Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 11, 1895 - Miscellanies, Volume III

'VIRGINIBUS PUERISQUE'
offers a continual series of successes, and so tickles
a man, through his vanity, into good humour. Alas!
in letters there is nothing of this sort. You may-
write as beautiful a hand as you will, you have
always something else to think of, and cannot pause
to notice your loops and flourishes ; they are beside
the mark, and the first law-stationer could put you
to the blush. Rousseau, indeed, made some account
of penmanship, even made it a source of livelihood,
when he copied out the Helo'ise for dilettante ladies ;
and therein showed that strange eccentric prudence
which guided him among so many thousand follies
and insanities. It would be well for all of the genus
irritabile thus to add something of skilled labour to
intangible brain-work. To find the right word is so
doubtful a success, and lies so near to failure, that
there is no satisfaction in a year of it ; but we all
know when we have formed a letter perfectly ; and
a stupid artist, right or wrong, is almost equally
certain he has found a right tone or a right colour,
or made a dexterous stroke with his brush. And,
again, painters may work out of doors ; and the fresh
air, the deliberate seasons, and the ' tranquillising
influence' of the green earth, counterbalance the
fever of thought, and keep them cool, placable, and
prosaic.
A ship captain is a good man to marry if it is
a marriage of love, for absences are a good influence
in love, and keep it bright and delicate ; but he is
just the worst man if the feeling is more pedestrian,
as habit is too frequently torn open and the solder
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