It was
simply the victory of one class of his foes, the greedy merchants, over
another class of his foes, the lazy abbots. In real history this
constantly occurs; that some small movement happens to favour one of the
million things suggested by some great man; whereupon the great man is
turned into the running slave of the small movement. Thus certain
sectarian movements borrowed the sensationalism without the
sacramentalism of Wesley. Thus certain groups of decadents found it
easier to imitate De Quincey's opium than his eloquence. Unless we grasp
this plain common sense (that you or I are not responsible for what some
ridiculous sect a hundred years hence may choose to do with what we say)
the peculiar position of Stevenson in later Victorian letters cannot
begin to be understood. For he was a very universal man; and talked some
sense not only on every subject, but, so far as it is logically
possible, in every sense. But the glaring deficiencies of the Victorian
compromise had by that time begun to gape so wide that he was forced, by
mere freedom of philosophy and fancy, to urge the neglected things.
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