Stevenson was a poet, a dramatist, an essayist, and a novelist,
besides writing many political, geographical, and biographical
sketches. As a poet, his fame is steadily waning. The tendency at
first was to rank him too high, owing to the undeniable charm of many
of the poems in the _Child's Garden of Verses_. The child's view of
the world, as set forth in these songs, is often originally and
gracefully expressed; but there is little in Stevenson's poetry that
is of permanent value, and it is probable that most of it will be
forgotten. This fact is in a way a tribute to his genius; for his
greatness as a prose writer has simply eclipsed his reputation as a
poet.

His plays were failures. They illustrate the familiar truth that a man
may have positive genius as a dramatic writer, and yet fail as a
dramatist. There are laws that govern the stage which must be obeyed;
play-writing is a great art in itself, entirely distinct from literary
composition. Even Browning, the most intensely dramatic poet of the
nineteenth century, was not nearly so successful in his dramas as in
his dramatic lyrics and romances.

His essays attracted at first very little attention; they were too
fine and too subtle to awaken popular enthusiasm. It was the success
of his novels that drew readers back to the essays, just as it was the
vogue of Sudermann's plays that made his earlier novels popular. One
has only to read such essays, however, as those printed in this volume
to realise not only their spirit and charm, but to feel instinctively
that one is reading English Literature. They are exquisite works of
art, written in an almost impeccable style. By many judicious readers,
they are placed above his works of fiction. They certainly constitute