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

ESSAYS AND FRAGMENTS
can now read about with equanimity, interest, and
I had almost said pleasure, while to the childish
critic he often caused unmixed distress. But the
rest is the same ; I could not finish The Pirate
when I was a child, I have never finished it yet ;
Peveril of the Peak dropped half way through
from my schoolboy hands, and though I have since
waded to an end in a kind of wager with my-
self, the exercise was quite without enjoyment.
There is something disquieting in these considera-
tions. I still think the visit to Ponto's the best
part of the Book of Snobs : does that mean that
I was right when I was a child, or does it mean
that I have never grown since then, that the child is
not the man's father, but the man ? and that I came
into the world with all my faculties complete, and
have only learned sinsyne to be more tolerant of
boredom? . . .
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