After this he wrote a
long succession of stories, not one of which can be called a
masterpiece because of the author's inability to finish his novels as
he planned them. Lack of patience or want of sustained creative power
invariably made him cut short his novels or end them in a way that
exasperates the reader.
[Illustration: ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON--THE AUTHOR'S INTIMATE
ASSOCIATES PRONOUNCE THIS PHOTOGRAPH A PERFECT PRESENTATION OF HIS
MOST TYPICAL EXPRESSION]
Some months Stevenson spent in California, but this State, with its
romantic history and its singular scenic beauty, appeared to have
little influence on his genius. In fact, locality seemed not to color
the work of his imagination. His closing years were spent in Somoa, a
South Sea Island paradise, in which he reveled in the primitive
conditions of life and recovered much of his early zest in physical
life. Yet his best work in those last years dealt not with the
palm-fringed atolls of the Pacific, but with the bleak Scotch moors
which refused him a home. In his letters he dwells on the curious
obsession of his imagination by old Scotch scenes and characters, and
on the day of his death he dictated a chapter of _Weir of Hermiston_,
a romance of the picturesque period of Scotland which had in it the
elements of his best work.
It is idle to deny that Stevenson appeals only to a limited audience.
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