Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 1, 1894 - Miscellanies, Volume I

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS
took counsel with him habitually. ' I sat at his feet,'
writes one of these, ' when I asked his advice, and
when the broad brow was set in thought and the firm
mouth said his say, I always knew that no man could
add to the worth of the conclusion.' He had excel-
lent taste, though whimsical and partial; collected old
furniture and delighted specially in simflowers long
before the days of Mr. Oscar Wilde ; took a lasting
pleasure in prints and pictures ; was a devout admirer
of Thomson of Duddingston at a time when few
shared the taste ; and though he read little, was
constant to his favourite books. He had never any
Greek ; Latin he happily re-taught himself after he
had left school, where he was a mere consistent idler :
happily, I say, for Lactantius, Vossius, and Cardinal
Bona were his chief authors. The first he must have
read for twenty years uninterruptedly, keeping it near
him in his study, and carrying it in his bag on journeys.
Another old theologian, Brown of Wamphray, was
often in his hands. When he was indisposed, he had
two books, Guy Mannering and The Parent's Assis-
tant, of which he never wearied. He was a strong
Conservative, or, as he preferred to call himself, a
Tory ; except in so far as his views were modified by
a hot-headed chivalrous sentiment for women. He
was actually in favour of a marriage law under which
any woman might have a divorce for the asking,
and no man on any ground whatever ; and the same
sentiment found another expression in a Magdalen
Mission in Edinburgh, founded and largely supported
by himself. This was but one of the many channels
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