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

XVI
A HUMBLE REMONSTRANCE
We have recently enjoyed a quite peculiar pleasure:
hearing, in some detail, the opinions, about the art
they practise, of Mr. Walter Besant and Mr. Heniy
James ; two men certainly of very different cahbre :
Mr. James so precise of outline, so cunning of fence,
so scrupulous of finish, and Mr. Besant so genial, so
friendly, with so persuasive and humorous a vein of
whim : Mr. James the very type of the deliberate
artist, Mr. Besant the impersonation of good-nature.^
That such doctors should differ will excite no great
surprise ; but one point in which they seem to agree
fills me, I confess, with wonder. For they are both
content to talk about the ' art of fiction ' ; and Mr.
Besant, waxing exceedingly bold, goes on to oppose
this so-called 'art of fiction ' to the 'art of poetry.'
By the art of poetry he can mean nothing but the
^ This papei% which does not otherwise fit the present volume, is
reprinted here as the proper continuation of the last. — R. L. S.
- '^The Art of Fiction/ by Walter Besant; a lecture delivered at the
Royal Institution, April 25, 1884. 'The Art of Fiction/ by Henry
James ; Longman's Magazine, September 1884.
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