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

MEMORIES AND PORTRAITS
droll, and emphatic, was a perpetual delight to all
who knew him before the clouds began to settle on
his mind. His use of language was both just and
picturesque ; and when at the beginning of his illness
he began to feel the ebbing of this power, it was
strange and painful to hear him reject one word after
another as inadequate, and at length desist from the
search and leave his phrase unfinished rather than
finish it without propriety. It was perhaps another
Celtic trait that his affections and emotions, passionate
as these were, and liable to passionate ups and downs,
found the most eloquent expression both in words
and gestures. Love, anger, and indignation shone
through him and broke forth in imagery, like what
we read of Southern races. For all these emotional
extremes, and in spite of the melancholy ground of
his character, he had upon the whole a happy life ;
nor was he less fortunate in his death, which at the
last came to him unaware.
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