The
difference is, moreover, that Stevenson was quite right in claiming that
he could treat his limitation as an accident; that his medicines "did
not colour his life." His life was really coloured out of a shilling
paint-box, like his toy-theatre: such high spirits as he had are the key
to him: his sufferings are not the key to him. But Henley's sufferings
are the key to Henley; much must be excused him, and there is much to be
excused. The result was that while there was always a certain dainty
equity about Stevenson's judgments, even when he was wrong, Henley
seemed to think that on the right side the wronger you were the better.
There was much that was feminine in him; and he is most understandable
when surprised in those little solitary poems which speak of emotions
mellowed, of sunset and a quiet end. Henley hurled himself into the new
fashion of praising Colonial adventure at the expense both of the
Christian and the republican traditions; but the sentiment did not
spread widely until the note was struck outside England in one of the
conquered countries; and a writer of Anglo-Indian short stories showed
the stamp of the thing called genius; that indefinable, dangerous and
often temporary thing.
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