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Robert Louis Stevenson is now passing through the unfavorable second stage of biography; and he is unfortunate in having reached this point at a time when debunking is the first literary industry in the world. George S. Hellman's "The True Stevenson" was written to overthrow the conception of Stevenson as a whimsical angel. The public has been led into this error by prejudiced biographers; and Mr. Hellman is the son of his time in rejoicing, always without prejudice, over the task of setting the public right.
Biographers of this type claim to have established a school of analytical biography. They devote themselves to the principle that if Cesar Borgin is thought a villain and Nell Gwyn no better than she might have been, no more proof is needed for the theses that Borgia was an upstanding Christian gentleman, and Mistress Gwyn a cheerful creature with no harm in her at all. Thus these moderns display their lack of prejudice by becoming hide-bound on the unpopular side of any given question. Their purpose is clear enough. A customary treatment of Stevenson, for instance, would startle no one. The only thing to do is to reverse the point of view, whitewash villains and smear angels with lamp-black until all are reduced to neutral gray.
Stevenson need not take all this too personally, wherever he is. He is only the latest person chosen to nourish the joy that lies in being shown that, in actual fact, the idol's feet are of a very crumbly clay. In due time, he will come into his own again. The true Stevenson will at length emerge, a man somewhat between the idealistic angel against whom Mr. Hellman has delivered his broadside, and the opposite conception which he himself has delineated.
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