THE MAIDEN CASTLE.

A Study in Folklore.

SPREAD, my Pegasus, thy pinions,
While this tragedy I tell
Of a king, who his dominions
Governed wisely, governed well.
But as preface be it stated

That, as far as man may know,
The events to be narrated
Happened several years ago.

His said Majesty, however,
Had a daughter-fair princess:
Legendary monarchs never

Boasted either more or less:
She, like those in other stories,
Was of beauty rich and rare;
Full description of her glories-
You may read it anywhere.

But alas! the regulation
Fairy godmother had she,
Who was huffed by some vexation,
As 'tis usual she should be;
Fairy, who with spiteful frowning,
All her manners quite forgot,
Said the chit should die by drowning,
Spake, and vanished from the spot.

For the rescue of her charmer

Princely lover should there be, Turning into melodrama

This portended tragedy.

Yet none came. 'Twas not surprising:

One can see the awkwardness Of a monarch advertising

In the columns of the Press.

Then the king (what king surrenders
Without struggle to his fate?)
Straightway wrote inviting tenders
For a lofty tower and great:
Gave no heed to spare his coffers;
Yet, by wisdom unforsaken,
Guarded lest the lowest offers
Necessarily be taken.

Came the architects with tracings,
Came the masons with their tools,
Came with bricks and granite facings,
Hammers, chisels, plumbs, and rules;
Till a tower of strength and tallness
Rose upon a lonely height;
Windows of exceeding smallness :
All the doors were water-tight.

In the tower his hapless daughter
Like a convict was immured,
And her abstinence from water
Most religiously secured.

Yet is fate too strong for mortals,

Nor could aught forfend the worst,
Though the massive iron portals
E'en a deluge had not burst.

For a lover had the maiden,
Though no princely scion he,
Who each evening ladder-laden
To the tower came secretly:

Then 'neath darkness' kind protection
To her window would he pass,
And the pair with fond affection

Kissed each other through the glass.

Sadly did the princess linger,

Till an inspiration came,

As with diamond-circled finger

On the pane she scratched his name: Then, her love the strength supplying, Stopping nor to sleep nor eat, Wrought she, till the glass was lying On the carpet at her feet.

Came her lover with his ladder,

And for flight her soul was nerved; But alas! her fate was sadder

Than such constancy deserved:

For she thought she heard a creaking,
(Fate's grim shears her thread had cut:)
Started, slipped her foot, and shrieking
Fell into the water-butt.

In the tower, repining deeply,
Held they inquest on the maid.
Then the place was bought up cheaply
By the local building trade.
Yet the traces, faint and broken,

Of its circle may one see,
Sole and last memorial token
Of this tearful tragedy.

R. H. F.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

(Read at a meeting of the Critics, October 20th, 1894.)

AW

E'are continually told, and volume after volume, as it comes from the publishers, attired in the greenest and goldenest of bindings, reminds us that our age has banished Genius, and chooses to set up in her place the images of Cleverness and Superficiality. It is the complaint of all the arts, but more especially has the sacred domain of letters suffered from the intrusion of these new deities. Instead of the great poets who even during their lifetime have won immortality, we have dozens of ephemeral versifiers, turning out their little books day after day, gaily-dressed weaklings! And for our great masters and mistresses of prose style-for Thackeray or George Eliot, with their deep knowledge of the human character and their perfect science of artistic treatment, we have next to nothing to show but a crowd of blatant essayists, ignorant adventurers in psychology, ready to weave their flimsy epigrams on any and every subject under Heaven.

But from the press of literary folk, visible to all, there stands out one figure in stature a very Saul among that lesser herd, one who has deigned to enter into their midst and touch their tools, who has not stood outside the press, like certain faultless stylists, but has brought into it a full measure of that old divinity which the gods of an earlier age possessed. He has handled the implements of the literary craftsman, and in his hand they have willingly lost their

bluntness, and adapted themselves readily to any material. Robert Louis Stevenson is a Michelangelo of letters, capable of the most minute and delicate goldsmith's work, a bold-handed, great-brained statuary, a consummate adept with pencil and brush.

It is only now and then that we find talent of this sort springing up and bearing fruit on whatever ground it is sown, finding moisture in the hardest and stoniest soil as well as in rich and fertile earth. The ordinary man, as a rule, finds his own province and cultivates it, infringing nowhere beyond his proper boundaries, and seldom setting his foot outside his own kingdom. But here we have one to whom every province is the same, whose kingdom is the whole world, to whose call nature and man, in wholesome federation, yield ready obedience. No man has ever been at home among so many men and in so many different kinds of places as Mr Stevenson.

For it is in his wonderful versatility that his chief charm resides. Wherever he sets foot he is at home. He is novelist, essayist, traveller, poet, playwright all in one. He can invest the most unpromising material with magic the most prosaic subject clothes itself amply in romance at obedience to his command. And his versatility extends beyond his choice of subject into his treatment. No two books were ever less alike than Prince Otto and the New Arabian Nights: and certainly the most far-sighted expert could not be expected to discover unaided their author in Virginibus Puerisque or, to go further still into the unlikely, in the Child's Garden of Verses. There is a common link of style, but even that is again and again of the thinnest but beyond that, what?

This strange ability, we might almost say, of taking an interest in anything, has provided for us a remarkably various repast. At his invitation we may batten on American prairies, or seek a meal on the barren rocks of Earraid, or stay to eat at Will o' the Mill's hostelry,