Of the Eleven referred to, Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson was sent in at eighth wicket down to face this cunning “delivery":—­“He experiments too long; he is still a boy wondering what he is going to be.  With Cowley’s candor he tells us that he wants to write something by which he may be for ever known.  His attempts in this direction have been in the nature of trying different ways, and he always starts off whistling.  Having gone so far without losing himself, he turns back to try another road.  Does his heart fail him, despite his jaunty bearing, or is it because there is no hurry? ...  But it is quite time the great work was begun.”

I have taken the liberty to italicise a word or two, because in them Mr. Barrie supplied an answer to his question.  “The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne!” is not an exhortation to hurry:  and in Mr. Stevenson’s case, at any rate, there was not the least need to hurry.  There was, indeed, a time when Mr. Stevenson had not persuaded himself of this.  In Across the Plains he tells us how, at windy Anstruther and an extremely early age, he used to draw his chair to the table and pour forth literature “at such a speed, and with such intimations of early death and immortality, as I now look back upon with wonder.  Then it was that I wrote Voces Fidelium, a series of dramatic monologues in verse; then that I indited the bulk of a Covenanting novel—­like so many others, never finished.  Late I sat into the night, toiling (as I thought) under the very dart of death, toiling to leave a memory behind me.  I feel moved to thrust aside the curtain of the years, to hail that poor feverish idiot, to bid him go to bed and clap Voces Fidelium on the fire before he goes, so clear does he appear to me, sitting there between his candles in the rose-scented room and the late night; so ridiculous a picture (to my elderly wisdom) does the fool present!”

There was no hurry then, as he now sees:  and there never was cause to hurry, I repeat.  “But how is this?  Is, then, the great book written?” I am sure I don’t know.  Probably not:  for human experience goes to show that The Great Book (like The Great American Novel) never gets written.  But that a great story has been written is certain enough:  and one of the curious points about this story is its title.

It is not Catriona; nor is it Kidnapped. Kidnapped is a taking title, and Catriona beautiful in sound and suggestion of romance:  and Kidnapped (as everyone knows) is a capital tale, though imperfect; and Catriona (as the critics began to point out, the day after its issue) a capital tale with an awkward fissure midway in it.  “It is the fate of sequels”—­thus Mr. Stevenson begins his Dedication—­“to disappoint those who have waited for them”; and it is possible that the boys of Merry England (who, it may be remembered, thought more of Treasure Island than of Kidnapped) will take but lukewarmly to Catriona, having had five years in which to forget its predecessor.  No:  the title of the great story is The Memoirs of David Balfour.  Catriona has a prettier name than David, and may give it to the last book of her lover’s adventures:  but the Odyssey was not christened after Penelope.