until the appearance of Charles Lamb that the personal essay reached
its climax in English literature. Over the pages of the _Essays of
Elia_ hovers an immortal charm--the charm of a nature inexhaustible in
its humour and kindly sympathy for humanity. Thackeray was another
great master of the literary easy-chair, and is to some readers more
attractive in this attitude than as a novelist. In America we have had
a few writers who have reached eminence in this form, beginning with
Washington Irving, and including Donald G. Mitchell, whose _Reveries
of a Bachelor_ has been read by thousands of people for over fifty
years.

As a personal essayist Stevenson seems already to belong to the first
rank. He is both eclectic and individual. He brought to his pen the
reminiscences of varied reading, and a wholly original touch of
fantasy. He was literally steeped in the gorgeous Gothic diction of
the seventeenth century, but he realised that such a prose style as
illumines the pages of William Drummond's _Cypress Grove_ and Browne's
_Urn Burial_ was a lost art. He attempted to imitate such writing only
in his youthful exercises, for his own genius was forced to express
itself in an original way. All of his personal essays have that air of
distinction which attracts and holds one's attention as powerfully in
a book as it does in social intercourse. Everything that he has to say
seems immediately worth saying, and worth hearing, for he was one of
those rare men who had an interesting mind. There are some literary
artists who have style and nothing else, just as there are some great
singers who have nothing but a voice. The true test of a book, like
that of an individual, is whether or not it improves upon
acquaintance. Stevenson's essays reflect a personality that becomes
brighter as we draw nearer. This fact makes his essays not merely
entertaining reading, but worthy of serious and prolonged study.