And that a man in such difficulties of health and finance, and so precarious a position, should have the courage of his own determined artistry, was in itself sufficiently remarkable: but the result more than justified his choice.
All the morning, Stevenson had been upstairs writing: probably after a bad night; very likely in what any other man would term a totally unfit condition. Under any and all circumstances, he continued to write unflinchingly; racked by coughing, reeling with weakness, with his right arm in a sling, and his left hand holding the pen,--sitting up in bed with a clinical thermometer in his mouth; and yet, as he declared, "I like my life all the same ... I should bear false witness if I did not declare life happy." ... He was, in his own words, "made for a contest, and the powers have so willed that my battlefield should be this dingy, inglorious one of the bed and the physic bottle."
"To declare life happy," became, in fact, his literary mission,--the condensed philosophy of his gay, inveterate courage. "I believe that literature should give joy," was his maxim, "one dank, dispirited word is harmful,--a crime of _lèse-humanité_." This brave and cheerful outlook is evident in all his essays,--it is, so to speak, a glorified and artistic Mark-Tapleyism, all-pervading, unimpugnable, ready to survive the most malevolent accidents of life, the crowning tragedy of death itself. And so you find the "chronic sickist," as he termed himself, still ready, in all but body, for great risks and inspiriting adventures, and--through a mist of pain--leading forlorn hopes with a waving sword of flame. You hear him proclaiming that:
"All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced; is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? and does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserable struggling to an end in sandy deltas?" (_Virginibus Puerisque_.)
