Certainly the contrast is remarkable; and it is one that throws a
strong light upon the subject of this paper. For here we have a man of
the finest creative instinct touching with perfect certainty and charm
the romantic junctures of his story; and we find him utterly careless,
almost, it would seem, incapable, in the technical matter of style,
and not only frequently weak, but frequently wrong in points of drama.
In character parts, indeed, and particularly in the Scotch, he was
delicate, strong and truthful; but the trite, obliterated features of
too many of his heroes have already wearied two generations of
readers. At times his characters will speak with something far beyond
propriety with a true heroic note; but on the next page they will be
wading wearily forward with an ungrammatical and undramatic rigmarole
of words. The man who could conceive and write the character of
Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot,[34] as Scott has conceived and written
it, had not only splendid romantic, but splendid tragic gifts. How
comes it, then, that he could so often fob us off with languid,
inarticulate twaddle?

It seems to me that the explanation is to be found in the very quality
of his surprising merits. As his books are play to the reader, so
were, they play to him. He conjured up the romantic with delight, but
he had hardly patience to describe it. He was a great day-dreamer, a
seer of fit and beautiful and humorous visions, but hardly a great
artist; hardly, in the manful sense, an artist at all. He pleased
himself, and so he pleases us. Of the pleasures of his art he tasted
fully; but of its toils and vigils and distresses never man knew less.
A great romantic--an idle child.


NOTES

This essay first appeared in _Longman's Magazine_ for November 1882,
Vol. I, pp. 69-79. Five years later it was published in the volume
_Memories and Portraits_ (1887), followed by an article called _A
Humble Remonstrance_, which should really be read in connection with
this essay, as it is a continuation of the same line of thought. In
the eternal conflict between Romanticism and Realism, Stevenson was
heart and soul with the former, and fortunately he lived long enough
to see the practical effects of his own precepts and influence. When
he began to write, Realism in fiction seemed to have absolute control;
when he died, a tremendous reaction in favor of the historical romance
had already set in, that reached its climax with the death of the
century. Stevenson's share in this Romantic revival was greater than
that of any other English writer, and as an English review remarked,
if it had not been for him most of the new authors would have been
Howells and James young men.

This paper was written at Davos in the winter of 1881-2, and in
February, writing to Henley, the author said, "I have just finished a
paper, 'A Gossip on Romance,' in which I have tried to do, very
popularly, about one-half of the matter you wanted me to try. In a
way, I have found an answer to the question. But the subject was
hardly fit for so chatty a paper, and it is all loose ends. If ever I
do my book on the Art of Literature, I shall gather them together and
be clear." (_Letters_, I, 269). On Dec. 8, 1884--the same month in
which _A Humble Remonstrance_ was printed, Stevenson wrote an
interesting letter to Henry James, whose views on the art of fiction
were naturally contrary to those of his friend. See _Letters_, I, 402.

[Note 1: _Like a pig for truffles_. See the _Epilogue_ to Browning's
_Pacchiarotto etc_., Stanza XVIII:--"Your product is--truffles, you
hunt with a pig!"]

[Note 2: _The Malabar coast_. A part of India.]

[Note 3: _Jacobite_. After James II was driven from the throne in
1688, his supporters and those of his descendants were called
Jacobites. Jacobus is the Latin for James.]

[Note 4: _John Rann or Jerry Abershaw_. John Rann I cannot find. Louis
Jeremiah (or Jerry) Abershaw was a highway robber, who infested the
roads near London; he was hung in 1795, when scarcely over twenty-one
years old.]

[Note 5: "_Great North road_." The road that runs on the east of
England up to Edinburgh. Stevenson yielded to the charm that these
words had for him, for he began a romance with the title, _The Great
North Road_, which however, he never finished. It was published as a
fragment in _The Illustrated London News_, in 1895.]

[Note 6: _What will he Do with It_? One of Bulwer-Lytton's novels,
published in 1858.]

[Note 7: Since traced by many obliging correspondents to the gallery
of Charles Kingsley.]

[Note 8: _Conduct is three parts of life_. In _Literature and Dogma_
(1873) Matthew Arnold asserted with great emphasis, that conduct was
three-fourths of life.]

[Note 9: _The sight of a pleasant arbour_. Possibly a reminiscence of
the arbour in _Pilgrim's Progress_, where Christian fell asleep, and
lost his roll. "Now about the midway to the top of the hill was a
pleasant arbour."]

[Note 10: "_Miching mallecho." Hamlet's_ description of the meaning of
the Dumb Show in the play-scene, Act III, Sc. 2. "Hidden
treachery"--see any annotated edition of _Hamlet_.]

[Note 11: _Burford Bridge ... Keats ... Endymion ... Nelson ... Emma
... the old Hawes Inn at the Queen's Ferry_. Burford Bridge is close
to Dorking in Surrey, England: in the old inn, Keats wrote a part of
his poem _Endymion_ (published 1818). The room where he composed is
still on exhibition. Two letters by Keats, which are exceedingly
important to the student of his art as a poet, were written from
Burford Bridge in November 1817. See Colvin's edition of Keats's
Letters, pp. 40-46.... "Emma" is Lady Hamilton, whom Admiral Nelson
loved.... Queen's Ferry (properly _Queensferry_) is on the Firth of
Forth, Scotland. See a few lines below in the text, where Stevenson
gives the reference to the opening pages of Scott's novel the
_Antiquary_, which begins in the old inn at this place. See also page
105 of the text, and Stevenson's foot note, where he declares that he
did make use of Queensferry in his novel _Kidnapped_ (1886)(Chapter
XXVI).]

[Note 12: Since the above was written I have tried to launch the boat
with my own hands in _Kidnapped_. Some day, perhaps, I may try a
rattle at the shutters.]

[Note 13: _Crusoe ... Achilles ... Ulysses ... Christian_. When
Robinson Crusoe saw the footprint on the sand, and realised he was not
alone.... To a reader of to-day the great hero Achilles seems to be
all bluster and selfish childishness; the true gentleman of the Iliad
is _Hector_.... When Ulysses returned home in the _Odyssey_, he bent
with ease the bow that had proved too much for all the suitors of his
lonely and faithful wife Penelope.... Christian "had not run far from
his own door when his wife and children, perceiving it, began to cry
after him to return; but the man put his fingers in his ears and ran
on crying, 'Life! Life! eternal Life!'"_--Pilgrim's Progress_.]

[Note 14: _]_. The Greek heavy-weight in Homer's _Iliad_.

[Note 15: _English people of the present day_. This was absolutely
true in 1882. But in 1892 a complete revolution in taste had set in,
and many of the most hardened realists were forced to write wild
romances, or lose their grip on the public. At this time, Stevenson
naturally had no idea how powerfully his as yet unwritten romances
were to affect the literary market.]

[Note 16: _Mr. Trollope's ... chronicling small beer ... Rawdon
Crawley's blow_. Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) wrote an immense number
of mildly entertaining novels concerned with the lives and ambitions
of English clergymen and their satellites. His best-known book is
probably _Barchester Towers_ (1857).... _Chronicling small beer_ is
the "lame and impotent conclusion" with which Iago finishes his poem
(_Othello_, Act II, Sc. I).... _Rawdon Crawley's blow_ refers to the
most memorable scene in Thackeray's great novel, _Vanity Fair_
(1847-8), where Rawdon Crawley, the husband of Becky Sharp, strikes
Lord Steyne in the face (Chap. LIII). After writing this powerful
scene, Thackeray was in a state of tremendous excitement, and slapping
his knee, said, "That's Genius!"]

[Note 17: _The end of Esmond ... pure Dumas_. Thackeray's romance
_Henry Esmond_ (1852) is regarded by many critics as the greatest work
of fiction in the English language; Stevenson here calls it "the best
of all his books." The scene Stevenson refers to is where Henry is
finally cured of his love for Beatrix, and theatrically breaks his
sword in the presence of the royal admirer (Book III, Chap. 13).
Alexander Dumas (1803-1370), author of _Monte Cristo_ and _Les Trois
Mousquetaires_. Stevenson playfully calls him "the great, unblushing
French thief"; all he means is that Dumas never hesitated to
appropriate material wherever he found it, and work it into his
romances.]

[Note 18: _The living fame of Robinson Crusoe with the discredit of
Clarissa Harlowe_. A strong contrast between the romance of incident
and the analytical novel. For remarks on _Clarissa_, see our Note 9 of
Chapter IV above.]

[Note 19: _Byronism_. About the time Lord Byron was publishing _Childe
Harold_ (1812-1818) a tremendous wave of romantic melancholy swept
over all the countries of Europe. Innumerable poems and romances
dealing with mysteriously-sad heroes were written in imitation of
Byron; and young authors wore low, rolling collars, and tried to look
depressed. See Gautier's _Histoire du Romantisme._ Now the death of
Lovelace (in a duel) in Richardson's _Clarissa_, was pitched in
exactly the Byronic key, though at that time Byron had not been
born.... The Elizabethans were of course thoroughly romantic.]

[Note 20: _Faria_..._DantГЁs_. Characters in Dumas's _Monte Cristo_
(1841-5).]

[Note 21: _Lucy and Richard Feveril_. Usually spelled "Feverel."
Stevenson strangely enough, was always a bad speller. The reference
here is to one of Stevenson's favorite novels _The Ordeal of Richard
Feverel_ (1859) by George Meredith. Stevenson's idolatrous praise of
this particular scene in the novel is curious, for no greater contrast
in English literary style can be found than that between Meredith's
and his own. For another reference by Stevenson to the older novelist,
see our Note 47 of Chapter IV above.]

[Note 22: _Robinson Crusoe is as realistic as it is romantic_. Therein
lies precisely the charm of this book for boyish minds; the details
are given with such candour that it seems as if they must all be true.
At heart, Defoe was an intense realist, as well as the first English
novelist.]

[Note 23: _The arrival of Haydn_. For a note on George Sand's novel
_Consuelo_ see Note 9 of Chapter IV above.]

[Note 24: _A joy for ever_. The first line of Keats's poem _Endymion_
is "A thing of beauty is a joy forever."]

[Note 25: _The Sailor's Sweetheart_. Mr. W. Clark Russell, born in New
York in 1844, has written many popular tales of the sea. His first
success was _The Wreck of the Grosvenor_ (1876); _The Sailor's
Sweetheart_, more properly, _A Sailor's Sweetheart_, was published in
1877.]

[Note 26: _Swiss Family Robinson_. A German story, _Der schweizerische
Robinson_ (1812) by J.D. Wyss (1743-1818). This story is not so
popular as it used to be.]

[Note 27: _Verne's Mysterious Island_. Jules Verne, who died at
Amiens, France, in 1904, wrote an immense number of romances, which,
translated into many languages, have delighted young readers all over
the world. _The Mysterious Island_ is a sequel to _Twenty Thousand
Leagues under the Sea_.]

[Note 28: _EugГЁne de Rastignac_. A character in Balzac's novel, PГЁre
Goriot.]

[Note 29: _The Lady of the Lake_. This poem, published in 1810, is as
Stevenson implies, not so much a poem as a rattling good story told in
rime.]

[Note 30: _The Pirate_. A novel by Scott, published in 1821. It was
the cause of Cooper's writing _The Pilot_. See Cooper's preface to the
latter novel.]

[Note 31: _Guy Mannering_. Also by Scott. Published 1815.]

[Note 32: _Miss Braddon's idea_. Mary Elizabeth Braddon (Maxwell),
born in 1837, published her first novel, _The Trail of the Serpent_,
in 1860. She has written a large number of sensational works of
fiction, very popular with an uncritical class of readers. Perhaps her
best-known book is _Lady Audley's Secret_ (1862). It would be well for
the student to refer to the scenes in _Guy Mannering_ which Stevenson
calls the "_Four strong notes_."]

[Note 33: _Mrs. Todgers's idea of a wooden leg_. Mrs. Todgers is a
character in Dickens's novel, _Martin Chuzzlewit_ (1843-4).]

[Note 34: _Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot_. A character in the
_Antiquary_ (1816).]


VI

THE CHARACTER OF DOGS

The civilisation, the manners, and the morals of dog-kind[1] are to a
great extent subordinated to those of his ancestral master, man. This
animal, in many ways so superior, has accepted a position of
inferiority, shares the domestic life, and humours the caprices of the
tyrant. But the potentate, like the British in India, pays small
regard to the character of his willing client, judges him with
listless glances, and condemns him in a byword. Listless have been the
looks of his admirers, who have exhausted idle terms of praise, and
buried the poor soul below exaggerations. And yet more idle and, if
possible, more unintelligent has been the attitude of his express
detractors; those who are very fond of dogs "but in their proper
place"; who say "poo' fellow, poo' fellow," and are themselves far
poorer; who whet the knife of the vivisectionist or heat his oven;[2]
who are not ashamed to admire "the creature's instinct"; and flying
far beyond folly, have dared to resuscitate the theory of animal
machines. The "dog's instinct" and the "automaton-dog," in this age of
psychology and science, sound like strange anachronisms. An automaton
he certainly is; a machine working independently of his control, the
heart like the mill-wheel, keeping all in motion, and the
consciousness, like a person shut in the mill garret, enjoying the
view out of the window and shaken by the thunder of the stones; an
automaton in one corner of which a living spirit is confined: an
automaton like man. Instinct again he certainly possesses. Inherited
aptitudes are his, inherited frailties. Some things he at once views
and understands, as though he were awakened from a sleep, as though he
came "trailing clouds of glory."[3] But with him, as with man, the
field of instinct is limited; its utterances are obscure and
occasional; and about the far larger part of life both the dog and his
master must conduct their steps by deduction and observation.

The leading distinction[4] between dog and man, after and perhaps
before the different duration of their lives, is that the one can
speak and that the other cannot. The absence of the power of speech
confines the dog in the development of his intellect. It hinders him
from many speculations, for words are the beginning of metaphysic. At
the same blow it saves him from many superstitions, and his silence
has won for him a higher name for virtue than his conduct justifies.
The faults of the dog[5] are many. He is vainer than man, singularly
greedy of notice, singularly intolerant of ridicule, suspicious like
the deaf, jealous to the degree of frenzy, and radically devoid of
truth. The day of an intelligent small dog is passed in the
manufacture and the laborious communication of falsehood; he lies with
his tail, he lies with his eye, he lies with his protesting paw; and
when he rattles his dish or scratches at the door his purpose is other
than appears. But he has some apology to offer for the vice. Many of
the signs which form his dialect have come to bear an arbitrary
meaning, clearly understood both by his master and himself; yet when a
new want arises he must either invent a new vehicle of meaning or
wrest an old one to a different purpose; and this necessity frequently
recurring must tend to lessen his idea of the sanctity of symbols.
Meanwhile the dog is clear in his own conscience, and draws, with a
human nicety, the distinction between formal and essential truth. Of
his punning perversions, his legitimate dexterity with symbols, he is
even vain; but when he has told and been detected in a lie, there is
not a hair upon his body but confesses guilt. To a dog of gentlemanly
feeling theft and falsehood are disgraceful vices. The canine, like
the human, gentleman demands in his misdemeanours Montaigne's "_je ne
sais quoi de genГ©rГ©ux_."[6] He is never more than half ashamed of
having barked or bitten; and for those faults into which he has been
led by the desire to shine before a lady of his race, he retains, even
under physical correction, a share of pride. But to be caught lying,
if he understands it, instantly uncurls his fleece.

Just as among dull observers he preserves a name for truth, the dog
has been credited with modesty. It is amazing how the use of language
blunts the faculties of man---that because vainglory finds no vent in
words, creatures supplied with eyes have been unable to detect a fault
so gross and obvious. If a small spoiled dog were suddenly to be
endowed with speech, he would prate interminably, and still about
himself; when we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in a
garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his foible for
falsehood, in a year's time he would have gone far to weary out our
love. I was about to compare him to Sir Willoughby Patterne,[7] but
the Patternes have a manlier sense of their own merits; and the
parallel, besides, is ready. Hans Christian Andersen,[8] as we behold
him in his startling memoirs, thrilling from top to toe with an
excruciating vanity, and scouting even along the street for shadows of
offence--here was the talking dog.

It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into
his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of
franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one
eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised
and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased
hunting[9] and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed.
Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we
keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious,
mannered and affected. The number of things that a small dog does
naturally is strangely small. Enjoying better spirits and not crushed
under material cares, he is far more theatrical than average man. His
whole life, if he be a dog of any pretension to gallantry, is spent in
a vain show, and in the hot pursuit of admiration. Take out your puppy
for a walk, and you will find the little ball of fur clumsy, stupid,
bewildered, but natural. Let but a few months pass, and when you
repeat the process you will find nature buried in convention. He will
do nothing plainly; but the simplest processes of our material life
will all be bent into the forms of an elaborate and mysterious
etiquette. Instinct, says the fool, has awakened. But it is not so.
Some dogs--some, at the very least--if they be kept separate from
others, remain quite natural; and these, when at length they meet with
a companion of experience, and have the game explained to them,
distinguish themselves by the severity of their devotion to its rules.
I wish I were allowed to tell a story which would radiantly illuminate
the point; but men, like dogs, have an elaborate and mysterious
etiquette. It is their bond of sympathy that both are the children of
convention.

The person, man or dog, who has a conscience is eternally condemned to
some degree of humbug; the sense of the law in their members[10]
fatally precipitates either towards a frozen and affected bearing. And
the converse is true; and in the elaborate and conscious manners of
the dog, moral opinions and the love of the ideal stand confessed. To
follow for ten minutes in the street some swaggering, canine cavalier,
is to receive a lesson in dramatic art and the cultured conduct of the
body; in every act and gesture you see him true to a refined
conception; and the dullest cur, beholding him, pricks up his ear and
proceeds to imitate and parody that charming ease. For to be a
high-mannered and high-minded gentleman, careless, affable, and gay,
is the inborn pretension of the dog. The large dog, so much lazier, so
much more weighed upon with matter, so majestic in repose, so
beautiful in effort, is born with the dramatic means to wholly
represent the part. And it is more pathetic and perhaps more
instructive to consider the small dog in his conscientious and
imperfect efforts to outdo Sir Philip Sidney.[11] For the ideal of the
dog is feudal and religious;[12] the ever-present polytheism, the
whip-bearing Olympus of mankind, rules them on the one hand; on the
other, their singular difference of size and strength among themselves
effectually prevents the appearance of the democratic notion. Or we
might more exactly compare their society to the curious spectacle
presented by a school--ushers, monitors, and big and little
boys--qualified by one circumstance, the introduction of the other
sex. In each, we should observe a somewhat similar tension of manner,
and somewhat similar points of honour. In each the larger animal keeps
a contemptuous good humour; in each the smaller annoys him with
wasp-like impudence, certain of practical immunity; in each we shall
find a double life producing double characters, and an excursive and
noisy heroism combined with a fair amount of practical timidity. I
have known dogs, and I have known school heroes that, set aside the
fur, could hardly have been told apart; and if we desire to understand
the chivalry of old, we must turn to the school playfields or the
dungheap where the dogs are trooping.

Woman, with the dog, has been long enfranchised. Incessant massacre of
female innocents has changed the proportions of the sexes and
perverted their relations. Thus, when we regard the manners of the
dog, we see a romantic and monogamous animal, once perhaps as delicate
as the cat, at war with impossible conditions. Man has much to answer
for; and the part he plays is yet more damnable and parlous[13] than
Corin's in the eyes of Touchstone. But his intervention has at least
created an imperial situation for the rare surviving ladies. In that
society they reign without a rival: conscious queens; and in the only
instance of a canine wife-beater that has ever fallen under my notice,
the criminal was somewhat excused by the circumstances of his story.
He is a little, very alert, well-bred, intelligent Skye, as black as a
hat, with a wet bramble for a nose and two cairn-gorms[14] for eyes.
To the human observer, he is decidedly well-looking; but to the ladies
of his race he seems abhorrent. A thorough elaborate gentleman, of the
plume and sword-knot order, he was born with the nice sense of
gallantry to women. He took at their hands the most outrageous
treatment; I have heard him bleating like a sheep, I have seen him
streaming blood, and his ear tattered like a regimental banner; and
yet he would scorn to make reprisals. Nay more, when a human lady
upraised the contumelious whip against the very dame who had been so
cruelly misusing him, my little great-heart gave but one hoarse cry
and fell upon the tyrant tooth and nail. This is the tale of a soul's
tragedy.[15] After three years of unavailing chivalry, he suddenly, in
one hour, threw off the yoke of obligation; had he been Shakespeare he
would then have written _Troilus and Cressida_[16] to brand the
offending sex; but being only a little dog, he began to bite them. The
surprise of the ladies whom he attacked indicated the monstrosity of
his offence; but he had fairly beaten off his better angel, fairly
committed moral suicide; for almost in the same hour, throwing aside
the last rags of decency, he proceeded to attack the aged also. The
fact is worth remark, showing as it does, that ethical laws are common
both to dogs and men; and that with both a single deliberate violation
of the conscience loosens all. "But while the lamp holds on to burn,"
says the paraphrase, "the greatest sinner may return."[17] I have been
cheered to see symptoms of effectual penitence in my sweet ruffian;
and by the handling that he accepted uncomplainingly the other day
from an indignant fair one, I begin to hope the period of _Sturm und
Drang_[18] is closed.

All these little gentlemen are subtle casuists. The duty to the female
dog is plain; but where competing duties rise, down they will sit and
study them out like Jesuit confessors.[19] I knew another little Skye,
somewhat plain in manner and appearance, but a creature compact of
amiability and solid wisdom. His family going abroad for a winter, he
was received for that period by an uncle in the same city. The winter
over, his own family home again, and his own house (of which he was
very proud) reopened, he found himself in a dilemma between two
conflicting duties of loyalty and gratitude. His old friends were not
to be neglected, but it seemed hardly decent to desert the new. This
was how he solved the problem. Every morning, as soon as the door was
opened, off posted Coolin to his uncle's, visited the children in the
nursery, saluted the whole family, and was back at home in time for
breakfast and his bit of fish. Nor was this done without a sacrifice
on his part, sharply felt; for he had to forego the particular honour
and jewel of his day--his morning's walk with my father. And perhaps,
from this cause, he gradually wearied of and relaxed the practice, and
at length returned entirely to his ancient habits. But the same
decision served him in another and more distressing case of divided
duty, which happened not long after. He was not at all a kitchen dog,
but the cook had nursed him with unusual kindness during the
distemper; and though he did not adore her as he adored my
father--although (born snob) he was critically conscious of her
position as "only a servant"--he still cherished for her a special
gratitude. Well, the cook left, and retired some streets away to
lodgings of her own; and there was Coolin in precisely the same
situation with any young gentleman who has had the inestimable benefit
of a faithful nurse. The canine conscience did not solve the problem
with a pound of tea at Christmas. No longer content to pay a flying
visit, it was the whole forenoon that he dedicated to his solitary
friend. And so, day by day, he continued to comfort her solitude until
(for some reason which I could never understand and cannot approve) he
was kept locked up to break him of the graceful habit. Here, it is not
the similarity, it is the difference, that is worthy of remark; the
clearly marked degrees of gratitude and the proportional duration of
his visits. Anything further removed from instinct it were hard to
fancy; and one is even stirred to a certain impatience with a
character so destitute of spontaneity, so passionless in justice, and
so priggishly obedient to the voice of reason.

There are not many dogs like this good Coolin. and not many people.
But the type is one well marked, both in the human and the canine
family. Gallantry was not his aim, but a solid and somewhat oppressive
respectability. He was a sworn foe to the unusual and the conspicuous,
a praiser of the golden mean, a kind of city uncle modified by
Cheeryble.[20] And as he was precise and conscientious in all the
steps of his own blameless course, he looked for the same precision
and an even greater gravity in the bearing of his deity, my father. It
was no sinecure to be Coolin's idol; he was exacting like a rigid
parent; and at every sign of levity in the man whom he respected, he
announced loudly the death of virtue and the proximate fall of the
pillars of the earth.

I have called him a snob; but all dogs are so, though in varying
degrees. It is hard to follow their snobbery among themselves; for
though I think we can perceive distinctions of rank, we cannot grasp
what is the criterion. Thus in Edinburgh, in a good part of the town,
there were several distinct societies or clubs that met in the morning
to--the phrase is technical--to "rake the backets"[21] in a troop. A
friend of mine, the master of three dogs, was one day surprised to
observe that they had left one club and joined another; but whether it
was a rise or a fall, and the result of an invitation or an expulsion,
was more than he could guess. And this illustrates pointedly our
ignorance of the real life of dogs, their social ambitions and their
social hierarchies. At least, in their dealings with men they are not
only conscious of sex, but of the difference of station. And that in
the most snobbish manner; for the poor man's dog is not offended by
the notice of the rich, and keeps all his ugly feeling for those
poorer or more ragged than his master. And again, for every station
they have an ideal of behaviour, to which the master, under pain of
derogation, will do wisely to conform. How often has not a cold glance
of an eye informed me that my dog was disappointed; and how much more
gladly would he not have taken a beating than to be thus wounded in
the seat of piety!

I knew one disrespectable dog. He was far liker a cat; cared little or
nothing for men, with whom he merely coexisted as we do with cattle,
and was entirely devoted to the art of poaching. A house would not
hold him, and to live in a town was what he refused. He led, I
believe, a life of troubled but genuine pleasure, and perished beyond
all question in a trap. But this was an exception, a marked reversion
to the ancestral type; like the hairy human infant. The true dog of
the nineteenth century, to judge by the remainder of my fairly large
acquaintance, is in love with respectability. A street-dog was once
adopted by a lady. While still an Arab, he had done as Arabs do,
gambolling in the mud, charging into butchers' stalls, a cat-hunter, a
sturdy beggar, a common rogue and vagabond; but with his rise into
society he laid aside these inconsistent pleasures. He stole no more,
he hunted no more cats; and conscious of his collar he ignored his old
companions. Yet the canine upper class was never brought to recognize
the upstart, and from that hour, except for human countenance, he was
alone. Friendless, shorn of his sports and the habits of a lifetime,
he still lived in a glory of happiness, content with his acquired
respectability, and with no care but to support it solemnly. Are we to
condemn or praise this self-made dog! We praise his human brother. And
thus to conquer vicious habits is as rare with dogs as with men. With
the more part, for all their scruple-mongering and moral thought, the
vices that are born with them remain invincible throughout; and they
live all their years, glorying in their virtues, but still the slaves
of their defects. Thus the sage Coolin was a thief to the last; among
a thousand peccadilloes, a whole goose and a whole cold leg of mutton
lay upon his conscience; but Woggs,[22] whose soul's shipwreck in the
matter of gallantry I have recounted above, has only twice been known
to steal, and has often nobly conquered the temptation. The eighth is
his favourite commandment. There is something painfully human in these
unequal virtues and mortal frailties of the best. Still more painful
is the bearing of those "stammering professors"[23] in the house of
sickness and under the terror of death. It is beyond a doubt to me
that, somehow or other, the dog connects together, or confounds, the
uneasiness of sickness and the consciousness of guilt. To the pains of
the body he often adds the tortures of the conscience; and at these
times his haggard protestations form, in regard to the human deathbed,
a dreadful parody or parallel.

I once supposed that I had found an inverse relation between the
double etiquette which dogs obey; and that those who were most
addicted to the showy street life among other dogs were less careful
in the practice of home virtues for the tyrant man. But the female
dog, that mass of carneying[24] affectations, shines equally in either
sphere; rules her rough posse of attendant swains with unwearying tact
and gusto; and with her master and mistress pushes the arts of
insinuation to their crowning point. The attention of man and the
regard of other dogs flatter (it would thus appear) the same
sensibility; but perhaps, if we could read the canine heart, they
would be found to flatter it in very marked degrees. Dogs live with
man as courtiers round a monarch, steeped in the flattery of his
notice and enriched with sinecures. To push their favour in this world
of pickings and caresses is, perhaps, the business of their lives; and
their joys may lie outside. I am in despair at our persistent
ignorance. I read in the lives of our companions the same processes of
reason, the same antique and fatal conflicts of the right against the
wrong, and of unbitted nature with too rigid custom; I see them with
our weaknesses, vain, false, inconstant against appetite, and with our
one stalk of virtue, devoted to the dream of an ideal; and yet, as
they hurry by me on the street with tail in air, or come singly to
solicit my regard, I must own the secret purport of their lives is
still inscrutable to man. Is man the friend, or is he the patron only?
Have they indeed forgotten nature's voice? or are those moments
snatched from courtiership when they touch noses with the tinker's
mongrel, the brief reward and pleasure of their artificial lives?
Doubtless, when man shares with his dog the toils of a profession and
the pleasures of an art, as with the shepherd or the poacher, the
affection warms and strengthens till it fills the soul. But doubtless,
also, the masters are, in many cases, the object of a merely
interested cultus, sitting aloft like Louis Quatorze,[25] giving and
receiving flattery and favour; and the dogs, like the majority of men,
have but forgotten their true existence and become the dupes of their
ambition.


NOTES

This article originally appeared in _The English Illustrated Magazine_
for May 1883, Vol. I, pp. 300-305. It was accompanied with
illustrations by Randolph Caldecott. The essay was later included in
the volume _Memories and Portraits_ (1887).

The astonishing fidelity and devotion of the dog to his master have
certainly been in part repaid by men of letters in all times. A
valuable essay might be written on the Dog's Place in Literature; in
the poetry of the East, hundreds of years before Christ, the dog's
faithfulness was more than once celebrated. One of the most marvellous
passages in Homer's _Odyssey_ is the recognition of the ragged Ulysses
by the noble old dog, who dies of joy. In recent years, since the
publication of Dr. John Brown's _Rab and his Friends_ (1858), the dog
has approached an apotheosis. Among innumerable sketches and stories
with canine heroes may be mentioned Bret Harte's extraordinary
portrait of _Boonder_: M. Maeterlinck's essay on dogs: Richard Harding
Davis's _The Bar Sinister_: Jack London's _The Call of the Wild_: and
best of all, Alfred Ollivant's splendid story _Bob, Son of Battle_
(1898) which has every indication of becoming an English classic. It
is a pity that dogs cannot read.

[Note 1: _The morals of dog-kind_. Stevenson discusses this subject
again in his essay _Pulvis et Umbra_ (1888).]

[Note 2: _Who whet the knife of the vivisectionist or heat his oven_.
Stevenson was so sympathetic by nature that once, seeing a man beating
a dog, he interfered, crying, "It's not your dog, it's God's dog." On
the subject of vivisection, however his biographer says: "It must be
laid to the credit of his reason and the firm balance of his judgment
that although vivisection was a subject he could not endure even to
have mentioned, yet, with all his imagination and sensibility, he
never ranged himself among the opponents of this method of inquiry,
provided, of course, it was limited, as in England, with the utmost
rigour possible."--Balfour's _Life_, II, 217. The two most powerful
opponents of vivisection among Stevenson's contemporaries were Ruskin
and Browning. The former resigned the Professorship of Poetry at
Oxford because vivisection was permitted at the University: and the
latter in two poems _Tray_ and _Arcades Ambo_ treated the
vivisectionists with contempt, implying that they were cowards. In
Bernard Shaw's clever novel _Cashel Byron's Profession_, The
prize-fighter maintains that his profession is more honorable than
that of a man who bakes dogs in an oven. This novel, by the way, which
he read in the winter of 1887-88, made an extraordinary impression on
Stevenson; he recognised its author's originality and cleverness
immediately, and was filled with curiosity as to what kind of person
this Shaw might be. "Tell me more of the inimitable author," he cried.
It is a pity that Stevenson did not live to see the vogue of Shaw as a
dramatist, for the latter's early novels produced practically no
impression on the public. See Stevenson's highly entertaining letter
to William Archer, _Letters_, II, 107.]

[Note 3: "_Trailing clouds of glory_." _Trailing with him clouds of
glory._ This passage, from Wordsworth's _Ode on the Intimations of
Immortality_ (1807), was a favorite one with Stevenson, and he quotes
it several times in various essays.]

[Note 4: _The leading distinction_. Those who know dogs will fully
agree with Stevenson here.]

[Note 5: _The faults of the dog_. All lovers of dogs will by no means
agree with Stevenson in his enumeration of canine sins.]

[Note 6: _Montaigne's "je ne sais quoi de gГ©nГ©reux_." A bit of
generosity. Montaigne's _Essays_ (1580) had an enormous influence on
Stevenson, as they have had on nearly all literary men for three
hundred years. See his article in this volume, _Books Which Save
Influenced Me_, and the discussion of the "personal essay" in our
general Introduction.]

[Note 7: _Sir Willoughby Patterne_. Again a character in Meredith's
_Egoist_. See our Note 47 of Chapter IV above.]

[Note 8: _Hans Christian Andersen_. A Danish writer of prodigious
popularity: born 1805, died 1875. His books were translated into many
languages. The "memoirs" Stevenson refers to, were called _The Story
of My Life_, in which the author brought the narrative only so far as
1847: it was, however, finished by another hand. He is well known to
juvenile readers by his _Stories for Children_.]

[Note 9: _Once he ceased hunting and became man's plate-licker, the
Rubicon was crossed_. For a reversion to type, where the plate-licker
goes back to hunting, see Mr. London's powerful story, _The Call of
the Wild_. ... The "Rubicon" was a small stream separating Cisalpine
Gaul from Italy. Caesar crossed it in 49 B. C, thus taking a decisive
step in deliberately advancing into Italy. "Plutarch, in his life of
Caesar, makes quite a dramatic scene out of the crossing of the
Rubicon. Caesar does not even mention it."--B. Perrin's ed. of
_Caesar's Civil War_, p. 142.]

[Note 10: _The law in their members. Romans_, VII, 23. "But I see
another law in my members."]

[Note 11: _Sir Philip Sidney_. The stainless Knight of Elizabeth's
Court, born 1554, died 1586. The pages of history afford no better
illustration of the "gentleman and the scholar." Poet, romancer,
critic, courtier, soldier, his beautiful life was crowned by a noble
death.]

[Note 12: _The ideal of the dog is feudal and religious_. Maeterlinck
says the dog is the only being who has found and is absolutely sure of
his God.]

[Note 13: _Damnable and parlous than Corin's in the eyes of
Touchstone_. See _As You Like It_, Act III, Sc. 2. "Sin is damnation:
Thou art in a parlous state, shepherd."]

[Note 14: _Cairn-gorms_. Brown or yellow quartz, found in the mountain
of Cairngorm, Scotland, over 4000 feet high. Stevenson's own dog,
"Woggs" or "Bogue," was a black Skye terrier, whom the author seems
here to have in mind. See Note 20 of this Chapter, below, "Woggs."]

[Note 15: _A Soul's Tragedy_. The title of a tragedy by Browning,
published in 1846.]

[Note 16: _Troilus and Cressida_. One of the most bitter and cynical
plays ever written; practically never seen on the English stage, it
was successfully revived at Berlin, in September 1904.]

[Note 17: "_While the lamp holds on to burn ... the greatest sinner
may return_." From a hymn by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), beginning

  "Life is the time to serve the Lord,
  The time to insure the great reward;
  And while the lamp holds out to burn,
  The vilest sinner may return."

Although this stanza has no remarkable merit, many of Watts's hymns
are genuine poetry.]

[Note 18: _Sturm und Drang_. This German expression has been well
translated "Storm and Stress." It was applied to the literature in
Germany (and in Europe) the latter part of the XVIIIth century, which
was characterised by emotional excess of all kinds. A typical book of
the period was Goethe's _Sorrows of Werther_ (_Die Leiden des jungen
Werthers_, 1774). The expression is also often applied to the period
of adolescence in the life of the individual.]

[Note 19: _Jesuit confessors_. The Jesuits, or Society of Jesus, one
of the most famous religious orders of the Roman Catholic Church, was
founded in 1534 by Ignatius of Loyola and a few others.]

[Note 20: _Modified by Cheeryble_. The Cheeryble Brothers are
characters in Dickens's _Nicholas Nickleby_ (1838-9). Dickens said in
his Preface, "Those who take an interest in this tale, will be glad to
learn that the BROTHERS CHEERYBLE live: that their liberal charity,
their singleness of heart, their noble nature ... are no creations of
the Author's brain."]

[Note 21: "_Rake the backets_." The "backet" is a small, square,
wooden trough generally used for ashes and waste.]

[Note 22: _Woggs_ (_and Note: Walter, Watty, Woggy, Woggs, Wog, and
lastly Bogue; under which last name he fell in battle some twelve
months ago. Glory was his aim and he attained it; for his icon, by the
hand of Caldecott, now lies among the treasures of the nation.)
Stevenson's well-beloved black Skye terrier. See Balfour's _Life_, I,
212, 223. Stevenson was so deeply affected by Woggs's death that he
could not bear ever to own another dog. A Latin inscription was placed
on his tombstone.... This Note was added in 1887, when the essay
appeared in _Memories and Portraits_. "Icon" means image (cf.
_iconoclast_); the word has lately become familiar through the
religious use of icons by the Russians in the war with Japan. Randolph
Caldecott (1846-1886) was a well-known artist and prominent
contributor of sketches to illustrated magazines.]

[Note 23: "_Stammering Professors_." A "professor" here means simply a
professing Christian. Stevenson alludes to the fact that dogs howl
fearfully if some one in the house is dying.]

[Note 24: "_Carneying_." This means coaxing, wheedling.]

[Note 25: _Louis Quatorze_. Louis XIV of France, who died in 1715,
after a reign of 72 years, the longest reign of any monarch in
history. His absolutism and complete disregard of the people
unconsciously prepared the way for the French Revolution in 1789.]


VII

A COLLEGE MAGAZINE

I

All through my boyhood and youth, I was known and pointed out for the
pattern of an idler;[1] and yet I was always busy on my own private
end, which was to learn to write. I kept always two books in my
pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy
fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside,
I would either read, or a pencil and a penny version-book would be in
my hand, to note down the features of the scene or commemorate some
halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words. And what I thus wrote was
for no ulterior use, it was written consciously for practice. It was
not so much that I wished to be an author (though I wished that too)
as that I had vowed that I would learn to write. That was a
proficiency that tempted me; and I practised to acquire it, as men
learn to whittle, in a wager with myself. Description was the
principal field of my exercise; for to any one with senses there is
always something worth describing, and town and country are but one
continuous subject. But I worked in other ways also; often accompanied
my walks with dramatic dialogues, in which I played many parts; and
often exercised myself in writing down conversations from memory.

This was all excellent, no doubt; so were the diaries I sometimes
tried to keep, but always and very speedily discarded, finding them a
school of posturing[2] and melancholy self-deception. And yet this was
not the most efficient part of my training. Good though it was, it
only taught me (so far as I have learned them at all) the lower and
less intellectual elements of the art, the choice of the essential
note and the right word: things that to a happier constitution had
perhaps come by nature. And regarded as training, it had one grave
defect; for it set me no standard of achievement. So that there was
perhaps more profit, as there was certainly more effort, in my secret
labours at home. Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly
pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with
propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or some
happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself
to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried
again, and was again unsuccessful and always unsuccessful; but at
least in these vain bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony,
in construction and the co-ordination of parts. I have thus played the
sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne,
to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire and to
Obermann.[3] I remember one of these monkey tricks, which was called
_The Vanity of Morals_: it was to have had a second part, _The Vanity
of Knowledge_; and as I had neither morality nor scholarship, the
names were apt; but the second part was never attempted, and the first
part was written (which is my reason for recalling it, ghostlike, from
its ashes) no less than three times: first in the manner of Hazlitt,
second in the manner of Ruskin,[4] who had cast on me a passing spell,
and third, in a laborious pasticcio of Sir Thomas Browne. So with my
other works: _Cain_, an epic, was (save the mark!) an imitation of
_Sordello: Robin Hood_, a tale in verse, took an eclectic middle
course among the fields of Keats, Chaucer and Morris: in _Monmouth,_ a
tragedy, I reclined on the bosom of Mr. Swinburne; in my innumerable
gouty-footed lyrics, I followed many masters; in the first draft of
_The King's Pardon_, a tragedy, I was on the trail of no lesser man
than John Webster; in the second draft of the same piece, with
staggering versatility, I had shifted my allegiance to Congreve, and
of course conceived my fable in a less serious vein--for it was not
Congreve's verse, it was his exquisite prose, that I admired and
sought to copy. Even at the age of thirteen I had tried to do justice
to the inhabitants of the famous city of Peebles[5] in the style of
the _Book of Snobs_. So I might go on for ever, through all my
abortive novels, and down to my later plays,[6] of which I think more
tenderly, for they were not only conceived at first under the bracing
influence of old Dumas, but have met with, resurrections: one,
strangely bettered by another hand, came on the stage itself and was
played by bodily actors; the other, originally known as _Semiramis: a
Tragedy_, I have observed on bookstalls under the _alias_ of _Prince
Otto_. But enough has been said to show by what arts of impersonation,
and in what purely ventriloquial efforts I first saw my words on
paper.

That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write; whether I have
profited or not, that is the way. It was so Keats learned,[7] and
there was never a finer temperament for literature than Keats's; it
was so, if we could trace it out, that all men have learned; and that
is why a revival of letters is always accompanied or heralded by a
cast back to earlier and fresher models. Perhaps I hear someone cry
out: But this is not the way to be original! It is not; nor is there
any way but to be born so. Nor yet, if you are born original, is there
anything in this training that shall clip the wings of your
originality. There can be none more original than Montaigne,[8]
neither could any be more unlike Cicero; yet no craftsman can fail to
see how much the one must have tried in his time to imitate the other.
Burns[9] is the very type of a prime force in letters: he was of all
men the most imitative. Shakespeare himself, the imperial, proceeds
directly from a school. It is only from a school that we can expect to
have good writers; it is almost invariably from a school that great
writers, these lawless exceptions, issue. Nor is there anything here
that should astonish the considerate. Before he can tell what cadences
he truly prefers, the student should have tried all that are possible;
before he can choose and preserve a fitting key of words, he should
long have practised the literary scales;[10] and it is only after
years of such gymnastic that he can sit down at last, legions of words
swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding
for his choice, and he himself knowing what he wants to do and (within
the narrow limit of a man's ability) able to do it.

And it is the great point of these imitations that there still shines
beyond the student's reach his inimitable model. Let him try as he
please, he is still sure of failure; and it is a very old and a very
true saying that failure is the only highroad to success. I must have
had some disposition to learn; for I clear-sightedly condemned my own
performances. I liked doing them indeed; but when they were done, I
could see they were rubbish. In consequence, I very rarely showed them
even to my friends; and such friends as I chose to be my confidants I
must have chosen well, for they had the friendliness to be quite plain
with me. "Padding," said one. Another wrote: "I cannot understand why
you do lyrics so badly." No more could I! Thrice I put myself in the
way of a more authoritative rebuff, by sending a paper to a magazine.
These were returned; and I was not surprised nor even pained. If they
had not been looked at, as (like all amateurs) I suspected was the
case, there was no good in repeating the experiment; if they had been
looked at--well, then I had not yet learned to write, and I must keep
on learning and living. Lastly, I had a piece of good fortune which is
the occasion of this paper, and by which I was able to see my
literature in print, and to measure experimentally how far I stood
from the favour of the public.