[In the following essay, Middleton attributes the unpopularity of the first publication of Treasure Island to the presence of human flaws in Stevenson's charac ters—a literary quality "at variance with juvenile conceptions of adventure."]

It is a pity that schoolmasters do not make a point of discovering the private literary tastes of their pupils, in order that we could form some general idea of what boys really like to read. Such an inquiry must be conducted tactfully; the only lists of the kind that we have seen were suspiciously priggish. It is true that there are boys who like Scott and Dickens, but it is safe to say that the average boy of twelve or thirteen cares neither for one nor the other, or at all events, given the opportunity, prefers Henty or Talbot Baines Reed. Yet, while we may acknowledge that boys do not accept our adult standards of criticism, it must not be inferred that they do not possess any of their own. A bookish boy will read anything if the supply of books is limited, but he will like some books better than others, and the most sophisticated of critics has no firmer ground for his judgments than that.

That the critical instinct of boys is sometimes subtle in its workings may be seen from the classic instance of Treasure Island, which entirely failed to capture the hearts of the juvenile readers of Young Folks when it appeared as a serial in that periodical. Indeed the editor had to defend it, in reply to criticisms of the earlier instalments. In revenge the Black Arrow, surely Stevenson's worst book, proved a great success with the same body of readers, a preference which should reveal to the thoughtful writer the enormous difficulty of estimating the probable popularity of books written for boys. The conscientious critic should be panic-stricken at Christmas-time, when he is faced with the usual deluge of juvenile literature, for he is about to adventure in an unknown land. A musical critic set down suddenly in Barnard's ring at Epsom to write an account of the Derby for the Newmarket touts would be in a position no more embarrassing.

What was it in Treasure Island that the readers of Young Folks did not like? If we could find a satisfactory answer to the question we should be nearer to an understanding of juvenile standards of criticism. Offhand, though we should not have thought of bracketing it with "Tom Sawyer" and the "Iliad," like Mr. Andrew Lang, we should have said that Treasure Island was the best boys' book that had ever been written. Pirates, treasure, a desert island, some good fighting and a boy hero are the elements that we should seek in a model work of that description; and though we do not credit the young with any taste for style, they should surely appreciate the romantic spirit and unfailing energy with which Stevenson's tale is told. He avoided, too, the heavy-handed morality that proved the undoing of Dean Farrar, and even, from a boy's point of view, of Thomas Hughes. Virtue triumphs, but so, to a minor extent, does the principal villain—that very finished ruffian John Silver—whose character drew its inspiration, we are told, from the "maimed strength and masterfulness" of the poet Henley, and with whom Stevenson had clearly fallen in love himself. An omission in the story that the author lamented would not probably occur to the mind of a boy. "The trouble is," he wrote, "to work it off without oaths. Buccaneers without oaths—bricks without straw. But youth and the fond parient have to be consulted." Another omission, that of female characters, was in joyful obedience to the wishes of the boy on whom he tried the earlier chapters, and here he was undoubtedly right. Yet the readers of Young Folks, those bizarre and nameless critics, refused to hear the charmer's voice till he changed his pipe and gave them the Black Arrow.

Boys are ineloquent critics, and this heightens the difficulty of understanding their literary preferences; so that we are forced to fall back on theory to account for the failure of Treasure Island in serial form. Perhaps the most notable difference between that and the average book for boys lies in the fact that Stevenson's characterization is more than skin deep. His hero, Jim Hawkins, is a real boy, and not one of the super-boys who lead armies and drive motor-cars across the pages of most boys' books. Admitting that Jim does heroic things, it is nevertheless true that Stevenson has robbed him of the normal heroic glamour. The grown-ups in the book do not turn to him for orders or acclaim him as a genius. We are made to feel, indeed we are told—that his splendid achievements are due to luck rather than judgment, and he emerges from his adventures without a halo. Now, doubtless, this study of a boy is faithful in terms of life, but this is not the kind of part that a boy would choose to play in his dreams. In the imaginary world of youth a boy triumphs over difficulties by superior skill and intellect, and not by luck, and his triumph is immediately recognized by old and young alike. Instead of adding a new kingdom to this world, Treasure Island is a shrewd blow at this fundamental law. It suggests that it is possible for a boy hero to be thoughtless and even foolish, and is a manifest denial of the truth that a boy can do no wrong in the world of adventure.

Again, though the adult mind finds John Silver a convincing and sufficient villain, it may be doubted whether he is acceptable to the young as a type of pirate captain. He is smooth-tongued and hypocritical, and he achieved by guile the ends that a proper pirate captain would have attained by force. It is a pity, for it cannot be denied that his ferocity is genuine when he doffs his ignoble mask. Flint or William Bones must have played the part with a better grace; in fact, from all we learn of Flint he must have been a model pirate, and all the lesser ruffians of Treasure Island fall to talking of him when they want to make our flesh creep. Their villainy is merely the shadow of Flint's, and tender youth, with a mind tuned for deeds of violence, may well imagine that the book begins too late. Treasure Island is well enough, but where is the tale of Flint's adventures? That is the book that a healthy-minded, blood-thirsty boy would wish to read.

Doubtless in humanizing his characters, in making his boy-hero a mere lifelike boy, in sketching his pirates as the cowardly, clumsy ruffians they were in real life, Stevenson was at variance with juvenile conceptions of adventure; and yet the story is so good that the coldness of those early readers remains a mystery. Treasure Island was begun at Baemar in August, 1881, and at the same time Stevenson was writing some of those graceful notes of childhood that were afterwards gathered into the "Child's Garden of Verses." In our experience these never fail with young children, who find in them a straightforward expression of everyday emotions, where grown-up people find poignant echoes of the rapture and enchantment of their lost childhood. When a child in our hearing called them "sensible" we realized the measure of the poet's success. From the lips of children he would have desired no other praise.

Intellectually boys are hard to reckon with, for in most of them the child's imagination is giving place to the materialism of a healthy animal, so that side by side with the credulity of inexperience we find a scepticism founded on cheerful ignorance. A boy may dismiss the novels of Scott as "rot" and read a halfpenny legend of Deadwood Dick, the Dime Detective, with interest and pleasure. But we must not on this account deny him the possession of a critical faculty. He knows what he likes, and that is the beginning of all criticism.