He is full of old-fashioned and absurd passages.
Sometimes he proses, and sometimes he runs to seed. He is so careless of
his English that his sentences are not always grammatical; but we get a
total impression of glorious and wholesome life.
It is the man Walter Scott who thus excites us. This heather, these
hills, these peasants, this prodigality and vigor and broad humor,
enlarge and strengthen us. If we return now to Weir of Hermiston, we
seem to be entering the cell of an alchemist. All is intention, all
calculation. The very style of Weir of Hermiston is English ten times
distilled.
Let us imagine that directness and unconsciousness are the great
qualities of style, and that Stevenson believes this. The greatest
directness and unconsciousness of which Stevenson himself was capable
are to be found in some of his early writings. Across the Plains, for
instance, represents his most straightforward and natural style. But it
happens that certain great writers who lived some time ago, and were
famous examples of "directness," have expressed themselves in the speech
of their own period.
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