Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 21, 1896 - Miscellanies, Volume IV

SKETCHES
THE SATIRIST
My companion enjoyed a cheap reputation for wit
and insight. He was by habit and repute a satirist.
If he did occasionally condemn anything or anybody
who richly deserved it, and whose demerits had
hitherto escaped, it was simply because he con-
demned everything and everybody. While I was
with him he disposed of St. Paul with an epigram,
shook my reverence for Shakespeare in a neat
antithesis, and fell foul of the Almighty himself, on
the score of one or two out of the ten command-
ments. Nothing escaped his blighting censure. At
every sentence he overthrew an idol, or lowered my
estimation of a friend. I saw everything with new
eyes, and could only marvel at my former blindness.
How was it possible that I had not before observed
A's false hair, B's selfishness, or C's boorish manners ?
I and my companion, methought, walked the streets
like a couple of gods among a swarm of vermin ;
for every one we saw seemed to bear openly upon
his brow the mark of the apocalyptic beast. I half
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