Of Walt Whitman and Thoreau, both most interesting studies in the volume, he has much that is stimulating to say; and many readers, who may not have time or opportunity for deep personal research, will find his essays on _Villon_, _Victor Hugo's Romances_, _Samuel Pepys_, _Yoshida Torajiro_ and _Charles of Orleans_ a very pleasant means of obtaining a great deal of information in a very limited space.
In the early essays, republished in volume form in 1881 by Messrs Chatto & Windus, under the title _Virginibus Puerisque_, Mr Stevenson discourses delightfully on many things, touching, for instance, with a light hand but a wise heart on matrimony and love-making, and the little things, so small in themselves, so large as they bulk for happiness or misery, that go to make peace or discord in married life. It is all done with a pointed pen and a smiling face; but its lightness covers wisdom, and it is full of sound counsel and makes wiser reading for young men and maidens than many books of more apparent gravity.
That pathos always lay close behind his playful mockeries and was never far away from the man whose paper on _Ordered South_ is like the bravely repressed cry of all his fellow-sufferers the companion paper on _El Dorado_ proves convincingly. Under its graceful phrases there lies deep and strong sympathy for toil, for hope deferred and longed for, for the disappointment of attainment, for the labour that after all has so often to be its own reward.
Between 1880 and 1885 Mr Stevenson collaborated with Mr Henley in the writing of four plays which were privately printed, _Deacon Brodie_ in 1880, _Beau Austin_ in 1884, _Admiral Guinea_ in 1884, and _Robert Macaire_ in 1885--the whole being finally published in volume form in an edition limited to 250 copies, in 1896. _Beau Austin_ was acted in 1890 at The Haymarket, and quite recently _Admiral Guinea_ has been played with Mr Sydney Valentine in the part of David Pew, but in spite of the literary distinction of the collaborators the plays have not been a great success on the stage.
In the later papers, 'A Christmas Sermon,' 'A Letter to a Young Gentleman,' and 'Pulvis et Umbra,' in the volume of collected essays called _Across the Plains_, the note of pathos which appears now and then in _Virginibus Puerisque_ is even more forcibly struck. The writer is older, he has known more of life and of suffering, he has more than once looked death closely in the face, and, though his splendid courage is there all the time, the sadness of humanity is more apparent than in most of his work. The other essays in this volume are very pleasant reading, and _Across the Plains_ and _The Old and New Pacific Capitals_ give most graphic descriptions of the life and scenery on the shore of the Pacific, and of the journey to get there.