Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 5, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume II

MEN AND BOOKS
help from bastard rhythms. Moreover, there is a
progression — I cannot call it a progress — in his work
towards a more and more strictly prosaic level, until
at last he sinks into the bathos of the prosy. Emer-
son mentions having once remarked to Thoreau :
' Who would not like to write something which all
can read, like Robinson Crusoe ? and who does not
see with regret that his page is not solid with a right
materiahstic treatment which delights everybody ? '
I must say in passing, that it is not the right
materialistic treatment which delights the world in
Robinson, but the romantic and philosophic interest
of the fable. The same treatment does quite the
reverse of delighting us when it is appUed, in Colonel
Jack, to the management of a plantation. But I
cannot help suspecting Thoreau to have been in-
fluenced either by this identical remark or by some
other closely similar in meaning. He began to fall
more and more into a detailed materiahstic treat-
ment ; he went into the business doggedly, as one
who should make a guide-book ; he not only
chronicled what had been important in his own
experience, but whatever might have been important
in the experience of anybody else ; not only what
had affected him, but all that he saw or heard. His
ardour had grown less, or perhaps it was incon-
sistent with a right materialistic treatment to display
such emotions as he felt ; and, to complete the
eventful change, he chose, from a sense of moral
dignity, to gut these later works of the saving quality
of humour. He was not one of those authors who
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