others. It may be very much doubted whether this process ever gave any
one a style of perfect freedom: and it may be questioned further whether
Stevenson ever attained such a style.

[27] Anthony Trollope, in one of the discursive passages in his
early books, has left positive testimony to the distaste with
which publishers regarded it.

But there could be no question that he did attain very interesting and
artistic effects, and there happened to be at the time a reaction
against what was called "slovenliness" and a demand for careful
preparation and planned effect in prose-writing. Even so, however, it
was not at once that Stevenson took to fiction. He began with essays,
literary and miscellaneous, and with personal accounts of travel: and
certain critical friends of his strongly urged him to continue in this
way. During the years 1878 and 1879, in a short-lived periodical called
_London_, which came to be edited by his friend the late Mr. Henley and
had a very small staff, he issued certain _New Arabian Nights_ which
caught the attention of one or two of his fellow-contributors very
strongly, and made them certain that a new power in fiction-writing had
arisen. It did not, however, at first much attract the public: and it
was the kind of thing which never attracts publishers until the public
forces their hands. For a time he had to wait, and to take what
opportunity he could get of periodical publication, "boy's
book"-writing, and the like. In fact _Treasure Island_ (1883), with
which he at last made his mark, is to this day classed as a boy's book
by some people who are miserable if they cannot classify. It certainly
deals with pirates, and pieces of eight, and adventures by land and sea;
but the manner of dealing--the style and narrative and the delineation
of the chief character, the engaging villain John Silver--is about as