Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson Part 8

[Note 12: Since the above was written I have tried to launch the boat with my own hands in _Kidnapped_. Some day, perhaps, I may try a rattle at the shutters.]

[Note 13: _Crusoe ... Achilles ... Ulysses ... Christian_. When Robinson Crusoe saw the footprint on the sand, and realised he was not alone.... To a reader of to-day the great hero Achilles seems to be all bl.u.s.ter and selfish childishness; the true gentleman of the Iliad is _Hector_.... When Ulysses returned home in the _Odyssey_, he bent with ease the bow that had proved too much for all the suitors of his lonely and faithful wife Penelope.... Christian "had not run far from his own door when his wife and children, perceiving it, began to cry after him to return; but the man put his fingers in his ears and ran on crying, 'Life! Life! eternal Life!'"_--Pilgrim's Progress_.]

[Note 14: _]_. The Greek heavy-weight in Homer's _Iliad_.

[Note 15: _English people of the present day_. This was absolutely true in 1882. But in 1892 a complete revolution in taste had set in, and many of the most hardened realists were forced to write wild romances, or lose their grip on the public. At this time, Stevenson naturally had no idea how powerfully his as yet unwritten romances were to affect the literary market.]

[Note 16: _Mr. Trollope's ... chronicling small beer ... Rawdon Crawley's blow_. Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) wrote an immense number of mildly entertaining novels concerned with the lives and ambitions of English clergymen and their satellites. His best-known book is probably _Barchester Towers_ (1857).... _Chronicling small beer_ is the "lame and impotent conclusion" with which Iago finishes his poem (_Oth.e.l.lo_, Act II, Sc. I).... _Rawdon Crawley's blow_ refers to the most memorable scene in Thackeray's great novel, _Vanity Fair_ (1847-8), where Rawdon Crawley, the husband of Becky Sharp, strikes Lord Steyne in the face (Chap. LIII). After writing this powerful scene, Thackeray was in a state of tremendous excitement, and slapping his knee, said, "That's Genius!"]

[Note 17: _The end of Esmond ... pure Dumas_. Thackeray's romance _Henry Esmond_ (1852) is regarded by many critics as the greatest work of fiction in the English language; Stevenson here calls it "the best of all his books." The scene Stevenson refers to is where Henry is finally cured of his love for Beatrix, and theatrically breaks his sword in the presence of the royal admirer (Book III, Chap. 13).

Alexander Dumas (1803-1370), author of _Monte Cristo_ and _Les Trois Mousquetaires_. Stevenson playfully calls him "the great, unblus.h.i.+ng French thief"; all he means is that Dumas never hesitated to appropriate material wherever he found it, and work it into his romances.]

[Note 18: _The living fame of Robinson Crusoe with the discredit of Clarissa Harlowe_. A strong contrast between the romance of incident and the a.n.a.lytical novel. For remarks on _Clarissa_, see our Note 9 of Chapter IV above.]

[Note 19: _Byronism_. About the time Lord Byron was publis.h.i.+ng _Childe Harold_ (1812-1818) a tremendous wave of romantic melancholy swept over all the countries of Europe. Innumerable poems and romances dealing with mysteriously-sad heroes were written in imitation of Byron; and young authors wore low, rolling collars, and tried to look depressed. See Gautier's _Histoire du Romantisme._ Now the death of Lovelace (in a duel) in Richardson's _Clarissa_, was pitched in exactly the Byronic key, though at that time Byron had not been born.... The Elizabethans were of course thoroughly romantic.]

[Note 20: _Faria_..._Dantes_. Characters in Dumas's _Monte Cristo_ (1841-5).]

[Note 21: _Lucy and Richard Feveril_. Usually spelled "Feverel."

Stevenson strangely enough, was always a bad speller. The reference here is to one of Stevenson's favorite novels _The Ordeal of Richard Feverel_ (1859) by George Meredith. Stevenson's idolatrous praise of this particular scene in the novel is curious, for no greater contrast in English literary style can be found than that between Meredith's and his own. For another reference by Stevenson to the older novelist, see our Note 47 of Chapter IV above.]

[Note 22: _Robinson Crusoe is as realistic as it is romantic_. Therein lies precisely the charm of this book for boyish minds; the details are given with such candour that it seems as if they must all be true.

At heart, Defoe was an intense realist, as well as the first English novelist.]

[Note 23: _The arrival of Haydn_. For a note on George Sand's novel _Consuelo_ see Note 9 of Chapter IV above.]

[Note 24: _A joy for ever_. The first line of Keats's poem _Endymion_ is "A thing of beauty is a joy forever."]

[Note 25: _The Sailor's Sweetheart_. Mr. W. Clark Russell, born in New York in 1844, has written many popular tales of the sea. His first success was _The Wreck of the Grosvenor_ (1876); _The Sailor's Sweetheart_, more properly, _A Sailor's Sweetheart_, was published in 1877.]

[Note 26: _Swiss Family Robinson_. A German story, _Der schweizerische Robinson_ (1812) by J.D. Wyss (1743-1818). This story is not so popular as it used to be.]

[Note 27: _Verne's Mysterious Island_. Jules Verne, who died at Amiens, France, in 1904, wrote an immense number of romances, which, translated into many languages, have delighted young readers all over the world. _The Mysterious Island_ is a sequel to _Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea_.]

[Note 28: _Eugene de Rastignac_. A character in Balzac's novel, Pere Goriot.]

[Note 29: _The Lady of the Lake_. This poem, published in 1810, is as Stevenson implies, not so much a poem as a rattling good story told in rime.]

[Note 30: _The Pirate_. A novel by Scott, published in 1821. It was the cause of Cooper's writing _The Pilot_. See Cooper's preface to the latter novel.]

[Note 31: _Guy Mannering_. Also by Scott. Published 1815.]

[Note 32: _Miss Braddon's idea_. Mary Elizabeth Braddon (Maxwell), born in 1837, published her first novel, _The Trail of the Serpent_, in 1860. She has written a large number of sensational works of fiction, very popular with an uncritical cla.s.s of readers. Perhaps her best-known book is _Lady Audley's Secret_ (1862). It would be well for the student to refer to the scenes in _Guy Mannering_ which Stevenson calls the "_Four strong notes_."]

[Note 33: _Mrs. Todgers's idea of a wooden leg_. Mrs. Todgers is a character in d.i.c.kens's novel, _Martin Chuzzlewit_ (1843-4).]

[Note 34: _Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot_. A character in the _Antiquary_ (1816).]

VI

THE CHARACTER OF DOGS

The civilisation, the manners, and the morals of dog-kind[1] are to a great extent subordinated to those of his ancestral master, man. This animal, in many ways so superior, has accepted a position of inferiority, shares the domestic life, and humours the caprices of the tyrant. But the potentate, like the British in India, pays small regard to the character of his willing client, judges him with listless glances, and condemns him in a byword. Listless have been the looks of his admirers, who have exhausted idle terms of praise, and buried the poor soul below exaggerations. And yet more idle and, if possible, more unintelligent has been the att.i.tude of his express detractors; those who are very fond of dogs "but in their proper place"; who say "poo' fellow, poo' fellow," and are themselves far poorer; who whet the knife of the vivisectionist or heat his oven;[2]

who are not ashamed to admire "the creature's instinct"; and flying far beyond folly, have dared to resuscitate the theory of animal machines. The "dog's instinct" and the "automaton-dog," in this age of psychology and science, sound like strange anachronisms. An automaton he certainly is; a machine working independently of his control, the heart like the mill-wheel, keeping all in motion, and the consciousness, like a person shut in the mill garret, enjoying the view out of the window and shaken by the thunder of the stones; an automaton in one corner of which a living spirit is confined: an automaton like man. Instinct again he certainly possesses. Inherited apt.i.tudes are his, inherited frailties. Some things he at once views and understands, as though he were awakened from a sleep, as though he came "trailing clouds of glory."[3] But with him, as with man, the field of instinct is limited; its utterances are obscure and occasional; and about the far larger part of life both the dog and his master must conduct their steps by deduction and observation.

The leading distinction[4] between dog and man, after and perhaps before the different duration of their lives, is that the one can speak and that the other cannot. The absence of the power of speech confines the dog in the development of his intellect. It hinders him from many speculations, for words are the beginning of metaphysic. At the same blow it saves him from many superst.i.tions, and his silence has won for him a higher name for virtue than his conduct justifies.

The faults of the dog[5] are many. He is vainer than man, singularly greedy of notice, singularly intolerant of ridicule, suspicious like the deaf, jealous to the degree of frenzy, and radically devoid of truth. The day of an intelligent small dog is pa.s.sed in the manufacture and the laborious communication of falsehood; he lies with his tail, he lies with his eye, he lies with his protesting paw; and when he rattles his dish or scratches at the door his purpose is other than appears. But he has some apology to offer for the vice. Many of the signs which form his dialect have come to bear an arbitrary meaning, clearly understood both by his master and himself; yet when a new want arises he must either invent a new vehicle of meaning or wrest an old one to a different purpose; and this necessity frequently recurring must tend to lessen his idea of the sanct.i.ty of symbols.

Meanwhile the dog is clear in his own conscience, and draws, with a human nicety, the distinction between formal and essential truth. Of his punning perversions, his legitimate dexterity with symbols, he is even vain; but when he has told and been detected in a lie, there is not a hair upon his body but confesses guilt. To a dog of gentlemanly feeling theft and falsehood are disgraceful vices. The canine, like the human, gentleman demands in his misdemeanours Montaigne's "_je ne sais quoi de genereux_."[6] He is never more than half ashamed of having barked or bitten; and for those faults into which he has been led by the desire to s.h.i.+ne before a lady of his race, he retains, even under physical correction, a share of pride. But to be caught lying, if he understands it, instantly uncurls his fleece.

Just as among dull observers he preserves a name for truth, the dog has been credited with modesty. It is amazing how the use of language blunts the faculties of man---that because vainglory finds no vent in words, creatures supplied with eyes have been unable to detect a fault so gross and obvious. If a small spoiled dog were suddenly to be endowed with speech, he would prate interminably, and still about himself; when we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in a garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his foible for falsehood, in a year's time he would have gone far to weary out our love. I was about to compare him to Sir Willoughby Patterne,[7] but the Patternes have a manlier sense of their own merits; and the parallel, besides, is ready. Hans Christian Andersen,[8] as we behold him in his startling memoirs, thrilling from top to toe with an excruciating vanity, and scouting even along the street for shadows of offence--here was the talking dog.

It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of franker appet.i.tes, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased hunting[9] and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed.

Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, mannered and affected. The number of things that a small dog does naturally is strangely small. Enjoying better spirits and not crushed under material cares, he is far more theatrical than average man. His whole life, if he be a dog of any pretension to gallantry, is spent in a vain show, and in the hot pursuit of admiration. Take out your puppy for a walk, and you will find the little ball of fur clumsy, stupid, bewildered, but natural. Let but a few months pa.s.s, and when you repeat the process you will find nature buried in convention. He will do nothing plainly; but the simplest processes of our material life will all be bent into the forms of an elaborate and mysterious etiquette. Instinct, says the fool, has awakened. But it is not so.

Some dogs--some, at the very least--if they be kept separate from others, remain quite natural; and these, when at length they meet with a companion of experience, and have the game explained to them, distinguish themselves by the severity of their devotion to its rules.

I wish I were allowed to tell a story which would radiantly illuminate the point; but men, like dogs, have an elaborate and mysterious etiquette. It is their bond of sympathy that both are the children of convention.

The person, man or dog, who has a conscience is eternally condemned to some degree of humbug; the sense of the law in their members[10]

fatally precipitates either towards a frozen and affected bearing. And the converse is true; and in the elaborate and conscious manners of the dog, moral opinions and the love of the ideal stand confessed. To follow for ten minutes in the street some swaggering, canine cavalier, is to receive a lesson in dramatic art and the cultured conduct of the body; in every act and gesture you see him true to a refined conception; and the dullest cur, beholding him, p.r.i.c.ks up his ear and proceeds to imitate and parody that charming ease. For to be a high-mannered and high-minded gentleman, careless, affable, and gay, is the inborn pretension of the dog. The large dog, so much lazier, so much more weighed upon with matter, so majestic in repose, so beautiful in effort, is born with the dramatic means to wholly represent the part. And it is more pathetic and perhaps more instructive to consider the small dog in his conscientious and imperfect efforts to outdo Sir Philip Sidney.[11] For the ideal of the dog is feudal and religious;[12] the ever-present polytheism, the whip-bearing Olympus of mankind, rules them on the one hand; on the other, their singular difference of size and strength among themselves effectually prevents the appearance of the democratic notion. Or we might more exactly compare their society to the curious spectacle presented by a school--ushers, monitors, and big and little boys--qualified by one circ.u.mstance, the introduction of the other s.e.x. In each, we should observe a somewhat similar tension of manner, and somewhat similar points of honour. In each the larger animal keeps a contemptuous good humour; in each the smaller annoys him with wasp-like impudence, certain of practical immunity; in each we shall find a double life producing double characters, and an excursive and noisy heroism combined with a fair amount of practical timidity. I have known dogs, and I have known school heroes that, set aside the fur, could hardly have been told apart; and if we desire to understand the chivalry of old, we must turn to the school playfields or the dungheap where the dogs are trooping.

Woman, with the dog, has been long enfranchised. Incessant ma.s.sacre of female innocents has changed the proportions of the s.e.xes and perverted their relations. Thus, when we regard the manners of the dog, we see a romantic and monogamous animal, once perhaps as delicate as the cat, at war with impossible conditions. Man has much to answer for; and the part he plays is yet more d.a.m.nable and parlous[13] than Corin's in the eyes of Touchstone. But his intervention has at least created an imperial situation for the rare surviving ladies. In that society they reign without a rival: conscious queens; and in the only instance of a canine wife-beater that has ever fallen under my notice, the criminal was somewhat excused by the circ.u.mstances of his story.

He is a little, very alert, well-bred, intelligent Skye, as black as a hat, with a wet bramble for a nose and two cairn-gorms[14] for eyes.

To the human observer, he is decidedly well-looking; but to the ladies of his race he seems abhorrent. A thorough elaborate gentleman, of the plume and sword-knot order, he was born with the nice sense of gallantry to women. He took at their hands the most outrageous treatment; I have heard him bleating like a sheep, I have seen him streaming blood, and his ear tattered like a regimental banner; and yet he would scorn to make reprisals. Nay more, when a human lady upraised the contumelious whip against the very dame who had been so cruelly misusing him, my little great-heart gave but one hoa.r.s.e cry and fell upon the tyrant tooth and nail. This is the tale of a soul's tragedy.[15] After three years of unavailing chivalry, he suddenly, in one hour, threw off the yoke of obligation; had he been Shakespeare he would then have written _Troilus and Cressida_[16] to brand the offending s.e.x; but being only a little dog, he began to bite them. The surprise of the ladies whom he attacked indicated the monstrosity of his offence; but he had fairly beaten off his better angel, fairly committed moral suicide; for almost in the same hour, throwing aside the last rags of decency, he proceeded to attack the aged also. The fact is worth remark, showing as it does, that ethical laws are common both to dogs and men; and that with both a single deliberate violation of the conscience loosens all. "But while the lamp holds on to burn,"

says the paraphrase, "the greatest sinner may return."[17] I have been cheered to see symptoms of effectual penitence in my sweet ruffian; and by the handling that he accepted uncomplainingly the other day from an indignant fair one, I begin to hope the period of _Sturm und Drang_[18] is closed.

All these little gentlemen are subtle casuists. The duty to the female dog is plain; but where competing duties rise, down they will sit and study them out like Jesuit confessors.[19] I knew another little Skye, somewhat plain in manner and appearance, but a creature compact of amiability and solid wisdom. His family going abroad for a winter, he was received for that period by an uncle in the same city. The winter over, his own family home again, and his own house (of which he was very proud) reopened, he found himself in a dilemma between two conflicting duties of loyalty and grat.i.tude. His old friends were not to be neglected, but it seemed hardly decent to desert the new. This was how he solved the problem. Every morning, as soon as the door was opened, off posted Coolin to his uncle's, visited the children in the nursery, saluted the whole family, and was back at home in time for breakfast and his bit of fish. Nor was this done without a sacrifice on his part, sharply felt; for he had to forego the particular honour and jewel of his day--his morning's walk with my father. And perhaps, from this cause, he gradually wearied of and relaxed the practice, and at length returned entirely to his ancient habits. But the same decision served him in another and more distressing case of divided duty, which happened not long after. He was not at all a kitchen dog, but the cook had nursed him with unusual kindness during the distemper; and though he did not adore her as he adored my father--although (born sn.o.b) he was critically conscious of her position as "only a servant"--he still cherished for her a special grat.i.tude. Well, the cook left, and retired some streets away to lodgings of her own; and there was Coolin in precisely the same situation with any young gentleman who has had the inestimable benefit of a faithful nurse. The canine conscience did not solve the problem with a pound of tea at Christmas. No longer content to pay a flying visit, it was the whole forenoon that he dedicated to his solitary friend. And so, day by day, he continued to comfort her solitude until (for some reason which I could never understand and cannot approve) he was kept locked up to break him of the graceful habit. Here, it is not the similarity, it is the difference, that is worthy of remark; the clearly marked degrees of grat.i.tude and the proportional duration of his visits. Anything further removed from instinct it were hard to fancy; and one is even stirred to a certain impatience with a character so dest.i.tute of spontaneity, so pa.s.sionless in justice, and so priggishly obedient to the voice of reason.

There are not many dogs like this good Coolin. and not many people.

But the type is one well marked, both in the human and the canine family. Gallantry was not his aim, but a solid and somewhat oppressive respectability. He was a sworn foe to the unusual and the conspicuous, a praiser of the golden mean, a kind of city uncle modified by Cheeryble.[20] And as he was precise and conscientious in all the steps of his own blameless course, he looked for the same precision and an even greater gravity in the bearing of his deity, my father. It was no sinecure to be Coolin's idol; he was exacting like a rigid parent; and at every sign of levity in the man whom he respected, he announced loudly the death of virtue and the proximate fall of the pillars of the earth.

I have called him a sn.o.b; but all dogs are so, though in varying degrees. It is hard to follow their sn.o.bbery among themselves; for though I think we can perceive distinctions of rank, we cannot grasp what is the criterion. Thus in Edinburgh, in a good part of the town, there were several distinct societies or clubs that met in the morning to--the phrase is technical--to "rake the backets"[21] in a troop. A friend of mine, the master of three dogs, was one day surprised to observe that they had left one club and joined another; but whether it was a rise or a fall, and the result of an invitation or an expulsion, was more than he could guess. And this ill.u.s.trates pointedly our ignorance of the real life of dogs, their social ambitions and their social hierarchies. At least, in their dealings with men they are not only conscious of s.e.x, but of the difference of station. And that in the most sn.o.bbish manner; for the poor man's dog is not offended by the notice of the rich, and keeps all his ugly feeling for those poorer or more ragged than his master. And again, for every station they have an ideal of behaviour, to which the master, under pain of derogation, will do wisely to conform. How often has not a cold glance of an eye informed me that my dog was disappointed; and how much more gladly would he not have taken a beating than to be thus wounded in the seat of piety!

I knew one disrespectable dog. He was far liker a cat; cared little or nothing for men, with whom he merely coexisted as we do with cattle, and was entirely devoted to the art of poaching. A house would not hold him, and to live in a town was what he refused. He led, I believe, a life of troubled but genuine pleasure, and perished beyond all question in a trap. But this was an exception, a marked reversion to the ancestral type; like the hairy human infant. The true dog of the nineteenth century, to judge by the remainder of my fairly large acquaintance, is in love with respectability. A street-dog was once adopted by a lady. While still an Arab, he had done as Arabs do, gambolling in the mud, charging into butchers' stalls, a cat-hunter, a st.u.r.dy beggar, a common rogue and vagabond; but with his rise into society he laid aside these inconsistent pleasures. He stole no more, he hunted no more cats; and conscious of his collar he ignored his old companions. Yet the canine upper cla.s.s was never brought to recognize the upstart, and from that hour, except for human countenance, he was alone. Friendless, shorn of his sports and the habits of a lifetime, he still lived in a glory of happiness, content with his acquired respectability, and with no care but to support it solemnly. Are we to condemn or praise this self-made dog! We praise his human brother. And thus to conquer vicious habits is as rare with dogs as with men. With the more part, for all their scruple-mongering and moral thought, the vices that are born with them remain invincible throughout; and they live all their years, glorying in their virtues, but still the slaves of their defects. Thus the sage Coolin was a thief to the last; among a thousand peccadilloes, a whole goose and a whole cold leg of mutton lay upon his conscience; but Woggs,[22] whose soul's s.h.i.+pwreck in the matter of gallantry I have recounted above, has only twice been known to steal, and has often n.o.bly conquered the temptation. The eighth is his favourite commandment. There is something painfully human in these unequal virtues and mortal frailties of the best. Still more painful is the bearing of those "stammering professors"[23] in the house of sickness and under the terror of death. It is beyond a doubt to me that, somehow or other, the dog connects together, or confounds, the uneasiness of sickness and the consciousness of guilt. To the pains of the body he often adds the tortures of the conscience; and at these times his haggard protestations form, in regard to the human deathbed, a dreadful parody or parallel.

I once supposed that I had found an inverse relation between the double etiquette which dogs obey; and that those who were most addicted to the showy street life among other dogs were less careful in the practice of home virtues for the tyrant man. But the female dog, that ma.s.s of carneying[24] affectations, s.h.i.+nes equally in either sphere; rules her rough posse of attendant swains with unwearying tact and gusto; and with her master and mistress pushes the arts of insinuation to their crowning point. The attention of man and the regard of other dogs flatter (it would thus appear) the same sensibility; but perhaps, if we could read the canine heart, they would be found to flatter it in very marked degrees. Dogs live with man as courtiers round a monarch, steeped in the flattery of his notice and enriched with sinecures. To push their favour in this world of pickings and caresses is, perhaps, the business of their lives; and their joys may lie outside. I am in despair at our persistent ignorance. I read in the lives of our companions the same processes of reason, the same antique and fatal conflicts of the right against the wrong, and of unbitted nature with too rigid custom; I see them with our weaknesses, vain, false, inconstant against appet.i.te, and with our one stalk of virtue, devoted to the dream of an ideal; and yet, as they hurry by me on the street with tail in air, or come singly to solicit my regard, I must own the secret purport of their lives is still inscrutable to man. Is man the friend, or is he the patron only?

Have they indeed forgotten nature's voice? or are those moments s.n.a.t.c.hed from courtiers.h.i.+p when they touch noses with the tinker's mongrel, the brief reward and pleasure of their artificial lives?

Doubtless, when man shares with his dog the toils of a profession and the pleasures of an art, as with the shepherd or the poacher, the affection warms and strengthens till it fills the soul. But doubtless, also, the masters are, in many cases, the object of a merely interested cultus, sitting aloft like Louis Quatorze,[25] giving and receiving flattery and favour; and the dogs, like the majority of men, have but forgotten their true existence and become the dupes of their ambition.

NOTES

This article originally appeared in _The English Ill.u.s.trated Magazine_ for May 1883, Vol. I, pp. 300-305. It was accompanied with ill.u.s.trations by Randolph Caldecott. The essay was later included in the volume _Memories and Portraits_ (1887).

The astonis.h.i.+ng fidelity and devotion of the dog to his master have certainly been in part repaid by men of letters in all times. A valuable essay might be written on the Dog's Place in Literature; in the poetry of the East, hundreds of years before Christ, the dog's faithfulness was more than once celebrated. One of the most marvellous pa.s.sages in Homer's _Odyssey_ is the recognition of the ragged Ulysses by the n.o.ble old dog, who dies of joy. In recent years, since the publication of Dr. John Brown's _Rab and his Friends_ (1858), the dog has approached an apotheosis. Among innumerable sketches and stories with canine heroes may be mentioned Bret Harte's extraordinary portrait of _Boonder_: M. Maeterlinck's essay on dogs: Richard Harding Davis's _The Bar Sinister_: Jack London's _The Call of the Wild_: and best of all, Alfred Ollivant's splendid story _Bob, Son of Battle_ (1898) which has every indication of becoming an English cla.s.sic. It is a pity that dogs cannot read.

[Note 1: _The morals of dog-kind_. Stevenson discusses this subject again in his essay _Pulvis et Umbra_ (1888).]

[Note 2: _Who whet the knife of the vivisectionist or heat his oven_.

Stevenson was so sympathetic by nature that once, seeing a man beating a dog, he interfered, crying, "It's not your dog, it's G.o.d's dog." On the subject of vivisection, however his biographer says: "It must be laid to the credit of his reason and the firm balance of his judgment that although vivisection was a subject he could not endure even to have mentioned, yet, with all his imagination and sensibility, he never ranged himself among the opponents of this method of inquiry, provided, of course, it was limited, as in England, with the utmost rigour possible."--Balfour's _Life_, II, 217. The two most powerful opponents of vivisection among Stevenson's contemporaries were Ruskin and Browning. The former resigned the Professors.h.i.+p of Poetry at Oxford because vivisection was permitted at the University: and the latter in two poems _Tray_ and _Arcades Ambo_ treated the vivisectionists with contempt, implying that they were cowards. In Bernard Shaw's clever novel _Cashel Byron's Profession_, The prize-fighter maintains that his profession is more honorable than that of a man who bakes dogs in an oven. This novel, by the way, which he read in the winter of 1887-88, made an extraordinary impression on Stevenson; he recognised its author's originality and cleverness immediately, and was filled with curiosity as to what kind of person this Shaw might be. "Tell me more of the inimitable author," he cried.