Stevenson, Robert Louis Balfour
Robert Louis Balfour (1850-1894), a Scotch poet, essayist, and novelist. He was born at Edinburgh, November 13, 1850. He died in Samoa, December 3, 1894. His father and his grandfather were lighthouse engineers. Grandfather Stevenson built no less than eighteen lighthouses, including that on the Bell Rock in 1807-10. He was the architect besides of numerous docks, breakwaters, and bridges. Robert was a graduate of the University of Edinburgh and a member of the Scottish bar. Instead of practicing, however, he, like Scott, turned his attention to literature. His style is remarkable for clearness, simplicity, sincerity, and an attractive play of humor. Stevenson is thoroughly original, both in his use of material and in his expressions. It is interesting, therefore, to know that he acquired his manner of writing by imitating with care the writings of others,--"playing the sedulous ape," he called it.
His contributions were welcomed by the editors of the New Quarterly, Macmillan's, Cornhill Magazine, and other periodicals. His earlier volumes are An Inland Voyage and Travels with a Donkey in Cevennes. Both are delightful. Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers is a series of papers addressed to girls and boys. Familiar Studies of Men and Books is a collection of magazine articles, including bright essays on Hugo, Burns, Whitman, Thoreau, Villon, Pepys, and Knox. Treasure Island and The Black Arrow are unsurpassed tales of adventure. Kidnapped, The Master of Ballantrae, and David Balfour are adventurous tales of high rank. In 1885 he published A Child's Garden of Verse, remarkably expressive of children's thoughts and feelings. A number of his novels are of a psychological nature. The most successful of these is The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Stevenson was never a robust man. In the search for health he resided for a time in the Adirondacks and in the mountains of California. Finally, his physician having ordered him south, he went to the southern Pacific and established a home on the island of Samoa. He was an eager writer, full of vivacity and fond of life. Although he knew that his years were almost numbered, he wrote on courageously, maintaining that one should meet death as cheerfully as though it were one of the pleasures of life.
To be honest, to be kind, to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary and not be embittered, to keep a few friends, but these without capitulation; above all, on the same grim condition to keep friends with himself--here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.
Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.