Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson Part 2

[Note 5: _Callot, or Sadeler, or Paul Brill._ Jacques Callot was an eminent French artist of the XVII century, born at Nancy in 1592, died 1635. Matthaeus and Paul Brill were two celebrated Dutch painters.

Paul, the younger brother of Matthaeus, was born about 1555, and died in 1626. His development in landscape-painting was remarkable. Gilles Sadeler, born at Antwerp 1570, died at Prague 1629, a famous artist, and nephew of two well-known engravers. He was called the "Phoenix of Engraving."]

[Note 6: _d.i.c.k Turpin_. d.i.c.k Turpin was born in Ess.e.x, England, and was originally a butcher. Afterwards he became a notorious highwayman, and was finally executed for horse-stealing, 10 April 1739. He and his steed Black Bess are well described in W. H. Ainsworth's _Rookwood_, and in his _Ballads_.]

[Note 7: _The Trossachs_. The word means literally, "bristling country." A beautifully romantic tract, beginning immediately to the east of Loch Katrine in Perth, Scotland. Stevenson's statement, "if a man of admirable romantic instinct had not peopled it for them with harmonious figures," refers to Walter Scott, and more particularly to the _Lady of the Lake_ (1810).]

[Note 8: _I am happier where it is tame and fertile, and not readily pleased without trees_. Notice the kind of country he begins to describe in the next paragraph. Is there really any contradiction in his statements?]

[Note 9: _Like David before Saul_. David charmed Saul out of his sadness, according to the Biblical story, not with nature, but with music. See I _Samuel_ XVI. 14-23. But in Browning's splendid poem, _Saul_ (1845), nature and music are combined in David's inspired playing.

"And I first played the tune all our sheep know," etc.]

[Note 10: _The sermon in stones_. See the beginning of the second act of _As You Like It_, where the exiled Duke says,

"And this our life exempt from public haunt Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones and good in everything."

It is not at all certain that Shakspere used the word "sermons" here in the modern sense; he very likely meant merely discourses, conversations.]

[Note 11: _Wuthering Heights_. The well-known novel (1847) by Emily Bronte (1818-1848) sister of the more famous Charlotte Bronte. The "little summer scene" Stevenson mentions, is in Chapter XXIV.]

[Note 12: _A solitary, spectacled stone-breaker_. To the pedestrian or cyclist, no difference between Europe and America is more striking than the comparative excellence of the country roads. The roads in Europe, even in lonely and remote districts, where one may travel for hours without seeing a house, are usually in perfect condition, hard, white and absolutely smooth. The slightest defect or abrasion is immediately repaired by one of these stone-breakers Stevenson mentions, a solitary individual, his eyes concealed behind large green goggles, to protect them from the glare and the flying bits of stone.]

[Note 13: _Ashamed and cold_. An excellent example of what Ruskin called "the pathetic fallacy."]

[Note 14: _The foliage is coloured like foliage in a gale_. Cf.

Tennyson, _In Memoriam_, LXXII:--

"With blasts that blow the poplar white."]

[Note 15: _Wordsworth, in a beautiful pa.s.sage_. The pa.s.sage Stevenson quotes is in Book VII of _The Prelude_, called _Residence in London_.]

[Note 16: _Cologne Cathedral, the great unfinished marvel by the Rhine_. This great cathedral, generally regarded as the most perfect Gothic church in the world, was begun in 1248, and was not completed until 1880, seven years after Stevenson wrote this essay.]

[Note 17: _In a golden zone like Apollo's._ The Greek G.o.d Apollo, later identified with Helios, the Sun-G.o.d. The twin towers of Cologne Cathedral are over 500 feet high, so that the experience described here is quite possible.]

[Note 18: _The two hall-fires at night_. In mediaeval castles, the hall was the general living-room, used regularly for meals, for a.s.semblies, and for all social requirements. The modern word "dining-hall" preserves the old significance of the word. The familiar expression, "bower and hall," is simply, in plain prose, bedroom and sitting-room.]

[Note 19: _a.s.sociation is turned against itself_. It is seldom that Stevenson uses an expression that is not instantly transparently clear. Exactly what does he mean by this phrase?]

[Note 20: "_As from an enemy_." Alluding to the pa.s.sage Stevenson has quoted above, from Wordsworth's _Prelude_.]

[Note 21: _Our noisy years did indeed seem moments_. A favorite reflection of Stevenson's, occurring in nearly all his serious essays.]

[Note 22: _Sh.e.l.ley speaks of the sea as "hungering for calm."_ This pa.s.sage occurs in the poem _Prometheus Unbound_, Act III, end of Scene 2.

"Behold the Nereids under the green sea-- Their wavering limbs borne on the wind like stream, Their white arms lifted o'er their streaming hair, With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns,-- Hastening to grace their mighty Sister's joy.

It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm."]

[Note 23: _Whin-pods._ "Whin" is from the Welsh _cwyn_, meaning "weed." Whin is gorse or furze, and the sound Stevenson alludes to is frequently heard in Scotland.]

[Note 24: "_Mon coeur est un luth suspendu_." These beautiful words are from the poet Beranger (1780-1857). It is probable that Stevenson found them first not in the original, but in reading the tales of Poe, for the "two lines of French verse" that "haunted" Stevenson are quoted by Poe at the beginning of one of his most famous pieces, _The Fall of the House of Usher_, where, however, the third, and not the first person is used:--

"_Son_ coeur est un luth suspendu; Sitot qu'on le touche il resonne."]

[Note 25: "_Out of the strong came forth sweetness_." Alluding to the riddle propounded by Samson. See the book of _Judges_, Chapter XIV.]

II

AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS

BOSWELL: "We grow weary when idle."

JOHNSON: "That is, sir, because others being busy, we want company; but if we were idle, there would be no growing weary; we should all entertain one another."[1]

Just now, when every one is bound, under pain of a decree in absence convicting them of _lese_-respectability,[2] to enter on some lucrative profession, and labour therein with something not far short of enthusiasm, a cry from the opposite party who are content when they have enough, and like to look on and enjoy in the meanwhile, savours a little of bravado and gasconade.[3] And yet this should not be.

Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in doing a great deal not recognised in the dogmatic formularies of the ruling cla.s.s, has as good a right to state its position as industry itself. It is admitted that the presence of people who refuse to enter in the great handicap race for sixpenny pieces, is at once an insult and a disenchantment for those who do. A fine fellow (as we see so many) takes his determination, votes for the sixpences, and in the emphatic Americanism, "goes for" them.[4] And while such an one is ploughing distressfully up the road, it is not hard to understand his resentment, when he perceives cool persons in the meadows by the wayside, lying with a handkerchief over their ears and a gla.s.s at their elbow. Alexander is touched in a very delicate place by the disregard of Diogenes.[5] Where was the glory of having taken Rome[6]

for these tumultuous barbarians, who poured into the Senate house, and found the Fathers sitting silent and unmoved by their success? It is a sore thing to have laboured along and scaled the arduous hilltops, and when all is done, find humanity indifferent to your achievement. Hence physicists condemn the unphysical; financiers have only a superficial toleration for those who know little of stocks; literary persons despise the unlettered; and people of all pursuits combine to disparage those who have none.

But though this is one difficulty of the subject, it is not the greatest. You could not be put in prison for speaking against industry, but you can be sent to Coventry[7] for speaking like a fool.

The greatest difficulty with most subjects is to do them well; therefore, please to remember this is an apology. It is certain that much may be judiciously argued in favour of diligence; only there is something to be said against it, and that is what, on the present occasion, I have to say. To state one argument is not necessarily to be deaf to all others, and that a man has written a book of travels in Montenegro, is no reason why he should never have been to Richmond.[8]

It is surely beyond a doubt that people should be a good deal idle in youth. For though here and there a Lord Macaulay may escape from school honours[9] with all his wits about him, most boys pay so dear for their medals that they never afterwards have a shot in their locker, "and begin the world bankrupt." And the same holds true during all the time a lad is educating himself, or suffering others to educate him. It must have been a very foolish old gentleman who addressed Johnson at Oxford in these words: "Young man, ply your book diligently now, and acquire a stock of knowledge; for when years come upon you, you will find that poring upon books will be but an irksome task." The old gentleman seems to have been unaware that many other things besides reading grow irksome, and not a few become impossible, by the time a man has to use spectacles and cannot walk without a stick. Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless subst.i.tute for life. It seems a pity to sit, like the Lady of Shalott,[10] peering into a mirror, with your back turned on all the bustle and glamour of reality. And if a man reads very hard, as the old anecdote reminds us, he will have little time for thoughts.

If you look back on your own education, I am sure it will not be the full, vivid, instructive hours of truantry that you regret; you would rather cancel some lack-l.u.s.tre periods between sleep and waking[11] in the cla.s.s. For my own part, I have attended a good many lectures in my time. I still remember that the spinning of a top is a case of Kinetic Stability. I still remember that Emphyteusis is not a disease, nor Stillicide[12] a crime. But though I would not willingly part with such sc.r.a.ps of science, I do not set the same store by them as by certain other odds and ends that I came by in the open street while I was playing truant. This is not the moment to dilate on that mighty place of education, which was the favourite school of d.i.c.kens and of Balzac,[13] and turns out yearly many inglorious masters in the Science of the Aspects of Life. Suffice it to say this: if a lad does not learn in the streets, it is because he has no faculty of learning.

Nor is the truant always in the streets, for if he prefers, he may go out by the gardened suburbs into the country. He may pitch on some tuft of lilacs over a burn, and smoke innumerable pipes to the tune of the water on the stones. A bird will sing in the thicket. And there he may fall into a vein of kindly thought, and see things in a new perspective. Why, if this be not education, what is? We may conceive Mr. Worldly Wiseman[14] accosting such an one, and the conversation that should thereupon ensue:--

"How, now, young fellow, what dost thou here?"

"Truly, sir, I take mine ease."

"Is not this the hour of the cla.s.s? and should'st thou not be plying thy Book with diligence, to the end thou mayest obtain knowledge?"

"Nay, but thus also I follow after Learning, by your leave."

"Learning, quotha! After what fas.h.i.+on, I pray thee? Is it mathematics?"

"No, to be sure."

"Is it metaphysics?"

"Nor that."

"Is it some language?"

"Nay, it is no language."

"Is it a trade?"