Your paper is pleasant and modest: most of R. L. Stevenson's
admirers are inclined to lay it on far too thick. That he is a
genius we all admit; but his genius, if fine, is limited. For
example, he cannot paint (or at least he never has painted) a
woman. No more could Fettes Douglas, skilful artist though he was
in his own special line, and I shall tell you a remark of Russel's
thereon some day. (4) There are women in his books, but there is
none of the beauty and subtlety of womanhood in them.

"R. L. Stevenson I knew well as a lad and often met him and talked
with him. He acted in private theatricals got up by the late
Professor Fleeming Jenkin. But he had then, as always, a pretty
guid conceit o' himsel' - which his clique have done nothing to
check. His father and his grandfather (I have danced with his
mother before her marriage) I knew better; but 'the family
theologian,' as some of R. L. Stevenson's friends dabbed his
father, was a very touchy theologian, and denounced any one who in
the least differed from his extreme Calvinistic views. I came
under his lash most unwittingly in this way myself. But for this
twist, he was a good fellow - kind and hospitable - and a really
able man in his profession. His father-in-law, R. L. Stevenson's
maternal grandfather, was the Rev. Dr Balfour, minister of Colinton
- one of the finest-looking old men I ever saw - tall, upright, and
ruddy at eighty. But he was marvellously feeble as a preacher, and
often said things that were deliciously, unconsciously,
unintentionally laughable, if not witty. We were near Colinton for
some years; and Mr Russell (of the SCOTSMAN), who once attended the
Parish Church with us, was greatly tickled by Balfour discoursing
on the story of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, remarking that Mrs P-'s
conduct was 'highly improper'!"