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

TALK AND TALKERS
kind formality of manner. His opinions and sym-
pathies dated the man ahuost to a decade. He had
begun life, under his mother's influence, as an admirer
of Junius, but on maturer knowledge had transferred
his admiration to Burke. He cautioned me, with
entire gravity, to be punctilious in writing English ;
never to forget that I was a Scotsman, that English
was a foreign tongue, and that if I attempted the
colloquial, I should certainly be shamed : the remark
was apposite, I suppose, in the days of David Hume.
Scott was too new for him ; he had known the author
— known him, too, for a Tory ; and to the genuine
classic a contemporary is always something of a
trouble. He had the old, serious love of the play ;
had even, as he was proud to tell, played a certain
part in the history of Shakespearian revivals, for he
had successfully pressed on Murray, of the old Edin-
burgh Theatre, the idea of producing Shakespeare's
fairy pieces with great scenic display. A Moderate
in religion, he was much struck in the last years of
his life by a conversation with two young lads,
revivalists. ' H'm,' he would say — ' new to me. T
have had — h'm — no such experience.' It struck him,
not with pain, rather with a solemn philosophic
interest, that he, a Christian as he hoped, and a
Christian of so old a standing, should hear these
young fellows talking of his own subject, his own
weapons that he had fought the battle of life with, —
'and — h'm — not understand.' In this wise and
graceful attitude he did justice to himself and others,
reposed unshaken in his old beliefs, and recognised
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