PRINCE OTTO: An entertaining essay in the 'rococo' fantastic, and for the most part belongs to the domain of the theatre than to literature. Its genre, is indeed, that of the higher comic opera, sacrilegious as the remark may sound. And even as that it is not specially brilliant or entertaining, but it is best remembered by the lovely bits of writing scattered about it: by the scene where the Prince sojourns a night and a morning at the River Farm of the Gottesheims, and particularly by the beautiful account of the Princess's flight through the wood in the early morning. 'Prince Otto' remains as Stevenson's personal favorite work, if not, his masterpiece.
ISLAND NIGHTS’ ENTERTAINMENTS: Consisting of “ The Beach of Falesá," " The Bottle Imp," and "The Isle of Voices." A rough and unlearned South Sea trader is the story-teller; nautical slang and colloquialisms are woven into a forcible and expressive prose. Stationed on the lonely beach of a forest clad isle, he is made the mark of a rival trader's diabolical plot, the superstitions of the natives being excited so that he is tabooed and nearly frightened to death. The charm of the tale is the wonderful atmosphere of glamour and dread. Life and nature in the Pacific are described with the familiar realism of one who has lived there. "The Bottle Imp" is a fairy story and "The Isle of Voices" is of all his gems, the fairest, rarest, most imperishable.
FATHER DAMIEN - An Open Letter to the Reverend Doctor Hyde of Honolulu: IT will be remembered that the Rev. Dr. Hyde of Honolulu, in a note communicated to the Sydney Presbyterian, was so ill-advised as to fall foul of the 'extravagant newspaper laudations of Damien, who was, he affirmed, 'a coarse, dirty man, headstrong and bigoted' — with a good deal more to the same or worse effect; and that in an open letter in 'The Scots Observer' Stevenson was moved to defend the incriminated priest. Stevenson pointed out that the accuser had never been at Molokai, of whose size and geographical position he showed himself almost ludicrously ignorant; that the gravest of his charges was based on the loosest gossip; but that, even if Damien was 'coarse, dirty, headstrong, and bigoted1 — yet with it all, and in spite of it all, he was generous, unselfish, noble, devoted: in every sense a hero and a martyr. And he had hard things to say on the self-righteousness of Dr. Hyde in his pleasant parsonage at Honolulu, and the fervour with which he thanked God that he was not even as this publican of Molokai.
