Note 47 — INTRODUCTION

Edinburgh edition of Stevenson’s works, iii. 236-61 (Miscellanies). “It is a singularly suggestive inquiry into a subject which has always been considered too vague and difficult for analysis, at any rate since the days of the classical writers on rhetoric, whom Stevenson had never read” (Graham Balfour’s Life of Robert Louis Stevenson ii. 11). S. H. Butcher (Harvard Lectures pp. 242, 243) regards the essay as “a pretty precise modern parallel to the speculations of Dionysius,” and quotes some passages in proof. The following is an example of such points of contact. Stevenson: “Each phrase in literature is built of sounds, as each phrase in music consists of notes. One sound suggests, echoes, demands and harmonizes with another; and the art of rightly using these concordances is the final art in literature.” Dionysius (C.V. c. 16): ὥστε πολλὴ ἀνάγκη καλὴν μὲν εἶναι λέξιν ἐν ᾗ καλά ἐστιν ὀνόματα, καλῶν δὲ ὀνομάτων συλλαβάς τε καὶ γράμματα καλὰ αἴτια εἶναι, ἡδεῖάν τε διάλεκτον ἐκ τῶν ἡδυνόντων τὴν ἀκοὴν γίνεσθαι. Compare p. 40 infra as to the music of sounds; and see Demetrius on Style p. 43, as to Stevenson and other English writers on style.