsense, or nonsense without the humour.’ Business letters, letters of information, and letters of courtesy he had sometimes to write: but when he wrote best was under the influence of the affection or impression, or the mere whim or mood, of the moment; pouring himself out in all manner of rhapsodical confessions and speculations, grave or gay, notes of observation and criticism, snatches of remembrance and autobiography, moralisings on matters uppermost for the hour in his mind, comments on his own work or other people’s, or mere idle fun and foolery.
With a letter-writer of this character, as it seems to me, a judicious reader desires to be left as much alone as possible. What he wants is to relish the correspondence by itself, or with only just so much in the way of notes and introductions as may serve to make allusions and situations clear. Two volumes, then, of letters so edited, to be preceded by a separate introductory volume of narrative and critical memoir, or _étude_—such was to be the memorial to my friend which I had planned, and hoped by this time to have ready. Unfortunately, the needful leisure has hitherto failed me, and might fail me for some time yet, to complete the separate volume of biography. That is now, at the wish of the family, to be undertaken by Stevenson’s cousin and my friend, Mr. Graham Balfour. Meanwhile the _Letters_, with introductions and notes somewhat extended from the original plan, are herewith presented as a substantive work by themselves.