112 Six Nineteenth-Century Fictionists
There is the same paradox in his understanding of cour-
age and its opposite. This bravest of men comprehended
fear so well that his depictions of fear are among his mas-
terpieces, as in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” “The Ebb
Tide,” “Markheim,” “The Master of Ballantrae,” “Treas-
ure Island,” and many others, not forgetting the nameless
terror of “Some College Memories.” This is the final touch
in Stevenson’s courage, that he could have been horribly
afraid and was not, that he could have dreaded death and
did not. All courage is fine, but the finest of all courage is
the courage of the man who could be a coward if he would,
but elects to be a hero instead.
And, by the same token, there is in all the virtue of Ste-
venson a quality of self-consciousness which was part of his
delicately poised artistic nature. There is a virtue which is
unconscious of itself, and there is a virtue which is conscious
of itself, and both are virtuous. And perhaps, after all,
only the virtue which is conscious of itself can express itself
in art. A dog’s love for its master is the symbol of self-
effacing, absolute love, but the dog cannot make literature
out of its love; Mrs. Browning could, and she did not love
Robert Browning the less because she was able to tell him
how much she loved him in the “Sonnets from the Portu-
guese.” Like Charles Lamb, like his favorite Montaigne,
Stevenson was an egotist, but, also like them, he was a be-
loved egotist. And he always had a liking for frank and
engaging egotists, and knew how to create them in literature
with skill—like Captain Burke in “The Master of Ballan-
trae,” like St. Ives, like Alan Breck, panting with the exer-
tion of the fight in the roundhouse, and turning to David to
ask in childlike joy, “Am I no a bonny fighter?” Stevenson
did not have to despise himself in order to love other men;
because he was intensely interested in his own life and pur-