for their home on the mountain-side of Vaea:  the last, October 6th, 1894, just two months before his grave was dug on Vaea top.  During his Odyssey in the South Seas (from August, 1888, to the spring of 1890) his letters, to Mr. Colvin at any rate, were infrequent and tantalizingly vague; but soon after settling on his estate in Samoa, “he for the first time, to my infinite gratification, took to writing me long and regular monthly budgets as full and particular as heart could wish; and this practice he maintained until within a few weeks of his death.”  These letters, occupying a place quite apart in Stevenson’s correspondence, Mr. Colvin has now edited with pious care and given to the public.

But the great, the happy surprise of the Vailima Letters is neither their continuity nor their fulness of detail—­although on each of these points they surpass our hopes.  The great, the entirely happy surprise is their intimacy.  We all knew—­who could doubt it?—­that Stevenson’s was a clean and transparent mind.  But we scarcely allowed for the innocent zest (innocent, because wholly devoid of vanity or selfishness) which he took in observing its operations, or for the child-like confidence with which he held out the crystal for his friend to gaze into.

One is at first inclined to say that had these letters been less open-hearted they had made less melancholy reading—­the last few of them, at any rate.  For, as their editor says, “the tenor of these last letters of Stevenson’s to me, and of others written to several of his friends at the same time, seemed to give just cause for anxiety.  Indeed, as the reader will have perceived, a gradual change had during the past months been coming over the tone of his correspondence....  To judge by these letters, his old invincible spirit of cheerfulness was beginning to give way to moods of depression and overstrained feeling, although to those about him, it seems, his charming, habitual sweetness and gaiety of temper were undiminished.”  Mr. Colvin is thinking, no doubt, of passages such as this, from the very last letter:—­

“I know I am at a climacteric for all men who live by their wits, so I do not despair.  But the truth is, I am pretty nearly useless at literature....  Were it not for my health, which made it impossible, I could not find it in my heart to forgive myself that I did not stick to an honest, commonplace trade when I was young, which might have now supported me during these ill years.  But do not suppose me to be down in anything else; only, for the nonce, my skill deserts me, such as it is, or was.  It was a very little dose of inspiration, and a pretty little trick of style, long lost, improved by the most heroic industry.  So far, I have managed to please the journalists.  But I am a fictitious article, and have long known it.  I am read by journalists, by my fellow-novelists, and by boys; with these incipit et explicit my vogue.”