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diff --git a/10761-0.txt b/10761-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b2beba0 --- /dev/null +++ b/10761-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5452 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10761 *** + +ESSAYS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON + + +SELECTED AND EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY WILLIAM LYON +PHELPS M.A.(HARVARD) PH.D.(YALE) + + +PREFACE + +The text of the following essays is taken from the Thistle Edition of +Stevenson's _Works_, published by Charles Scribner's Sons, in New +York. I have refrained from selecting any of Stevenson's formal essays +in literary criticism, and have chosen only those that, while ranking +among his masterpieces in style, reveal his personality, character, +opinions, philosophy, and faith. In the _Introduction_, I have +endeavoured to be as brief as possible, merely giving a sketch of his +life, and indicating some of the more notable sides of his literary +achievement; pointing out also the literary school to which these +Essays belong. A lengthy critical Introduction to a book of this kind +would be an impertinence to the general reader, and a nuisance to a +teacher. In the _Notes_, I have aimed at simple explanation and some +extended literary comment. It is hoped that the general recognition of +Stevenson as an English classic may make this volume useful in school +and college courses, while it is not too much like a textbook to repel +the average reader. I am indebted to Professor Catterall of Cornell +and to Professor Cross of Yale, and to my brother the Rev. Dryden W. +Phelps, for some assistance in locating references. W.L.P., YALE +UNIVERSITY, _13 February 1906_. + + +CONTENTS + + INTRODUCTION + + BIBLIOGRAPHY + + I ON THE ENJOYMENT OF UNPLEASANT PLACES + NOTES + + II AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS + NOTES + + III AES TRIPLEX + NOTES + + IV TALK AND TALKERS + NOTES + + V A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE + NOTES + + VI THE CHARACTER OF DOGS + NOTES + + VII A COLLEGE MAGAZINE + NOTES + +VIII BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME + NOTES + + IX PULVIS ET UMBRA + NOTES + + +INTRODUCTION + + +I + +LIFE OF STEVENSON + +Robert Louis Stevenson[1] was born at Edinburgh on the 13 November +1850. His father, Thomas, and his grandfather, Robert, were both +distinguished light-house engineers; and the maternal grandfather, +Balfour, was a Professor of Moral Philosophy, who lived to be ninety +years old. There was, therefore, a combination of _Lux et Veritas_ in +the blood of young Louis Stevenson, which in _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_ +took the form of a luminous portrayal of a great moral idea. + +In the language of Pope, Stevenson's life was a long disease. Even as +a child, his weak lungs caused great anxiety to all the family except +himself; but although Death loves a shining mark, it took over forty +years of continuous practice for the grim archer to send the black +arrow home. It is perhaps fortunate for English literature that his +health was no better; for the boy craved an active life, and would +doubtless have become an engineer. He made a brave attempt to pursue +this calling, but it was soon evident that his constitution made it +impossible. After desultory schooling, and an immense amount of +general reading, he entered the University of Edinburgh, and then +tried the study of law. Although the thought of this profession became +more and more repugnant, and finally intolerable, he passed his final +examinations satisfactorily. This was in 1875. + +He had already begun a series of excursions to the south of France and +other places, in search of a climate more favorable to his incipient +malady; and every return to Edinburgh proved more and more +conclusively that he could not live in Scotch mists. He had made the +acquaintance of a number of literary men, and he was consumed with a +burning ambition to become a writer. Like Ibsen's _Master-Builder_, +there was a troll in his blood, which drew him away to the continent +on inland voyages with a canoe and lonely tramps with a donkey; these +gave him material for books full of brilliant pictures, shrewd +observations, and irrepressible humour. He contributed various +articles to magazines, which were immediately recognised by critics +like Leslie Stephen as bearing the unmistakable mark of literary +genius; but they attracted almost no attention from the general +reading public, and their author had only the consciousness of good +work for his reward. In 1880 he was married. + +Stevenson's first successful work was _Treasure Island_, which was +published in book form in 1883, and has already become a classic. This +did not, however, bring him either a good income or general fame. His +great reputation dates from the publication of the _Strange Case of +Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,_ which appeared in 1886. That work had an +instant and unqualified success, especially in America, and made its +author's name known to the whole English-speaking world. _Kidnapped_ +was published the same year, and another masterpiece, _The Master of +Ballantrae_, in 1889. + +After various experiments with different climates, including that of +Switzerland, Stevenson sailed for America in August 1887. The winter +of 1887-88 he spent at Saranac Lake, under the care of Dr. Trudeau, +who became one of his best friends. In 1890 he settled at Samoa in the +Pacific. Here he entered upon a career of intense literary activity, +and yet found time to take an active part in the politics of the +island, and to give valuable assistance in internal improvements. + +The end came suddenly, exactly as he would have wished it, and +precisely as he had unconsciously predicted in the last radiant, +triumphant sentences of his great essay, _Aes Triplex_. He had been at +work on a novel, _St. Ives_, one of his poorer efforts, and whose +composition grew steadily more and more distasteful, until he found +that he was actually writing against the grain. He threw this aside +impatiently, and with extraordinary energy and enthusiasm began a new +story, _Weir of Hermiston_, which would undoubtedly have been his +masterpiece, had he lived to complete it. In luminosity of style, in +nobleness of conception, in the almost infallible choice of words, +this astonishing fragment easily takes first place in Stevenson's +productions. At the end of a day spent in almost feverish dictation, +the third of December 1894, he suddenly fainted, and died without +regaining consciousness. "Death had not been suffered to take so much +as an illusion from his heart. In the hot-fit of life, a-tiptoe on the +highest point of being, he passed at a bound on to the other side. The +noise of the mallet and chisel was scarcely quenched, the trumpets +were hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of glory, +this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shot into the spiritual land." + +He was buried at the summit of a mountain, the body being carried on +the shoulders of faithful Samoans, who might have sung Browning's +noble hymn, + + "Let us begin and carry up this corpse, + Singing together! + Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes + Each in its tether + Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain... + That's the appropriate country; there, man's thought, + Rarer, intenser, + Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought, + Chafes in the censer. + Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop; + Seek we sepulture + On a tall mountain... + Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights: + Wait ye the warning! + Our low life was the level's and the night's; + He's for the morning. + Step to a tune, square chests, erect each head, + 'Ware the beholders! + This is our master, famous, calm and dead, + Borne on our shoulders... + + Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot clouds form, + Lightnings are loosened, + Stars come and go! Let joy break with the storm, + Peace let the dew send! + Lofty designs must close in like effects + Loftily lying, + Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects, + Living and dying." + + +II + +PERSONALITY AND CHARACTER + +Stevenson had a motley personality, which is sufficiently evident in +his portraits. There was in him the Puritan, the man of the world, and +the vagabond. There was something too of the obsolete soldier of +fortune, with the cocked and feathered hat, worn audaciously on one +side. There was also a touch of the elfin, the uncanny--the mysterious +charm that belongs to the borderland between the real and the unreal +world--the element so conspicuous and so indefinable in the art of +Hawthorne. Writers so different as Defoe, Cooper, Poe, and Sir Thomas +Browne, are seen with varying degrees of emphasis in his literary +temperament. He was whimsical as an imaginative child; and everyone +has noticed that he never grew old. His buoyant optimism was based on +a chronic experience of physical pain, for pessimists like +Schopenhauer are usually men in comfortable circumstances, and of +excellent bodily health. His courage and cheerfulness under depressing +circumstances are so splendid to contemplate that some critics believe +that in time his _Letters_ may be regarded as his greatest literary +work, for they are priceless in their unconscious revelation of a +beautiful soul. + +Great as Stevenson was as a writer, he was still greater as a Man. So +many admirable books have been written by men whose character will not +bear examination, that it is refreshing to find one Master-Artist +whose daily life was so full of the fruits of the spirit. As his +romances have brought pleasure to thousands of readers, so the +spectacle of his cheerful march through the Valley of the Shadow of +Death is a constant source of comfort and inspiration. One feels +ashamed of cowardice and petty irritation after witnessing the steady +courage of this man. His philosophy of life is totally different from +that of Stoicism; for the Stoic says, "Grin and bear it," and usually +succeeds in doing neither. Stevenson seems to say, "Laugh and forget +it," and he showed us how to do both. + +Stevenson had the rather unusual combination of the Artist and the +Moralist, both elements being marked in his writings to a very high +degree. The famous and oft-quoted sonnet by his friend, the late Mr. +Henley, gives a vivid picture: + + "Thin-legged, thin-chested, slight unspeakably, + Neat-footed and weak-fingered: in his face-- + Lean, large-honed, curved of beak, and touched with race, + Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea, + The brown eyes radiant with vivacity-- + There shown a brilliant and romantic grace, + A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace + Of passion, impudence, and energy. + Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck, + Most vain, most generous, sternly critical, + Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist; + A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck, + Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all, + And something of the Shorter Catechist." + +He was not primarily a moral teacher, like Socrates or Thomas Carlyle; +nor did he feel within him the voice of a prophetic mission. The +virtue of his writings consists in their wholesome ethical quality, in +their solid health. Fresh air is often better for the soul than the +swinging of the priest's censer. At a time when the school of Zola was +at its climax, Stevenson opened the windows and let in the pleasant +breeze. For the morbid and unhealthy period of adolescence, his books +are more healthful than many serious moral works. He purges the mind +of uncleanness, just as he purged contemporary fiction. + +As Stevenson's correspondence with his friends like Sidney Colvin and +William Archer reveals the social side of his nature, so his +correspondence with the Unseen Power in which he believed shows that +his character was essentially religious. A man's letters are often a +truer picture of his mind than a photograph; and when these epistles +are directed not to men and women, but to the Supreme Intelligence, +they form a real revelation of their writer's heart. Nothing betrays +the personality of a man more clearly than his prayers, and the +following petition that Stevenson composed for the use of his +household at Vailima, bears the stamp of its author. + + "At Morning. The day returns and brings us the petty round of + irritating concerns and duties. Help us to play the man, help us to + perform them with laughter and kind faces, let cheerfulness abound + with industry. Give us to go blithely on our business all this day, + bring us to our resting beds weary and content and undishonoured, + and grant us in the end the gift of sleep." + + +III + +STEVENSON'S VERSATILITY + +Stevenson was a poet, a dramatist, an essayist, and a novelist, +besides writing many political, geographical, and biographical +sketches. As a poet, his fame is steadily waning. The tendency at +first was to rank him too high, owing to the undeniable charm of many +of the poems in the _Child's Garden of Verses_. The child's view of +the world, as set forth in these songs, is often originally and +gracefully expressed; but there is little in Stevenson's poetry that +is of permanent value, and it is probable that most of it will be +forgotten. This fact is in a way a tribute to his genius; for his +greatness as a prose writer has simply eclipsed his reputation as a +poet. + +His plays were failures. They illustrate the familiar truth that a man +may have positive genius as a dramatic writer, and yet fail as a +dramatist. There are laws that govern the stage which must be obeyed; +play-writing is a great art in itself, entirely distinct from literary +composition. Even Browning, the most intensely dramatic poet of the +nineteenth century, was not nearly so successful in his dramas as in +his dramatic lyrics and romances. + +His essays attracted at first very little attention; they were too +fine and too subtle to awaken popular enthusiasm. It was the success +of his novels that drew readers back to the essays, just as it was the +vogue of Sudermann's plays that made his earlier novels popular. One +has only to read such essays, however, as those printed in this volume +to realise not only their spirit and charm, but to feel instinctively +that one is reading English Literature. They are exquisite works of +art, written in an almost impeccable style. By many judicious readers, +they are placed above his works of fiction. They certainly constitute +the most original portion of his entire literary output. It is +astonishing that this young Scotchman should have been able to make so +many actually new observations on a game so old as Life. There is a +shrewd insight into the motives of human conduct that makes some of +these graceful sketches belong to the literature of philosophy, using +the word philosophy in its deepest and broadest sense. The essays are +filled with whimsical paradoxes, keen and witty as those of Bernard +Shaw, without having any of the latter's cynicism, iconoclasm, and +sinister attitude toward morality. For the real foundation of even the +lightest of Stevenson's works is invariably ethical. + +His fame as a writer of prose romances grows brighter every year. His +supreme achievement was to show that a book might be crammed with the +most wildly exciting incidents, and yet reveal profound and acute +analysis of character, and be written with consummate art. His tales +have all the fertility of invention and breathless suspense of Scott +and Cooper, while in literary style they immeasurably surpass the +finest work of these two great masters. + +His best complete story, is, I think, _Treasure Island_. There is a +peculiar brightness about this book which even the most notable of the +later works failed to equal. Nor was it a trifling feat to make a +blind man and a one-legged man so formidable that even the reader is +afraid of them. Those who complain that this is merely a pirate story +forget that in art the subject is of comparatively little importance, +whereas the treatment is everything. To say, as some do, that there is +no difference between _Treasure Island_ and a cheap tale of blood and +thunder, is equivalent to saying that there is no difference between +the Sistine Madonna and a chromo Virgin. + + +IV + +THE PERSONAL ESSAY + +The Personal Essay is a peculiar form of literature, entirely +different from critical essays like those of Matthew Arnold and from +purely reflective essays, like those of Bacon. It is a species of +writing somewhat akin to autobiography or firelight conversation; +where the writer takes the reader entirely into his confidence, and +chats pleasantly with him on topics that may be as widely apart as the +immortality of the soul and the proper colour of a necktie. The first +and supreme master of this manner of writing was Montaigne, who +belongs in the front rank of the world's greatest writers of prose. +Montaigne talks endlessly on the most trivial subjects without ever +becoming trivial. To those who really love reading and have some +sympathy with humanity, Montaigne's _Essays_ are a "perpetual refuge +and delight," and it is interesting to reflect how far in literary +fame this man, who talked about his meals, his horse, and his cat, +outshines thousands of scholarly and talented writers, who discussed +only the most serious themes in politics and religion. The great +English prose writers in the field of the personal essay during the +seventeenth century were Sir Thomas Browne, Thomas Fuller, and Abraham +Cowley, though Walton's _Compleat Angler_ is a kindred work. Browne's +_Religio Medici_, and his delightful _Garden of Cyrus_, old Tom +Fuller's quaint _Good Thoughts in Bad Times_ and Cowley's charming +_Essays_ are admirable examples of this school of composition. +Burton's wonderful _Anatomy of Melancholy_ is a colossal personal +essay. Some of the papers of Steele and Addison in the _Tatler_, +_Guardian,_ and the _Spectator_ are of course notable; but it was not +until the appearance of Charles Lamb that the personal essay reached +its climax in English literature. Over the pages of the _Essays of +Elia_ hovers an immortal charm--the charm of a nature inexhaustible in +its humour and kindly sympathy for humanity. Thackeray was another +great master of the literary easy-chair, and is to some readers more +attractive in this attitude than as a novelist. In America we have had +a few writers who have reached eminence in this form, beginning with +Washington Irving, and including Donald G. Mitchell, whose _Reveries +of a Bachelor_ has been read by thousands of people for over fifty +years. + +As a personal essayist Stevenson seems already to belong to the first +rank. He is both eclectic and individual. He brought to his pen the +reminiscences of varied reading, and a wholly original touch of +fantasy. He was literally steeped in the gorgeous Gothic diction of +the seventeenth century, but he realised that such a prose style as +illumines the pages of William Drummond's _Cypress Grove_ and Browne's +_Urn Burial_ was a lost art. He attempted to imitate such writing only +in his youthful exercises, for his own genius was forced to express +itself in an original way. All of his personal essays have that air of +distinction which attracts and holds one's attention as powerfully in +a book as it does in social intercourse. Everything that he has to say +seems immediately worth saying, and worth hearing, for he was one of +those rare men who had an interesting mind. There are some literary +artists who have style and nothing else, just as there are some great +singers who have nothing but a voice. The true test of a book, like +that of an individual, is whether or not it improves upon +acquaintance. Stevenson's essays reflect a personality that becomes +brighter as we draw nearer. This fact makes his essays not merely +entertaining reading, but worthy of serious and prolonged study. + +[Note 1: His name was originally Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson. He +later dropped the "Balfour" and changed the spelling of "Lewis" to +"Louis," but the name was always pronounced "Lewis."] + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY + +The following information is taken from Col. Prideaux's admirable +_Bibliography_ of Stevenson, London, 1903. I have given the titles and +dates of only the more important publications in book form; and of the +critical works on Stevenson, I have included only a few of those that +seem especially useful to the student and general reader. The detailed +facts about the separate publications of each essay included in the +present volume are fully given in my notes. + + +WORKS + +1878. An Inland Voyage. +1879. Travels with a Donkey. +1881. Virginibus Puerisque. +1882. Familiar Studies of Men and Books. +1882. New Arabian Nights. +1883. Treasure Island. +1885. Prince Otto. +1885. A Child's Garden of Verses. +1885. More New Arabian Nights. The Dynamiter. +1886. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. +1886. Kidnapped. +1887. The Merry Men. +1887. Memories and Portraits. +1888. The Black Arrow. +1889. The Master of Ballantrae. (A few copies privately printed in + 1888.) +1889. The Wrong Box. +1890. Father Damien. +1892. Across the Plains. +1892. The Wrecker. +1893. Island Nights' Entertainments. +1893. Catriona. +1894. The Ebb Tide. +1895. Vailima Letters. +1896. Weir of Hermiston. +1898. St. Ives. +1899. Letters, Two Volumes. + + +NOTE. The _Edinburgh Edition_ of the _works_, in twenty-eight volumes, +is often referred to by bibliographers; it can now be obtained only at +second-hand bookshops, or at auction sales. The best complete edition +on the market is the _Thistle Edition_, in twenty-six volumes, +including the _Life_ and the _Letters_, published by Charles +Scribner's Sons, New York. + + +WORKS ON STEVENSON + +_Life of Robert Louis Stevenson_, by Graham Balfour. 1901. Two +Volumes. _This is the standard Life, and indispensable._ + +_Robert Louis Stevenson_, by Henry James, in _Partial Portraits,_ +1894. _Admirable criticism_. + +_Robert Louis Stevenson_, by Walter Raleigh. 1895. _An excellent +appreciation of his character and work._ + +_Robert Louis Stevenson: Personal Memories_, by Edmund Gosse, in +_Critical Kit-Kats,_ 1896. _Entertaining gossip._ + +_Stevenson's Shrine, The Record of a Pilgrimage_, by Laura Stubbs. +1903. _Very interesting full-page illustrations._ + +_(For further critical books and articles, which are numerous, consult +Prideaux.)_ + + +ESSAYS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON + + +I + +ON THE ENJOYMENT OF UNPLEASANT PLACES + +It is a difficult matter[1] to make the most of any given place, and +we have much in our own power. Things looked at patiently from one +side after another generally end by showing a side that is beautiful. +A few months ago some words were said in the _Portfolio_ as to an +"austere regimen in scenery"; and such a discipline was then +recommended as "healthful and strengthening to the taste." That is the +text, so to speak, of the present essay. This discipline in +scenery,[2] it must be understood, is something more than a mere walk +before breakfast to whet the appetite. For when we are put down in +some unsightly neighborhood, and especially if we have come to be more +or less dependent on what we see, we must set ourselves to hunt out +beautiful things with all the ardour and patience of a botanist after +a rare plant. Day by day we perfect ourselves in the art of seeing +nature more favourably. We learn to live with her, as people learn to +live with fretful or violent spouses: to dwell lovingly on what is +good, and shut our eyes against all that is bleak or inharmonious. We +learn, also, to come to each place in the right spirit. The traveller, +as Brantôme quaintly tells us, "_fait des discours en soi pour se +soutenir en chemin_";[3] and into these discourses he weaves something +out of all that he sees and suffers by the way; they take their tone +greatly from the varying character of the scene; a sharp ascent brings +different thoughts from a level road; and the man's fancies grow +lighter as he comes out of the wood into a clearing. Nor does the +scenery any more affect the thoughts than the thoughts affect the +scenery. We see places through our humours as though differently +colored glasses. We are ourselves a term in the equation, a note of +the chord, and make discord or harmony almost at will. There is no +fear for the result, if we can but surrender ourselves sufficiently to +the country that surrounds and follows us, so that we are ever +thinking suitable thoughts or telling ourselves some suitable sort of +story as we go. We become thus, in some sense, a centre of beauty; we +are provocative of beauty,[4] much as a gentle and sincere character +is provocative of sincerity and gentleness in others. And even where +there is no harmony to be elicited by the quickest and most obedient +of spirits, we may still embellish a place with some attraction of +romance. We may learn to go far afield for associations, and handle +them lightly when we have found them. Sometimes an old print comes to +our aid; I have seen many a spot lit up at once with picturesque +imaginations, by a reminiscence of Callot, or Sadeler, or Paul +Brill.[5] Dick Turpin[6] has been my lay figure for many an English +lane. And I suppose the Trossachs would hardly be the Trossachs[7] for +most tourists if a man of admirable romantic instinct had not peopled +it for them with harmonious figures, and brought them thither their +minds rightly prepared for the impression. There is half the battle in +this preparation. For instance: I have rarely been able to visit, in +the proper spirit, the wild and inhospitable places of our own +Highlands. I am happier where it is tame and fertile, and not readily +pleased without trees.[8] I understand that there are some phases of +mental trouble that harmonise well with such surroundings, and that +some persons, by the dispensing power of the imagination, can go back +several centuries in spirit, and put themselves into sympathy with the +hunted, houseless, unsociable way of life that was in its place upon +these savage hills. Now, when I am sad, I like nature to charm me out +of my sadness, like David before Saul;[9] and the thought of these +past ages strikes nothing in me but an unpleasant pity; so that I can +never hit on the right humour for this sort of landscape, and lose +much pleasure in consequence. Still, even here, if I were only let +alone, and time enough were given, I should have all manner of +pleasure, and take many clear and beautiful images away with me when I +left. When we cannot think ourselves into sympathy with the great +features of a country, we learn to ignore them, and put our head among +the grass for flowers, or pore, for long times together, over the +changeful current of a stream. We come down to the sermon in +stones,[10] when we are shut out from any poem in the spread +landscape. We begin to peep and botanise, we take an interest in birds +and insects, we find many things beautiful in miniature. The reader +will recollect the little summer scene in _Wuthering Heights_[11]--the +one warm scene, perhaps, in all that powerful, miserable novel--and +the great feature that is made therein by grasses and flowers and a +little sunshine: this is in the spirit of which I now speak. And, +lastly, we can go indoors; interiors are sometimes as beautiful, often +more picturesque, than the shows of the open air, and they have that +quality of shelter of which I shall presently have more to say. + +With all this in mind, I have often been tempted to put forth the +paradox that any place is good enough to live a life in, while it is +only in a few, and those highly favoured, that we can pass a few hours +agreeably. For, if we only stay long enough, we become at home in the +neighbourhood. Reminiscences spring up, like flowers, about +uninteresting corners. We forget to some degree the superior +loveliness of other places, and fall into a tolerant and sympathetic +spirit which is its own reward and justification. Looking back the +other day on some recollections of my own, I was astonished to find +how much I owed to such a residence; six weeks in one unpleasant +country-side had done more, it seemed, to quicken and educate my +sensibilities than many years in places that jumped more nearly with +my inclination. + +The country to which I refer was a level and treeless plateau, over +which the winds cut like a whip. For miles on miles it was the same. A +river, indeed, fell into the sea near the town where I resided; but +the valley of the river was shallow and bald, for as far up as ever I +had the heart to follow it. There were roads, certainly, but roads +that had no beauty or interest; for, as there was no timber, and but +little irregularity of surface, you saw your whole walk exposed to you +from the beginning: there was nothing left to fancy, nothing to +expect, nothing to see by the wayside, save here and there an +unhomely-looking homestead, and here and there a solitary, spectacled +stone-breaker;[12] and you were only accompanied, as you went doggedly +forward by the gaunt telegraph-posts and the hum of the resonant wires +in the keen sea-wind. To one who has learned to know their song in +warm pleasant places by the Mediterranean, it seemed to taunt the +country, and make it still bleaker by suggested contrast. Even the +waste places by the side of the road were not, as Hawthorne liked to +put it, "taken back to Nature" by any decent covering of vegetation. +Wherever the land had the chance, it seemed to lie fallow. There is a +certain tawny nudity of the South, bare sunburnt plains, coloured like +a lion, and hills clothed only in the blue transparent air; but this +was of another description--this was the nakedness of the North; the +earth seemed to know that it was naked, and was ashamed and cold.[13] + +It seemed to be always blowing on that coast. Indeed, this had passed +into the speech of the inhabitants, and they saluted each other when +they met with "Breezy, breezy," instead of the customary "Fine day" of +farther south. These continual winds were not like the harvest breeze, +that just keeps an equable pressure against your face as you walk, and +serves to set all the trees talking over your head, or bring round you +the smell of the wet surface of the country after a shower. They were +of the bitter, hard, persistent sort, that interferes with sight and +respiration, and makes the eyes sore. Even such winds as these have +their own merit in proper time and place. It is pleasant to see them +brandish great masses of shadow. And what a power they have over the +colour of the world! How they ruffle the solid woodlands in their +passage, and make them shudder and whiten like a single willow! There +is nothing more vertiginous than a wind like this among the woods, +with all its sights and noises; and the effect gets between some +painters and their sober eyesight, so that, even when the rest of +their picture is calm, the foliage is coloured like foliage in a +gale.[14] There was nothing, however, of this sort to be noticed in a +country where there were no trees and hardly any shadows, save the +passive shadows and clouds or those of rigid houses and walls. But the +wind was nevertheless an occasion of pleasure; for nowhere could you +taste more fully the pleasure of a sudden lull, or a place of +opportune shelter. The reader knows what I mean; he must remember how, +when he has sat himself down behind a dyke on a hill-side, he +delighted to hear the wind hiss vainly through the crannies at his +back; how his body tingled all over with warmth, and it began to dawn +upon him, with a sort of slow surprise, that the country was +beautiful, the heather purple, and the faraway hills all marbled with +sun and shadow. Wordsworth, in a beautiful passage[15] of the +"Prelude," has used this as a figure for the feeling struck in us by +the quiet by-streets of London after the uproar of the great +thoroughfares; and the comparison may be turned the other way with as +good effect: + + "Meanwhile the roar continues, till at length, + Escaped as from an enemy we turn, + Abruptly into some sequestered nook, + Still as a shelter'd place when winds blow loud!" + +I remember meeting a man once, in a train, who told me of what must +have been quite the most perfect instance of this pleasure of escape. +He had gone up, one sunny, windy morning, to the top of a great +cathedral somewhere abroad; I think it was Cologne Cathedral, the +great unfinished marvel by the Rhine;[16] and after a long while in +dark stairways, he issued at last into the sunshine, on a platform +high above the town. At that elevation it was quite still and warm; +the gale was only in the lower strata of the air, and he had forgotten +it in the quiet interior of the church and during his long ascent; and +so you may judge of his surprise when, resting his arms on the sunlit +balustrade and looking over into the _Place_ far below him, he saw the +good people holding on their hats and leaning hard against the wind as +they walked. There is something, to my fancy, quite perfect in this +little experience of my fellow-traveller's. The ways of men seem +always very trivial to us when we find ourselves alone on a +church-top, with the blue sky and a few tall pinnacles, and see far +below us the steep roofs and foreshortened buttresses, and the silent +activity of the city streets; but how much more must they not have +seemed so to him as he stood, not only above other men's business, but +above other men's climate, in a golden zone like Apollo's![17] + +This was the sort of pleasure I found in the country of which I write. +The pleasure was to be out of the wind, and to keep it in memory all +the time, and hug oneself upon the shelter. And it was only by the sea +that any such sheltered places were to be found. Between the black +worm-eaten headlands there are little bights and havens, well screened +from the wind and the commotion of the external sea, where the sand +and weeds look up into the gazer's face from a depth of tranquil +water, and the sea-birds, screaming and flickering from the ruined +crags, alone disturb the silence and the sunshine. One such place has +impressed itself on my memory beyond all others. On a rock by the +water's edge, old fighting men of the Norse breed had planted a double +castle; the two stood wall to wall like semi-detached villas; and yet +feud had run so high between their owners, that one, from out of a +window, shot the other as he stood in his own doorway. There is +something in the juxtaposition of these two enemies full of tragic +irony. It is grim to think of bearded men and bitter women taking +hateful counsel together about the two hall-fires at night,[18] when +the sea boomed against the foundations and the wild winter wind was +loose over the battlements. And in the study we may reconstruct for +ourselves some pale figure of what life then was. Not so when we are +there; when we are there such thoughts come to us only to intensify a +contrary impression, and association is turned against itself.[19] I +remember walking thither three afternoons in succession, my eyes weary +with being set against the wind, and how, dropping suddenly over the +edge of the down, I found myself in a new world of warmth and shelter. +The wind, from which I had escaped, "as from an enemy,"[20] was +seemingly quite local. It carried no clouds with it, and came from +such a quarter that it did not trouble the sea within view. The two +castles, black and ruinous as the rocks about them, were still +distinguishable from these by something more insecure and fantastic in +the outline, something that the last storm had left imminent and the +next would demolish entirely. It would be difficult to render in words +the sense of peace that took possession of me on these three +afternoons. It was helped out, as I have said, by the contrast. The +shore was battered and bemauled by previous tempests; I had the memory +at heart of the insane strife of the pigmies who had erected these two +castles and lived in them in mutual distrust and enmity, and knew I +had only to put my head out of this little cup of shelter to find the +hard wind blowing in my eyes; and yet there were the two great tracts +of motionless blue air and peaceful sea looking on, unconcerned and +apart, at the turmoil of the present moment and the memorials of the +precarious past. There is ever something transitory and fretful in the +impression of a high wind under a cloudless sky; it seems to have no +root in the constitution of things; it must speedily begin to faint +and wither away like a cut flower. And on those days the thought of +the wind and the thought of human life came very near together in my +mind. Our noisy years did indeed seem moments[21] in the being of the +eternal silence: and the wind, in the face of that great field of +stationary blue, was as the wind of a butterfly's wing. The placidity +of the sea was a thing likewise to be remembered. Shelley speaks of +the sea as "hungering for calm,"[22] and in this place one learned to +understand the phrase. Looking down into these green waters from the +broken edge of the rock, or swimming leisurely in the sunshine, it +seemed to me that they were enjoying their own tranquillity; and when +now and again it was disturbed by a wind ripple on the surface, or the +quick black passage of a fish far below, they settled back again (one +could fancy) with relief. + +On shore, too, in the little nook of shelter, everything was so +subdued and still that the least particular struck in me a pleasurable +surprise. The desultory crackling of the whin-pods[23] in the +afternoon sun usurped the ear. The hot, sweet breath of the bank, that +had been saturated all day long with sunshine, and now exhaled it into +my face, was like the breath of a fellow-creature. I remember that I +was haunted by two lines of French verse; in some dumb way they seemed +to fit my surroundings and give expression to the contentment that was +in me, and I kept repeating to myself-- + + "Mon coeur est un luth suspendu,[24] + Sitôt qu'on le touche, il résonne." + +I can give no reason why these lines came to me at this time; and for +that very cause I repeat them here. For all I know, they may serve to +complete the impression in the mind of the reader, as they were +certainly a part of it for me. + +And this happened to me in the place of all others where I liked least +to stay. When I think of it I grow ashamed of my own ingratitude. "Out +of the strong came forth sweetness."[25] There, in the bleak and gusty +North, I received, perhaps, my strongest impression of peace. I saw +the sea to be great and calm; and the earth, in that little corner, +was all alive and friendly to me. So, wherever a man is, he will find +something to please and pacify him: in the town he will meet pleasant +faces of men and women, and see beautiful flowers at a window, or hear +a cage-bird singing at the corner of the gloomiest street; and for the +country, there is no country without some amenity--let him only look +for it in the right spirit, and he will surely find. + + +NOTES + +This article first appeared in the _Portfolio_, for November 1874, and +was not reprinted until two years after Stevenson's death, in 1896, +when it was included in the _Miscellanies_ (Edinburgh Edition, +_Miscellanies_, Vol. IV, pp. 131-142). The editor of the _Portfolio_ +was the well-known art critic, Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1834-1894), +author of the _Intellectual Life_ (1873). Just one year before, +Stevenson had had printed in the _Portfolio_ his first contribution to +any periodical, _Roads_. Although _The Enjoyment of Unpleasant Places_ +attracted scarcely any attention on its first appearance, and has +since become practically forgotten, there is perhaps no better essay +among his earlier works with which to begin a study of his +personality, temperament, and style. In its cheerful optimism this +article is particularly characteristic of its author. It should be +remembered that when this essay was first printed, Stevenson was only +twenty-four years old. + +[Note 1: _It is a difficult matter_, etc. The appreciation of nature +is a quite modern taste, for although people have always loved the +scenery which reminds them of home, it was not at all fashionable in +England to love nature for its own sake before 1740. Thomas Gray was +the first person in Europe who seems to have exhibited a real love of +mountains (see his _Letters_). A study of the development of the +appreciation of nature before and after Wordsworth (England's greatest +nature poet) is exceedingly interesting. See Myra Reynolds, _The +Treatment of Nature in English Poetry between Pope and Wordsworth_ +(1896).] + +[Note 2: _This discipline in scenery._ Note what is said on this +subject in Browning's extraordinary poem, _Fra Lippo Lippi_, vs. +300-302. + + "For, don't you mark? We're made so that we love + First when we see them painted, things we have passed + Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see."] + +[Note 3: _Brantôme quaintly tells us, "fait des discours en soi pour +se soutenir en chemin."_ Freely translated, "the traveller talks to +himself to keep up his courage on the road." Pierre de Bourdeille, +Abbé de Brantôme, (cir. 1534-1614), travelled all over Europe. His +works were not published till long after his death, in 1665. Several +complete editions of his writings in numerous volumes have appeared in +the nineteenth century, one edited by the famous writer, Prosper +Mérimée.] + +[Note 4: _We are provocative of beauty._ Compare again, _Fra Lippo +Lippi_, vs. 215 et seq. + + "Or say there's beauty with no soul at all-- + (I never saw it--put the case the same--) + If you get simple beauty and nought else, + You get about the best thing God invents: + That's somewhat: and you'll find the soul you have missed, + Within yourself, when you return him thanks."] + +[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: _Dick Turpin_. Dick Turpin was born in Essex, 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 passage_. The passage 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 God Apollo, +later identified with Helios, the Sun-god. 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 +assemblies, 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: _Association 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 passage 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: _Shelley speaks of the sea as "hungering for calm."_ This +passage 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 _çwyn_, 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 Béranger (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; + Sitôt qu'on le touche il résonne."] + +[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 _lèse_-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 class, 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 glass 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 substitute 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-lustre periods between sleep and waking[11] in +the class. 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 scraps 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 Dickens 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 class? 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 fashion, 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?" + +"Nor a trade neither." + +"Why, then, what is't?" + +"Indeed, sir, as a time may soon come for me to go upon Pilgrimage, I +am desirous to note what is commonly done by persons in my case, and +where are the ugliest Sloughs and Thickets on the Road; as also, what +manner of Staff is of the best service. Moreover, I lie here, by this +water, to learn by root-of-heart a lesson which my master teaches me +to call Peace, or Contentment." + +Hereupon, Mr. Worldly Wiseman was much commoved with passion, and +shaking his cane with a very threatful countenance, broke forth upon +this wise: "Learning, quotha!" said he; "I would have all such rogues +scourged by the Hangman!" + +And so he would go his way, ruffling out his cravat with a crackle of +starch, like a turkey when it spread its feathers. + +Now this, of Mr. Wiseman, is the common opinion. A fact is not called +a fact, but a piece of gossip, if it does not fall into one of your +scholastic categories. An inquiry must be in some acknowledged +direction, with a name to go by; or else you are not inquiring at all, +only lounging; and the workhouse is too good for you. It is supposed +that all knowledge is at the bottom of a well, or the far end of a +telescope. Sainte-Beuve,[15] as he grew older, came to regard all +experience as a single great book, in which to study for a few years +ere we go hence; and it seemed all one to him whether you should read +in Chapter xx., which is the differential calculus, or in Chapter +xxxix., which is hearing the band play in the gardens. As a matter of +fact, an intelligent person, looking out of his eyes and hearkening in +his ears, with a smile on his face all the time, will get more true +education than many another in a life of heroic vigils. There is +certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found upon the summits +of formal and laborious science; but it is all round about you, and +for the trouble of looking, that you will acquire the warm and +palpitating facts of life. While others are filling their memory with +a lumber of words, one-half of which they will forget before the week +be out, your truant may learn some really useful art: to play the +fiddle, to know a good cigar, or to speak with ease and opportunity to +all varieties of men. Many who have "plied their book diligently," and +know all about some one branch or another of accepted lore, come out +of the study with an ancient and owl-like demeanour, and prove dry, +stockish, and dyspeptic in all the better and brighter parts of life. +Many make a large fortune, who remain underbred and pathetically +stupid to the last. And meantime there goes the idler, who began life +along with them--by your leave, a different picture. He has had time +to take care of his health and his spirits; he has been a great deal +in the open air, which is the most salutary of all things for both +body and mind; and if he has never read the great Book in very +recondite places, he has dipped into it and skimmed it over to +excellent purpose. Might not the student afford some Hebrew roots, and +the business man some of his half-crowns, for a share of the idler's +knowledge of life at large, and Art of Living? Nay, and the idler has +another and more important quality than these. I mean his wisdom. He +who has much looked on at the childish satisfaction of other people in +their hobbies, will regard his own with only a very ironical +indulgence. He will not be heard among the dogmatists. He will have a +great and cool allowance for all sorts of people and opinions. If he +finds no out-of-the-way truths, he will identify himself with no very +burning falsehood. His way took him along a by-road, not much +frequented, but very even and pleasant, which is called Commonplace +Lane, and leads to the Belvedere of Commonsense.[16] Thence he shall +command an agreeable, if no very noble prospect; and while others +behold the East and West, the Devil and the Sunrise, he will be +contentedly aware of a sort of morning hour upon all sublunary things, +with an army of shadows running speedily and in many different +directions into the great daylight of Eternity. The shadows and the +generations, the shrill doctors and the plangent wars,[17] go by into +ultimate silence and emptiness; but underneath all this, a man may +see, out of the Belvedere windows, much green and peaceful landscape; +many firelit parlours; good people laughing, drinking, and making love +as they did before the Flood or the French Revolution; and the old +shepherd[18] telling his tale under the hawthorn. + +Extreme _busyness_, whether at school or college, kirk or market, is a +symptom of deficient vitality; and a faculty for idleness implies a +catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity. There is a +sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about, who are scarcely conscious +of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation. +Bring these fellows into the country, or set them aboard ship, and you +will see how they pine for their desk or their study. They have no +curiosity; they cannot give themselves over to random provocations; +they do not take pleasure in the exercise of their faculties for its +own sake; and unless Necessity lays about them with a stick, they will +even stand still. It is no good speaking to such folk: they _cannot_ +be idle, their nature is not generous enough; and they pass those +hours in a sort of coma, which are not dedicated to furious moiling in +the gold-mill. When they do not require to go to the office, when they +are not hungry and have no mind to drink, the whole breathing world is +a blank to them. If they have to wait an hour or so for a train, they +fall into a stupid trance with their eyes open. To see them, you would +suppose there was nothing to look at and no one to speak with; you +would imagine they were paralysed or alienated; and yet very possibly +they are hard workers in their own way, and have good eyesight for a +flaw in a deed or a turn of the market. They have been to school and +college, but all the time they had their eye on the medal; they have +gone about in the world and mixed with clever people, but all the time +they were thinking of their own affairs. As if a man's soul were not +too small to begin with, they have dwarfed and narrowed theirs by a +life of all work and no play; until here they are at forty, with a +listless attention, a mind vacant of all material of amusement, and +not one thought to rub against another, while they wait for the train. +Before he was breeched, he might have clambered on the boxes; when he +was twenty, he would have stared at the girls; but now the pipe is +smoked out, the snuffbox empty, and my gentleman sits bolt upright +upon a bench, with lamentable eyes. This does not appeal to me as +being Success in Life. + +But it is not only the person himself who suffers from his busy +habits, but his wife and children, his friends and relations, and down +to the very people he sits with in a railway carriage or an omnibus. +Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be +sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things. And it is not by +any means certain that a man's business is the most important thing he +has to do. To an impartial estimate it will seem clear that many of +the wisest, most virtuous, and most beneficent parts that are to be +played upon the Theatre of Life are filled by gratuitous performers, +and pass, among the world at large, as phases of idleness. For in that +Theatre not only the walking gentlemen, singing chambermaids, and +diligent fiddlers in the orchestra, but those who look on and clap +their hands from the benches, do really play a part and fulfil +important offices towards the general result. You are no doubt very +dependent on the care of your lawyer and stockbroker, of the guards +and signalmen who convey you rapidly from place to place, and the +policemen who walk the streets for your protection; but is there not a +thought of gratitude in your heart for certain other benefactors who +set you smiling when they fall in your way, or season your dinner with +good company? Colonel Newcome helped to lose his friend's money; Fred +Bayham had an ugly trick of borrowing shirts; and yet they were better +people to fall among than Mr. Barnes. And though Falstaff was neither +sober nor very honest, I think I could name one or two long-faced +Barabbases whom the world could better have done without. Hazlitt +mentions that he was more sensible of obligation to Northcote,[19] who +had never done him anything he could call a service, than to his whole +circle of ostentatious friends; for he thought a good companion +emphatically the greatest benefactor. I know there are people in the +world who cannot feel grateful unless the favour has been done them at +the cost of pain and difficulty. But this is a churlish disposition. A +man may send you six sheets of letter-paper covered with the most +entertaining gossip, or you may pass half an hour pleasantly, perhaps +profitably, over an article of his; do you think the service would be +greater, if he had made the manuscript in his heart's blood, like a +compact with the devil? Do you really fancy you should be more +beholden to your correspondent, if he had been damning you all the +while for your importunity? Pleasures are more beneficial than duties +because, like the quality of mercy,[20] they are not strained, and +they are twice blest. There must always be two to a kiss, and there +may be a score in a jest; but wherever there is an element of +sacrifice, the favour is conferred with pain, and, among generous +people, received with confusion. There is no duty we so much underrate +as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits +upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they +are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor. The other +day, a ragged, barefoot boy ran down the street after a marble, with +so jolly an air that he set every one he passed into a good humour; +one of these persons, who had been delivered from more than usually +black thoughts, stopped the little fellow and gave him some money with +this remark: "You see what sometimes comes of looking pleased." If he +had looked pleased before, he had now to look both pleased and +mystified. For my part, I justify this encouragement of smiling rather +than tearful children; I do not wish to pay for tears anywhere but +upon the stage; but I am prepared to deal largely in the opposite +commodity. A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a +five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of good-will; and +their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been +lighted. We need not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh +proposition; they do a better thing than that, they practically +demonstrate the great Theorum of the liveableness of Life. +Consequently, if a person cannot be happy without remaining idle, idle +he should remain. It is a revolutionary precept; but thanks to hunger +and the workhouse, one not easily to be abused; and within practical +limits, it is one of the most incontestable truths in the whole Body +of Morality. Look at one of your industrious fellows for a moment, I +beseech you. He sows hurry and reaps indigestion; he puts a vast deal +of activity out to interest, and receives a large measure of nervous +derangement in return. Either he absents himself entirely from all +fellowship, and lives a recluse in a garret, with carpet slippers and +a leaden inkpot; or he comes among people swiftly and bitterly, in a +contraction of his whole nervous system, to discharge some temper +before he returns to work. I do not care how much or how well he +works, this fellow is an evil feature in other people's lives. They +would be happier if he were dead. They could easier do without his +services in the Circumlocution Office, than they can tolerate his +fractious spirits. He poisons life at the well-head. It is better to +be beggared out of hand by a scapegrace nephew, than daily hag-ridden +by a peevish uncle. + +And what, in God's name, is all this pother about? For what cause do +they embitter their own and other people's lives? That a man should +publish three or thirty articles a year, that he should finish or not +finish his great allegorical picture, are questions of little interest +to the world. The ranks of life are full; and although a thousand +fall, there are always some to go into the breach. When they told Joan +of Arc[21] she should be at home minding women's work, she answered +there were plenty to spin and wash. And so, even with your own rare +gifts! When nature is "so careless of the single life,"[22] why should +we coddle ourselves into the fancy that our own is of exceptional +importance? Suppose Shakespeare had been knocked on the head some dark +night in Sir Thomas Lucy's[23] preserves, the world would have wagged +on better or worse, the pitcher gone to the well, the scythe to the +corn, and the student to his book; and no one been any the wiser of +the loss. There are not many works extant, if you look the alternative +all over, which are worth the price of a pound of tobacco to a man of +limited means. This is a sobering reflection for the proudest of our +earthly vanities. Even a tobacconist may, upon consideration, find no +great cause for personal vainglory in the phrase; for although tobacco +is an admirable sedative, the qualities necessary for retailing it are +neither rare nor precious in themselves. Alas and alas! you may take +it how you will, but the services of no single individual are +indispensable. Atlas[24] was just a gentleman with a protracted +nightmare! And yet you see merchants who go and labour themselves into +a great fortune and thence into bankruptcy court; scribblers who keep +scribbling at little articles until their temper is a cross to all who +come about them, as though Pharaoh should set the Israelites to make a +pin instead of a pyramid;[25] and fine young men who work themselves +into a decline,[26] and are driven off in a hearse with white plumes +upon it. Would you not suppose these persons had been whispered, by +the Master of the Ceremonies, the promise of some momentous destiny? +and that this lukewarm bullet on which they play their farces was the +bull's-eye and centrepoint of all the universe? And yet it is not so. +The ends for which they give away their priceless youth, for all they +know, may be chimerical or hurtful; the glory and riches they expect +may never come, or may find them indifferent; and they and the world +they inhabit are so inconsiderable that the mind freezes at the +thought. + + +NOTES + +This essay was first printed in the _Cornhill Magazine_, for July +1877, Vol. XXXVI, pp. 80-86. It was next published in the volume, +_Virginibus Puerisque_, in 1881. Although this book contains some of +the most admirable specimens of Stevenson's style, it did not have a +large sale, and it was not until 1887 that another edition Appeared. +The editor of the _Cornhill Magazine_ from 1871 to 1882 was Leslie +Stephen (1832-1904), whose kindness and encouragement to the new +writer were of the utmost importance at this critical time. That so +grave and serious a critic as Leslie Stephen should have taken such +delight in a _jeu d'esprit_ like _Idlers_, is proof, if any were +needed, for the breadth of his literary outlook. Stevenson had been at +work on this article a year before its appearance, which shows that +his _Apology for Idlers_ demanded from him anything but idling. As +Graham Balfour says, in his _Life of Stevenson_, I, 122, "Except +before his own conscience, there was hardly any time when the author +of the _Apology for Idlers_ ever really neglected the tasks of his +true vocation." In July 1876 he wrote to Mrs. Sitwell, "A paper called +'A Defence of Idlers' (which is really a defence of R.L.S.) is in a +good way." A year later, after the publication of the article, he +wrote (in August 1877) to Sidney Colvin, "Stephen has written to me +apropos of 'Idlers,' that something more in that vein would be +agreeable to his views. From Stephen I count that a devil of a lot." +It is noteworthy that this charming essay had been refused by +_Macmillan's Magazine_ before Stephen accepted it for the _Cornhill._ +(_Life,_ I, 180). + +[Note 1: The conversation between Boswell and Johnson, quoted at the +beginning of the essay, occurred on the 26 October 1769, at the famous +Mitre Tavern. In Stevenson's quotation, the word "all" should be +inserted after the word "were" to correspond with the original text, +and to make sense. Johnson, though constitutionally lazy, was no +defender of Idlers, and there is a sly humour in Stevenson's appealing +to him as authority. Boswell says in his _Life_, under date of 1780, +"He would allow no settled indulgence of idleness upon principle, and +always repelled every attempt to urge excuses for it. A friend one day +suggested, that it was not wholesome to study soon after dinner. +JOHNSON: 'Ah, sir, don't give way to such a fancy. At one time of my +life I had taken it into my head that it was not wholesome to study +between breakfast and dinner.'"] + +[Note 2: _Lèse-respectability._ From the French verb _leser_, to hurt, +to injure. The most common employment of this verb is in the phrase +"_lèse-majesté,"_ high treason. Stevenson's mood here is like that of +Lowell, when he said regretfully, speaking of the eighteenth century, +"Responsibility for the universe had not then been invented." (_Essay +on Gray_.)] + +[Note 3: _Gasconade_. Boasting. The inhabitants of Gascony +(_Gascogne)_ a province in the south-west of France, are proverbial +not only for their impetuosity and courage, but for their willingness +to brag of the possession of these qualities. Excellent examples of +the typical Gascon in literature are D'Artagnan in Dumas's _Trois +Mousquetaires_ (1844) and Cyrano in Rostand's splendid drama, _Cyrano +de Bergerac_ (1897).] + +[Note 4: _In the emphatic Americanism, "goes for" them._ When +Stevenson wrote this (1876-77), he had not yet been in America. Two +years later, in 1879, when he made the journey across the plains, he +had many opportunities to record Americanisms far more emphatic than +the harmless phrase quoted here, which can hardly be called an +Americanism. Murray's _New English Dictionary_ gives excellent English +examples of this particular sense of "go for" in the years 1641, 1790, +1864, and 1882!] + +[Note 5: _Alexander is touched in a very delicate place_. Alluding to +the famous interview between the young Alexander and the old Diogenes, +which took place at Corinth about 330 B.C. Alexander asked Diogenes in +what way he could be of service to him, and the philosopher replied +gruffly, "By standing out of my sunshine." As a young man Diogenes had +been given to all excesses of dissipation; but he later went to the +opposite extreme of asceticism, being one of the earliest and most +striking illustrations of "plain living and high thinking." The +debauchery of his youth and the privation and exposure of his old age +did not deeply affect his hardy constitution, for he is said to have +lived to the age of ninety. In the charming play by the Elizabethan, +John Lyly, _A moste excellente Comedie of Alexander, Campaspe, and +Diogenes_ (1584), the conversations between the man who has conquered +the world and the man who has overcome the world are highly +entertaining.] + +[Note 6: _Where was the glory of having taken Rome_. This refers to +the invasion by the Gauls about the year 389 B. C. A good account is +given in T. Arnold's _History of Rome_ I, pp. 534 et seq.] + +[Note 7: _Sent to Coventry_. The origin of this proverb, which means +of course, "to ostracise," probably dates back to 1647, when, +according to Clarendon's _History of the Great Rebellion_, VI, par. +83, Royalist prisoners were sent to the parliamentary stronghold of +Coventry, in Warwickshire.] + +[Note 8: _Montenegro ... Richmond_. Montenegro is one of the smallest +principalities in the world, about 3,550 square miles. It is in the +Balkan peninsula, to the east of the lower Adriatic, between +Austro-Hungary and Turkey. When Stevenson was writing this essay, +1876-77, Montenegro was the subject of much discussion, owing to the +part she took in the Russo-Turkish war. The year after this article +was published (1878) Montenegro reached the coast of the Adriatic for +the first time, and now has two tiny seaports. Tennyson celebrated the +hardy virtues of the inhabitants in his sonnet _Montenegro_, written +in 1877. + + "O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throne + Of Freedom! warriors beating back the swarm + Of Turkish Islam for five hundred years." + +_Richmond_ is on the river Thames, close to the city of London.] + +[Note 9: _Lord Macaulay may escape from school honours._ Stevenson +here alludes to the oft-heard statement that the men who succeed in +after life have generally been near the foot of their classes at +school and college. It is impossible to prove either the falsity or +truth of so general a remark, but it is easier to point out men who +have been successful both at school and in life, than to find +sufficient evidence that school and college prizes prevent further +triumphs. Macaulay, who is noted by Stevenson as an exception, was +precocious enough to arouse the fears rather than the hopes of his +friends. When he was four years old, he hurt his finger, and a lady +inquiring politely as to whether the injured member was better, the +infant replied gravely, "Thank you, Madam, the agony is abated."] + +[Note 10: _The Lady of Shalott_. See Tennyson's beautiful poem (1833). + + "And moving thro' a mirror clear + That hangs before her all the year, + Shadows of the world appear."] + +[Note 11: _Some lack-lustre periods between sleep and waking._ Cf. +_King Lear_, Act I, Sc. 2, vs. 15. "Got 'tween asleep and wake."] + +[Note 12: _Kinetic Stability ... _Emphyteusis ... Stillicide_ For +Kinetic Stability, see any modern textbook on Physics. _Emphyteusis_ +is the legal renting of ground; _Stillicide_, a continual dropping of +water, as from the eaves of a house. These words, _Emphyteusis_ and +_Stillicide_, are terms in Roman Law. Stevenson is of course making +fun of the required studies of Physics and Roman Law, and of their +lack of practical value to him in his chosen career.] + +[Note 13: _The favourite school of Dickens and of Balzac_. The great +English novelist Dickens (1812-1870) and his greater French +contemporary Balzac (1799-1850), show in their works that their chief +school was Life.] + +[Note 14: _Mr. Worldly Wiseman_. The character in Bunyan's _Pilgrim's +Progress_ (1678), who meets Christian soon after his setting out from +the City of Destruction. _Pilgrim's Progress_ was a favorite book of +Stevenson's; he alludes to it frequently in his essays. See also his +own article _Bagster's Pilgrim's Progress_, first published in the +_Magazine of Art_ in February 1882. This essay is well worth reading, +and the copies of the pictures which he includes are extremely +diverting.] + +[Note 15: _Sainte-Beuve._ The French writer Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869) +is usually regarded today as the greatest literary critic who ever +lived. His constant change of convictions enabled him to see life from +all sides.] + +[Note 16: _Belvedere of Commonsense_. Belvedere is an Italian word, +which referred originally to a place of observation on the top of a +house, from which one might enjoy an extensive prospect. A portion of +the Vatican in Rome is called the Belvedere, thus lending this name to +the famous statue of Apollo, which stands there. On the continent, +anything like a summer-house is often called a Belvedere. One of the +most interesting localities which bears this name is the Belvedere +just outside of Weimar, in Germany, where Goethe used to act in his +own dramas in the open air theatre.] + +[Note 17: _The plangent wars_. Plangent is from the Latin _plango_, to +strike, to beat. Stevenson's use of the word is rather unusual in +English.] + +[Note 18: _The old shepherd telling his tale_.. See Milton, +_L'Allegro:_-- + + "And every shepherd tells his tale + Under the hawthorn in the dale." + +"Tells his tale" means of course "counts his sheep," not "tells a +story." The old use of the word "tell" for "count" survives to-day in +the word "teller" in a parliamentary assemblage, or in a bank.] + +[Note 19: _Colonel Newcome ... Fred Bayham ... Mr. Barnes ... Falstaff +... Barabbases ... Hazlitt ... Northcote._ Colonel Newcome, the great +character in Thackeray's _The Newcomes_ (1854). _Fred Bayham_ and +_Barnes Newcome_ are persons in the same story. One of the best essays +on Falstaff is the one printed in the first series of Mr. Augustine +Birrell's _Obiter Dicta_ (1884). This essay would have pleased +Thackeray. One of the finest epitaphs in literature is that pronounced +over the supposedly dead body of Falstaff by Prince Hal--"I could have +better spared a better man." (_King Henry IV_, Part I, Act V, Sc. 4.) +_Barabbas_ was the robber who was released at the time of the trial of +Christ.... _William Hazlitt_ (1778-1830), the well-known essayist, +published in 1830 the _Conversations_ of _James Northcote_ +(1746-1831). Northcote was an artist and writer, who had been an +assistant in the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Stevenson projected a +_Life of Hazlitt_, but later abandoned the undertaking. (_Life,_ I, +230.)] + +[Note 20: _The quality of mercy_. See Portia's wonderful speech in the +_Merchant of Venice_, Act IV, Scene I.] + +[Note 21: _Joan of Arc_. The famous inspired French peasant girl, who +led the armies of her king to victory, and who was burned at Rouen in +1431. She was variously regarded as a harlot and a saint. In +Shakspere's historical plays, she is represented in the basest manner, +from conventional motives of English patriotism. Voltaire's scandalous +work, _La Pucelle_, and Schiller's noble _Jungfrau von Orleans_ make +an instructive contrast. She has been the subject of many dramas and +works of poetry and fiction. Her latest prominent admirer is Mark +Twain, whose historical romance _Joan of Arc_ is one of the most +carefully written, though not one of the most characteristic of his +books.] + +[Note 22: "_So careless of the single life_." See Tennyson's _In +Memoriam_, LV, where the poet discusses the pessimism caused by +regarding the apparent indifference of nature to the happiness of the +individual. + + "Are God and Nature then at strife, + That Nature lends such evil dreams? + So careful of the type she seems, + So careless of the single life."] + +[Note 23: _Shakespeare ... Sir Thomas Lucy_. The familiar tradition +that Shakspere as a boy was a poacher on the preserves of his +aristocratic neighbor, Sir Thomas Lucy. See Halliwell-Phillipps's +_Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare_. In 1879, at the first +performance of _As You Like It_ at the Stratford Memorial Theatre, the +deer brought on the stage in Act IV, Scene 2, had been shot that very +morning by H.S. Lucy, Esq., of Charlecote Park, a descendant of the +owner of the herd traditionally attacked by the future dramatist.] + +[Note 24: _Atlas_. In mythology, the leader of the Titans, who fought +the Gods, and was condemned by Zeus to carry the weight of the vault +of heaven on his head and hands. In the sixteenth century the name +Atlas was given to a collection of maps by Mercator, probably because +a picture of Atlas had been commonly placed on the title-pages of +geographical works.] + +[Note 25: _Pharaoh ... Pyramid_. For _Pharaoh's_ experiences with the +Israelites, see the book of _Exodus_. Pharaoh was merely the name +given by the children of Israel to the rulers of Egypt: cf. Caesar, +Kaiser, etc. ... The Egyptian pyramids were regarded as one of the +seven wonders of ancient times, the great pyramid weighing over six +million tons. The pyramids were used for the tombs of monarchs.] + +[Note 26: _Young men who work themselves into a decline._ Compare the +tone of the close of this essay with that of the conclusion of _AEs +Triplex_. Stevenson himself died in the midst of the most arduous work +possible--the making of a literary masterpiece.] + + +III + +AES TRIPLEX[1] + +The changes wrought by death are in themselves so sharp and final, and +so terrible and melancholy in their consequences, that the thing +stands alone in man's experience, and has no parallel upon earth. It +outdoes all other accidents because it is the last of them. Sometimes +it leaps suddenly upon its victims, like a Thug;[2] sometimes it lays +a regular siege and creeps upon their citadel during a score of years. +And when the business is done, there is sore havoc made in other +people's lives, and a pin knocked out by which many subsidiary +friendships hung together. There are empty chairs, solitary walks, and +single beds at night. Again in taking away our friends, death does not +take them away utterly, but leaves behind a mocking, tragical, and +soon intolerable residue, which must be hurriedly concealed. Hence a +whole chapter of sights and customs striking to the mind, from the +pyramids of Egypt to the gibbets and dule trees[3] of mediaeval +Europe. The poorest persons have a bit of pageant going towards the +tomb; memorial stones are set up over the least memorable; and, in +order to preserve some show of respect for what remains of our old +loves and friendships, we must accompany it with much grimly ludicrous +ceremonial, and the hired undertaker parades before the door. All +this, and much more of the same sort, accompanied by the eloquence of +poets, has gone a great way to put humanity in error; nay, in many +philosophies the error has been embodied and laid down with every +circumstance of logic; although in real life the bustle and swiftness, +in leaving people little time to think, have not left them time enough +to go dangerously wrong in practice. + +As a matter of fact, although few things are spoken of with more +fearful whisperings than this prospect of death, few have less +influence on conduct under healthy circumstances. We have all heard of +cities in South America built upon the side of fiery mountains, and +how, even in this tremendous neighbourhood, the inhabitants are not a +jot more impressed by the solemnity of mortal conditions than if they +were delving gardens in the greenest corner of England. There are +serenades and suppers and much gallantry among the myrtles overhead; +and meanwhile the foundation shudders underfoot, the bowels of the +mountain growl, and at any moment living ruin may leap sky-high into +the moonlight, and tumble man and his merry-making in the dust. In the +eyes of very young people, and very dull old ones, there is something +indescribably reckless and desperate in such a picture. It seems not +credible that respectable married people, with umbrellas, should find +appetite for a bit of supper within quite a long distance of a fiery +mountain; ordinary life begins to smell of high-handed debauch when it +is carried on so close to a catastrophe; and even cheese and salad, it +seems, could hardly be relished in such circumstances without +something like a defiance of the Creator. It should be a place for +nobody but hermits dwelling in prayer and maceration, or mere +born-devils drowning care in a perpetual carouse. + +And yet, when one comes to think upon it calmly, the situation of +these South American citizens forms only a very pale figure for the +state of ordinary mankind. This world itself, travelling blindly and +swiftly in overcrowded space, among a million other worlds travelling +blindly and swiftly in contrary directions, may very well come by a +knock that would set it into explosion like a penny squib. And what, +pathologically looked at, is the human body with all its organs, but a +mere bagful of petards? The least of these is as dangerous to the +whole economy as the ship's powder-magazine to the ship; and with +every breath we breathe, and every meal we eat, we are putting one or +more of them in peril. If we clung as devotedly as some philosophers +pretend we do to the abstract idea of life, or were half as frightened +as they make out we are, for the subversive accident that ends it all, +the trumpets might sound[4] by the hour and no one would follow them +into battle--the blue-peter might fly at the truck,[5] but who would +climb into a sea-going ship? Think (if these philosophers were right) +with what a preparation of spirit we should affront the daily peril of +the dinner-table: a deadlier spot than any battlefield in history, +where the far greater proportion of our ancestors have miserably left +their bones! What woman would ever be lured into marriage, so much +more dangerous than the wildest sea? And what would it be to grow old? +For, after a certain distance, every step we take in life we find the +ice growing thinner below our feet, and all around us and behind us we +see our contemporaries going through. By the time a man gets well into +the seventies, his continued existence is a mere miracle; and when he +lays his old bones in bed for the night, there is an overwhelming +probability that he will never see the day. Do the old men mind it, as +a matter of fact? Why, no. They were never merrier; they have their +grog at night, and tell the raciest stories; they hear of the death of +people about their own age, or even younger, not as if it was a grisly +warning, but with a simple childlike pleasure at having outlived +someone else; and when a draught might puff them out like a fluttering +candle, or a bit of a stumble shatter them like so much glass, their +old hearts keep sound and unaffrighted, and they go on, bubbling with +laughter, through years of man's age compared to which the valley at +Balaclava[6] was as safe and peaceful as a village cricket-green on +Sunday. It may fairly be questioned (if we look to the peril only) +whether it was a much more daring feat for Curtius[7] to plunge into +the gulf, than for any old gentleman of ninety to doff his clothes and +clamber into bed. + +Indeed, it is a memorable subject for consideration, with what +unconcern and gaiety mankind pricks on along the Valley of the Shadow +of Death. The whole way is one wilderness of snares, and the end of +it, for those who fear the last pinch, is irrevocable ruin. And yet we +go spinning through it all, like a party for the Derby.[8] Perhaps the +reader remembers one of the humorous devices of the deified +Caligula:[9] how he encouraged a vast concourse of holiday-makers on +to his bridge over Baiae[10] bay; and when they were in the height of +their enjoyment, turned loose the Praetorian guards[11] among the +company, and had them tossed into the sea. This is no bad miniature of +the dealings of nature with the transitory race of man. Only, what a +chequered picnic we have of it, even while it lasts! and into what +great waters, not to be crossed by any swimmer, God's pale Praetorian +throws us over in the end! + +We live the time that a match flickers; we pop the cork of a +ginger-beer bottle, and the earthquake swallows us on the instant. Is +it not odd, is it not incongruous, is it not, in the highest sense of +human speech, incredible, that we should think so highly of the +ginger-beer, and regard so little the devouring earthquake? The love +of Life and the fear of Death are two famous phrases that grow harder +to understand the more we think about them. It is a well-known fact +that an immense proportion of boat accidents would never happen if +people held the sheet in their hands instead of making it fast; and +yet, unless it be some martinet of a professional mariner or some +landsman with shattered nerves, every one of God's creatures makes it +fast. A strange instance of man's unconcern and brazen boldness in the +face of death! + +We confound ourselves with metaphysical phrases, which we import into +daily talk with noble inappropriateness. We have no idea of what death +is, apart from its circumstances and some of its consequences to +others; and although we have some experience of living, there is not a +man on earth who has flown so high into abstraction as to have any +practical guess at the meaning of the Word _life_. All literature, +from Job and Omar Khayyam to Thomas Carlyle or Walt Whitman,[12] is +but an attempt to look upon the human state with such largeness of +view as shall enable us to rise from the consideration of living to +the Definition of Life. And our sages give us about the best +satisfaction in their power when they say that it is a vapour, or a +show, or made out of the same stuff with dreams.[13] Philosophy, in +its more rigid sense, has been at the same work for ages; and after a +myriad bald heads have wagged over the problem, and piles of words +have been heaped one upon another into dry and cloudy volumes without +end, philosophy has the honour of laying before us, with modest pride, +her contribution towards the subject: that life is a Permanent +Possibility of Sensation.[14] Truly a fine result! A man may very well +love beef, or hunting, or a woman; but surely, surely, not a Permanent +Possibility of Sensation. He may be afraid of a precipice, or a +dentist, or a large enemy with a club, or even an undertaker's man; +but not certainly of abstract death. We may trick with the word life +in its dozen senses until we are weary of tricking; we may argue in +terms of all the philosophies on earth, but one fact remains true +throughout--that we do not love life, in the sense that we are greatly +preoccupied about its conservation; that we do not, properly speaking, +love life at all, but living. Into the views of the least careful +there will enter some degree of providence; no man's eyes are fixed +entirely on the passing hour; but although we have some anticipation +of good health, good weather, wine, active employment, love, and +self-approval, the sum of these anticipations does not amount to +anything like a general view of life's possibilities and issues; nor +are those who cherish them most vividly, at all the most scrupulous of +their personal safety. To be deeply interested in the accidents of our +existence, to enjoy keenly the mixed texture of human experience, +rather leads a man to disregard precautions, and risk his neck against +a straw. For surely the love of living is stronger in an Alpine +climber roping over a peril, or a hunter riding merrily at a stiff +fence, than in a creature who lives upon a diet and walks a measured +distance in the interest of his constitution. + +There is a great deal of very vile nonsense talked upon both sides of +the matter: tearing divines reducing life to the dimensions of a mere +funeral procession, so short as to be hardly decent; and melancholy +unbelievers yearning for the tomb as if it were a world too far away. +Both sides must feel a little ashamed of their performances now and +again when they draw in their chairs to dinner. Indeed, a good meal +and a bottle of wine is an answer to most standard works upon the +question. When a man's heart warms to his viands, he forgets a great +deal of sophistry, and soars into a rosy zone of contemplation. Death +may be knocking at the door, like the Commander's statue;[15] we have +something else in hand, thank God, and let him knock. Passing bells +are ringing all the world over. All the world over, and every +hour,[16] someone is parting company with all his aches and ecstasies. +For us also the trap is laid. But we are so fond of life that we have +no leisure to entertain the terror of death. It is a honeymoon with us +all through, and none of the longest. Small blame to us if we give our +whole hearts to this glowing bride of ours, to the appetites, to +honour, to the hungry curiosity of the mind, to the pleasure of the +eyes in nature, and the pride of our own nimble bodies. + +We all of us appreciate the sensations; but as for caring about the +Permanence of the Possibility, a man's head is generally very bald, +and his senses very dull, before he comes to that. Whether we regard +life as a lane leading to a dead wall--a mere bag's end,[17] as the +French say--or whether we think of it as a vestibule or gymnasium, +where we wait our turn and prepare our faculties for some more noble +destiny; whether we thunder in a pulpit, or pule in little atheistic +poetry-books, about its vanity and brevity; whether we look justly for +years of health and vigour, or are about to mount into a Bath-chair, +as a step towards the hearse; in each and all of these views and +situations there is but one conclusion possible: that a man should +stop his ears against paralysing terror, and run the race that is set +before him with a single mind. No one surely could have recoiled with +more heartache and terror from the thought of death than our respected +lexicographer; and yet we know how little it affected his conduct, how +wisely and boldly he walked, and in what a fresh and lively vein he +spoke of life. Already an old man, he ventured on his Highland tour; +and his heart, bound with triple brass, did not recoil before +twenty-seven individual cups of tea.[18] As courage and intelligence +are the two qualities best worth a good man's cultivation, so it is +the first part of intelligence to recognise our precarious estate in +life, and the first part of courage to be not at all abashed before +the fact. A frank and somewhat headlong carriage, not looking too +anxiously before, not dallying in maudlin regret over the past, stamps +the man who is well armoured for this world. + +And not only well armoured for himself, but a good friend and a good +citizen to boot. We do not go to cowards for tender dealing; there is +nothing so cruel as panic; the man who has least fear for his own +carcass, has most time to consider others. That eminent chemist who +took his walks abroad in tin shoes, and subsisted wholly upon tepid +milk, had all his work cut out for him in considerate dealings with +his own digestion. So soon as prudence has begun to grow up in the +brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds its first expression in a +paralysis of generous acts. The victim begins to shrink spiritually; +he develops a fancy for parlours with a regulated temperature, and +takes his morality on the principle of tin shoes and tepid milk. The +care of one important body or soul becomes so engrossing, that all the +noises of the outer world begin to come thin and faint into the +parlour with the regulated temperature; and the tin shoes go equably +forward over blood and rain. To be overwise is to ossify; and the +scruple-monger ends by standing stockstill. Now the man who has his +heart on his sleeve, and a good whirling weathercock of a brain, who +reckons his life as a thing to be dashingly used and cheerfully +hazarded, makes a very different acquaintance of the world, keeps all +his pulses going true and fast, and gathers impetus as he runs, until, +if he be running towards anything better than wildfire, he may shoot +up and become a constellation in the end. Lord look after his health, +Lord have a care of his soul, says he; and he has at the key of the +position, and swashes through incongruity and peril towards his aim. +Death is on all sides of him with pointed batteries, as he is on all +sides of all of us; unfortunate surprises gird him round; mim-mouthed +friends[19] and relations hold up their hands in quite a little +elegiacal synod about his path: and what cares he for all this? Being +a true lover of living, a fellow with something pushing and +spontaneous in his inside, he must, like any other soldier, in any +other stirring, deadly warfare, push on at his best pace until he +touch the goal. "A peerage or Westminster Abbey!"[20] cried Nelson in +his bright, boyish, heroic manner. These are great incentives; not for +any of these, but for the plain satisfaction of living, of being about +their business in some sort or other, do the brave, serviceable men of +every nation tread down the nettle danger,[21] and pass flyingly over +all the stumbling-blocks of prudence. Think of the heroism of Johnson, +think of that superb indifference to mortal limitation that set him +upon his dictionary, and carried him through triumphantly until the +end! Who, if he were wisely considerate of things at large, would ever +embark upon any work much more considerable than a halfpenny post +card? Who would project a serial novel, after Thackeray and Dickens +had each fallen in mid-course?[22] Who would find heart enough to +begin to live, if he dallied with the consideration of death? + +And, after all, what sorry and pitiful quibbling all this is! To +forego all the issues of living in a parlour with a regulated +temperature--as if that were not to die a hundred times over, and for +ten years at a stretch! As if it were not to die in one's own +lifetime, and without even the sad immunities of death! As if it were +not to die, and yet be the patient spectators of our own pitiable +change! The Permanent Possibility is preserved, but the sensations +carefully held at arm's length, as if one kept a photographic plate in +a dark chamber. It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to +waste it like a miser. It is better to live and be done with it, than +to die daily in the sickroom. By all means begin your folio; even if +the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a +month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week. +It is not only in finished undertakings that we ought to honour useful +labour. A spirit goes out of the man who means execution, which +outlives the most untimely ending. All who have meant good work with +their whole hearts, have done good work,[23] although they may die +before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong +and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and +bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, +like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and +planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths +full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and +silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a +termination? and does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in +full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in +sandy deltas? When the Greeks made their fine saying that those whom +the gods love die young,[24] I cannot help believing they had this +sort of death also in their eye. For surely, at whatever age it +overtake the man, this is to die young. Death has not been suffered to +take so much as an illusion from his heart. In the hot-fit of life, a +tip-toe on the highest point of being, he passes at a bound on to the +other side. The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, +the trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds +of glory,[25] this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the +spiritual land. + + +NOTES + +This essay, which is commonly (and justly) regarded as Stevenson's +masterpiece of literary composition, was first printed in the +_Cornhill Magazine_ for April 1878, Vol. XXXVII, pp. 432-437. In 1881 +it was published in the volume _Virginibus Puerisque_. For the success +of this volume, as well as for its author's relations with the editor +of the _Cornhill_, see our note to _An Apology for Idlers_. It was +this article which was selected for reprinting in separate form by the +American Committee of the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Fund; to +every subscriber of ten dollars or more, was given a copy of this +essay, exquisitely printed at the De Vinne Press, 1898. Copies of this +edition are now eagerly sought by book-collectors; five of them were +taken by the Robert Louis Stevenson Club of Yale College, consisting +of a few undergraduates of the class of 1898, who subscribed fifty +dollars to the fund. + +Stevenson's cheerful optimism was constantly shadowed by the thought +of Death, and in _Aes Triplex_ he gives free rein to his fancies on +this universal theme. + +[Note 1: The title, _AEs Triplex_, is taken from Horace, _aes triplex +circa pectus_, "breast enclosed by triple brass," "aes" used by Horace +as a "symbol of indomitable courage."--Lewis's Latin Dictionary.] + +[Note 2: _Thug_. This word, which sounds to-day so slangy, really +comes from the Hindoos (Hindustani _thaaa_, deceive). It is the name +of a religious order in India, ostensibly devoted to the worship of a +goddess, but really given to murder for the sake of booty. The +Englishmen in India called them _Thugs_, hence the name in its modern +general sense.] + +[Note 3: _Pyramids ... dule trees_. For pyramids, see our note 25 of +chapter II above... _Dule trees_. More properly spelled "dool." A dool +was a stake or post used to mark boundaries.] + +[Note 4: _The trumpets might sound_. "For if the trumpet give an +uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?" I _Cor_. +XIV, 8.] + +[Note 5: _The blue-peter might-fly at the truck_. The blue-peter is a +term used in the British navy and widely elsewhere; it is a blue flag +with a white square employed often as a signal for sailing. The word +is corrupted from _Blue Repeater_, a signal flag. _Truck_ is a very +small platform at the top of a mast.] + +[Note 6: _Balaclava_. A little port near Sebastopol, in the Crimea. +During the Crimean War, on the 25 October 1854, occurred the cavalry +charge of some six hundred Englishmen, celebrated by Tennyson's +universally known poem, _The Charge of the Light Brigade_. It has +recently been asserted that the number reported as actually killed in +this headlong charge referred to the horses, not to the men.] + +[Note 7: _Curtius_. Referring to the story of the Roman youth, Metius +Curtius, who in 362 B.C. leaped into a chasm in the Forum, in order to +save his country. The chasm immediately closed over him, and Rome was +saved. Although the truth of the story has naturally failed to survive +the investigations of historical critics, its moral inspiration has +been effective in many historical instances.] + +[Note 8: _Party for the Derby_. Derby Day, which is the occasion of +the most famous annual running race for horses in the world, takes +place in the south of England during the week preceding Whitsunday. +The race was founded by the Earl of Derby in 1780. It is now one of +the greatest holidays in England, and the whole city of London turns +out for the event. It is a great spectacle to see the crowd going from +London and returning. The most faithful description of the event, the +crowds, and the interest excited, may be found in George Moore's +novel, _Esther Waters_ (1894).] + +[Note 9: _The deified Caligula_. Caius Caligula was Roman Emperor from +37 to 41 A. D. He was brought up among the soldiers, who gave him the +name Caligula, because he wore the soldier's leather shoe, or +half-boot, (Latin _caliga_). Caligula was deified, but that did not +prevent him from becoming a madman, which seems to be the best way to +account for his wanton cruelty and extraordinary caprices.] + +[Note 10: _Baiae_ was a small town on the Campanian Coast, ten miles +from Naples. It was a favorite summer resort of the Roman +aristocracy.] + +[Note 11: The _Praetorian Guard_ was the body-guard of the Roman +emperors. The incident Stevenson speaks of may be found in Tacitus.] + +[Note 12: _Job_ ... _Walt Whitman_. The book of _Job_ is usually +regarded as the most poetical work in the Bible, even exceeding +_Psalms_ and _Isaiah_ in its splendid imaginative language and +extraordinary figures of speech. For a literary study of it, the +student is recommended to Professor Moulton's edition. Omar Khayyam +was a Persian poet of mediaeval times, who became known to English +readers through the beautiful paraphrase of some of his stanzas by +Edward Fitzgerald, in 1859. If any one will take the trouble to +compare a literal prose rendering of Omar (as in N.H. Dole's variorum +edition) with the version by Fitzgerald, he will speedily see that the +power and beauty of the poem is due far more to the skill of "Old +Fitz" than to the original. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was perhaps the +foremost writer of English prose in the nineteenth century. Although a +consummate literary artist, he was even more influential as a moral +tonic. His philosophy and that of Omar represent as wide a contrast as +could easily be found. Walt Whitman, the strange American poet +(1819-1892), whose famous _Leaves_ _of Grass_ (1855) excited an uproar +in America, and gave the author a much more serious reputation in +Europe. Stevenson's interest in him was genuine, but not partisan, and +his essay, _The Gospel According to Walt Whitman (The New Quarterly +Magazine_, Oct. 1878), is perhaps the most judicious appreciation in +the English language of this singular poet. Job, Omar Khayyam, Carlyle +and Whitman, taken together, certainly give a curious collection of +what the Germans call _Weltanschauungen_.] + +[Note 13: _A vapour, or a show, or made out of the same stuff with +dreams_. For constant comparisons of life with a vapour or a show, see +Quarles's _Emblems_ (1635), though these conventional figures may be +found thousands of times in general literature. The latter part of the +sentence refers to the _Tempest_, Act IV, Scene I. + + "We are such stuff + As dreams are made on, and our little life + Is rounded with a sleep."] + +[Note 14: _Permanent Possibility of Sensation_. "Matter then, may be +defined, a Permanent Possibility of Sensation."--John Stuart Mill, +_Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_, Vol. I. Chap. XI.] + +[Note 15: _Like the Commander's Statue_. In the familiar story of Don +Juan, where the audacious rake accepts the Commander's invitation to +supper. For treatments of this theme, see Molière's play _Don Juan_, +or Mozart's opera _Don Giovanni_; see also Bernard Shaw's paradoxical +play, _Man and Superman_.... _We have something else in hand, thank +God, and let him knock_. It is possible that Stevenson's words here +are an unconscious reminiscence of Colley Cibber's letter to the +novelist Richardson. This unabashed old profligate celebrated the +Christmas Day of his eightieth year by writing to the apostle of +domestic virtue in the following strain: "Though Death has been +cooling his heels at my door these three weeks, I have not had time to +see him. The daily conversation of my friends has kept me so agreeably +alive, that I have not passed my time better a great while. If you +have a mind to make one of us, I will order Death to come another +day."] + +[Note 16: _All the world over, and every hour_. He might truthfully +have said, "every second."] + +[Note 17: _A mere bag's end, as the French say. A cul de sac._] + +[Note 18: _Our respected lexicographer ... Highland tour ... triple +brass ... twenty-seven individual cups of tea._ Dr. Samuel Johnson's +Dictionary appeared in 1755. For his horror of death, his fondness for +tea, and his Highland tour with Boswell, see the latter's _Life of +Johnson_; consult the late Dr. Hill's admirable index in his edition +of the _Life_.] + +[Note 19: _Mim-mouthed friends_. See J. Wright's _English Dialect +Dictionary_. "Mim-mouthed" means "affectedly prim or proper in +speech."] + +[Note 20: "_A peerage or Westminster Abbey!_" Horatio Nelson +(1758-1805), the most famous admiral in England's naval history, who +won the great battle of Trafalgar and lost his life in the moment of +victory. Nelson was as ambitious as he was brave, and his cry that +Stevenson quotes was characteristic.] + +[Note 21: _Tread down the nettle danger_. Hotspur's words in _King +Henry IV_, Part I, Act II, Sc. 3. "Out of this nettle, danger, we +pluck this flower, safety."] + +[Note 22: _After Thackeray and Dickens had each fallen in mid-course?_ +Thackeray and Dickens, dying in 1863 and in 1870 respectively, left +unfinished _Denis Duval_ and _The Mystery of Edwin Drood_. Stevenson +himself left unfinished what would in all probability have been his +unquestioned masterpiece, _Weir of Hermiston_.] + +[Note 23: _All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have +done good work_. See Browning's inspiring poem, _Rabbi Ben Ezra_, +XXIII, XXIV, XXV:-- + + "Not on the vulgar mass + Called "work," must sentence pass, + Things done, which took the eye and had the price; + O'er which, from level stand, + The low world laid its hand, + Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice: + + But all, the world's coarse thumb + And finger failed to plumb, + So passed in making up the main account; + All instincts immature, + All purposes unsure, + That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount: + + Thoughts hardly to be packed + Into a narrow act, + Fancies that broke through language and escaped; + All I could never be, + All, men ignored in me, + This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped."] + +[Note 24: _Whom the Gods love die young._ "Quem di diligunt adolescens +moritur."--Plautus, _Bacchides_, Act IV, Sc. 7.] + +[Note 25: _Trailing with him clouds of glory._ This passage, from +Wordsworth's _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_ (1807), was a +favorite one with Stevenson, and he quotes it several times in various +essays.] + + +IV + +TALK AND TALKERS + +I + +"Sir, we had a good talk."[1]--JOHNSON. + +"As we must account[2] for every idle word, so we must for every idle +silence."--FRANKLIN. + +There can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk; to be affable, +gay, ready, clear and welcome; to have a fact, a thought, or an +illustration, pat to every subject; and not only to cheer the flight +of time among our intimates, but bear our part in that great +international congress, always sitting, where public wrongs are first +declared, public errors first corrected, and the course of public +opinion shaped, day by day, a little nearer to the right. No measure +comes before Parliament but it has been long ago prepared by the grand +jury of the talkers; no book is written that has not been largely +composed by their assistance. Literature in many of its branches is no +other than the shadow of good talk; but the imitation falls far short +of the original in life, freedom and effect. There are always two to a +talk, giving and taking, comparing experience and according +conclusions. Talk is fluid, tentative, continually "in further search +and progress;" while written words remain fixed, become idols even to +the writer, found wooden dogmatisms, and preserve flies of obvious +error in the amber[3] of the truth. Last and chief, while literature, +gagged with linsey-woolsey, can only deal with a fraction of the life +of man, talk goes fancy free[4] and may call a spade a spade.[5] It +cannot, even if it would, become merely aesthetic or merely classical +like literature. A jest intervenes, the solemn humbug is dissolved in +laughter, and speech runs forth out of the contemporary groove into +the open fields of nature, cheery and cheering, like schoolboys out of +school. And it is in talk alone that we can learn our period and +ourselves. In short, the first duty of a man is to speak; that is his +chief business in this world; and talk, which is the harmonious speech +of two or more, is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs +nothing in money; it is all profit; it completes our education, founds +and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in +almost any state of health. + +The spice of life is battle; the friendliest relations are still a +kind of contest; and if we would not forego all that is valuable in +our lot, we must continually face some other person, eye to eye, and +wrestle a fall whether in love or enmity. It is still by force of +body, or power of character or intellect; that we attain to worthy +pleasures. Men and women contend for each other in the lists of love, +like rival mesmerists; the active and adroit decide their challenges +in the sports of the body; and the sedentary sit down to chess or +conversation. All sluggish and pacific pleasures are, to the same +degree, solitary and selfish; and every durable bond between human +beings is founded in or heightened by some element of competition. +Now, the relation that has the least root in matter is undoubtedly +that airy one of friendship; and hence, I suppose, it is that good +talk most commonly arises among friends. Talk is, indeed, both the +scene and instrument of friendship. It is in talk alone that the +friends can measure strength, and enjoy that amicable +counter-assertion of personality which is the gauge of relations and +the sport of life. + +A good talk is not to be had for the asking. Humours must first be +accorded in a kind of overture or prologue; hour, company and +circumstance be suited; and then, at a fit juncture, the subject, the +quarry of two heated minds, spring up like a deer out of the wood. Not +that the talker has any of the hunter's pride, though he has all and +more than all his ardour. The genuine artist follows the stream of +conversation as an angler follows the windings of a brook, not +dallying where he fails to "kill." He trusts implicitly to hazard; and +he is rewarded by continual variety, continual pleasure, and those +changing prospects of the truth that are the best of education. There +is nothing in a subject, so called, that we should regard it as an +idol, or follow it beyond the promptings of desire. Indeed, there are +few subjects; and so far as they are truly talkable, more than the +half of them may be reduced to three: that I am I, that you are you, +and that there are other people dimly understood to be not quite the +same as either. Wherever talk may range, it still runs half the time +on these eternal lines. The theme being set, each plays on himself as +on an instrument; asserts and justifies himself; ransacks his brain +for instances and opinions, and brings them forth new-minted, to his +own surprise and the admiration of his adversary. All natural talk is +a festival of ostentation; and by the laws of the game each accepts +and fans the vanity of the other. It is from that reason that we +venture to lay ourselves so open, that we dare to be so warmly +eloquent, and that we swell in each other's eyes to such a vast +proportion. For talkers, once launched, begin to overflow the limits +of their ordinary selves, tower up to the height of their secret +pretensions, and give themselves out for the heroes, brave, pious, +musical and wise, that in their most shining moments they aspire to +be. So they weave for themselves with words and for a while inhabit a +palace of delights, temple at once and theatre, where they fill the +round of the world's dignities, and feast with the gods, exulting in +Kudos. And when the talk is over, each goes his way, still flushed +with vanity and admiration, still trailing clouds of glory;[6] each +declines from the height of his ideal orgie, not in a moment, but by +slow declension. I remember, in the _entr'acte_ of an afternoon +performance, coming forth into the sunshine, in a beautiful green, +gardened corner of a romantic city; and as I sat and smoked, the music +moving in my blood, I seemed to sit there and evaporate _The Flying +Dutchman_[7] (for it was that I had been hearing) with a wonderful +sense of life, warmth, well-being and pride; and the noises of the +city, voices, bells and marching feet, fell together in my ears like a +symphonious orchestra. In the same way, the excitement of a good talk +lives for a long while after in the blood, the heart still hot within +you, the brain still simmering, and the physical earth swimming around +you with the colours of the sunset. + +Natural talk, like ploughing, should turn up a large surface of life, +rather than dig mines into geological strata. Masses of experience, +anecdote, incident, cross-lights, quotation, historical instances, the +whole flotsam and jetsam of two minds forced in and in upon the matter +in hand from every point of the compass, and from every degree of +mental elevation and abasement--these are the material with which talk +is fortified, the food on which the talkers thrive. Such argument as +is proper to the exercise should still be brief and seizing. Talk +should proceed by instances; by the apposite, not the expository. It +should keep close along the lines of humanity, near the bosoms and +businesses of men, at the level where history, fiction and experience +intersect and illuminate each other. I am I, and You are You, with all +my heart; but conceive how these lean propositions change and brighten +when, instead of words, the actual you and I sit cheek by jowl, the +spirit housed in the live body, and the very clothes uttering voices +to corroborate the story in the face. Not less surprising is the +change when we leave off to speak of generalities--the bad, the good, +the miser, and all the characters of Theophrastus[8]--and call up +other men, by anecdote or instance, in their very trick and feature; +or trading on a common knowledge, toss each other famous names, still +glowing with the hues of life. Communication is no longer by words, +but by the instancing of whole biographies, epics, systems of +philosophy, and epochs of history, in bulk. That which is understood +excels that which is spoken in quantity and quality alike; ideas thus +figured and personified, change hands, as we may say, like coin; and +the speakers imply without effort the most obscure and intricate +thoughts. Strangers who have a large common ground of reading will, +for this reason, come the sooner to the grapple of genuine converse. +If they know Othello and Napoleon, Consuelo and Clarissa Harlowe, +Vautrin and Steenie Steenson,[9] they can leave generalities and begin +at once to speak by figures. + +Conduct and art are the two subjects that arise most frequently and +that embrace the widest range of facts. A few pleasures bear +discussion for their own sake, but only those which are most social or +most radically human; and even these can only be discussed among their +devotees. A technicality is always welcome to the expert, whether in +athletics, art or law; I have heard the best kind of talk on +technicalities from such rare and happy persons as both know and love +their business. No human being[10] ever spoke of scenery for above two +minutes at a time, which makes me suspect we hear too much of it in +literature. The weather is regarded as the very nadir and scoff of +conversational topics. And yet the weather, the dramatic element in +scenery, is far more tractable in language, and far more human both in +import and suggestion than the stable features of the landscape. +Sailors and shepherds, and the people generally of coast and mountain, +talk well of it; and it is often excitingly presented in literature. +But the tendency of all living talk draws it back and back into the +common focus of humanity. Talk is a creature of the street and +market-place, feeding on gossip; and its last resort is still in a +discussion on morals. That is the heroic form of gossip; heroic in +virtue of its high pretensions; but still gossip, because it turns on +personalities. You can keep no men long, nor Scotchmen[11] at all, off +moral or theological discussion. These are to all the world what law +is to lawyers; they are everybody's technicalities; the medium through +which all consider life, and the dialect in which they express their +judgments. I knew three young men who walked together daily for some +two months in a solemn and beautiful forest and in cloudless summer +weather; daily they talked with unabated zest, and yet scarce wandered +that whole time beyond two subjects--theology and love. And perhaps +neither a court of love[12] nor an assembly of divines would have +granted their premises or welcomed their conclusions. + +Conclusions, indeed, are not often reached by talk any more than by +private thinking. That is not the profit. The profit is in the +exercise, and above all in the experience; for when we reason at large +on any subject, we review our state and history in life. From time to +time, however, and specially, I think, in talking art, talk becomes +effective, conquering like war, widening the boundaries of knowledge +like an exploration. A point arises; the question takes a +problematical, a baffling, yet a likely air; the talkers begin to feel +lively presentiments of some conclusion near at hand; towards this +they strive with emulous ardour, each by his own path, and struggling +for first utterance; and then one leaps upon the summit of that matter +with a shout, and almost at the same moment the other is beside him; +and behold they are agreed. Like enough, the progress is illusory, a +mere cat's cradle having been wound and unwound out of words. But the +sense of joint discovery is none the less giddy and inspiring. And in +the life of the talker such triumphs, though imaginary, are neither +few nor far apart; they are attained with speed and pleasure, in the +hour of mirth; and by the nature of the process, they are always +worthily shared. + +There is a certain attitude, combative at once and deferential, eager +to fight yet most averse to quarrel, which marks out at once the +talkable man. It is not eloquence, not fairness, not obstinacy, but a +certain proportion of all of these that I love to encounter in my +amicable adversaries. They must not be pontiffs holding doctrine, but +huntsmen questing after elements of truth. Neither must they be boys +to be instructed, but fellow-teachers with whom I may, wrangle and +agree on equal terms. We must reach some solution, some shadow of +consent; for without that, eager talk becomes a torture. But we do not +wish to reach it cheaply, or quickly, or without the tussle and effort +wherein pleasure lies. + +The very best talker, with me, is one whom I shall call Spring-Heel'd +Jack.[13] I say so, because I never knew anyone who mingled so largely +the possible ingredients of converse. In the Spanish proverb, the +fourth man necessary to compound a salad, is a madman to mix it: Jack +is that madman. I know not what is more remarkable; the insane +lucidity of his conclusions, the humorous eloquence of his language, +or his power of method, bringing the whole of life into the focus of +the subject treated, mixing the conversational salad like a drunken +god. He doubles like the serpent, changes and flashes like the shaken +kaleidoscope, transmigrates bodily into the views of others, and so, +in the twinkling of an eye and with a heady rapture, turns questions +inside out and flings them empty before you on the ground, like a +triumphant conjuror. It is my common practice when a piece of conduct +puzzles me, to attack it in the presence of Jack with such grossness, +such partiality and such wearing iteration, as at length shall spur +him up in its defence. In a moment he transmigrates, dons the required +character, and with moonstruck philosophy justifies the act in +question. I can fancy nothing to compare with the _vim_ of these +impersonations, the strange scale of language, flying from Shakespeare +to Kant, and from Kant to Major Dyngwell[14]-- + + "As fast as a musician scatters sounds + Out of an instrument--" + +the sudden, sweeping generalisations, the absurd irrelevant +particularities, the wit, wisdom, folly, humour, eloquence and bathos, +each startling in its kind, and yet all luminous in the admired +disorder of their combination. A talker of a different calibre, though +belonging to the same school, is Burly.[15] Burly is a man of great +presence; he commands a larger atmosphere, gives the impression of a +grosser mass of character than most men. It has been said of him that +his presence could be felt in a room you entered blindfold; and the +same, I think, has been said of other powerful constitutions condemned +to much physical inaction. There is something boisterous and piratic +in Burly's manner of talk which suits well enough with this +impression. He will roar you down, he will bury his face in his hands, +he will undergo passions of revolt and agony; and meanwhile his +attitude of mind is really both conciliatory and receptive; and after +Pistol has been out-Pistol'd,[16] and the welkin rung for hours, you +begin to perceive a certain subsidence in these spring torrents, +points of agreement issue, and you end arm-in-arm, and in a glow of +mutual admiration. The outcry only serves to make your final union the +more unexpected and precious. Throughout there has been perfect +sincerity, perfect intelligence, a desire to hear although not always +to listen, and an unaffected eagerness to meet concessions. You have, +with Burly, none of the dangers that attend debate with Spring-Heel'd +Jack; who may at any moment turn his powers of transmigration on +yourself, create for you a view you never held, and then furiously +fall on you for holding it. These, at least, are my two favourites, +and both are loud, copious intolerant talkers. This argues that I +myself am in the same category; for if we love talking at all, we love +a bright, fierce adversary, who will hold his ground, foot by foot, in +much our own manner, sell his attention dearly, and give us our full +measure of the dust and exertion of battle. Both these men can be beat +from a position, but it takes six hours to do it; a high and hard +adventure, worth attempting. With both you can pass days in an +enchanted country of the mind, with people, scenery and manners of its +own; live a life apart, more arduous, active and glowing than any real +existence; and come forth again when the talk is over, as out of a +theatre or a dream, to find the east wind still blowing and the +chimney-pots of the old battered city still around you. Jack has the +far finer mind, Burly the far more honest; Jack gives us the animated +poetry, Burly the romantic prose, of similar themes; the one glances +high like a meteor and makes a light in darkness; the other, with many +changing hues of fire, burns at the sea-level, like a conflagration; +but both have the same humour and artistic interests, the same +unquenched ardour in pursuit, the same gusts of talk and thunderclaps +of contradiction. + +Cockshot[17] is a different article, but vastly entertaining, and has +been meat and drink to me for many a long evening. His manner is dry, +brisk and pertinacious, and the choice of words not much. The point +about him is his extraordinary readiness and spirit. You can propound +nothing but he has either a theory about it ready-made, or will have +one instantly on the stocks, and proceed to lay its timbers and launch +it in your presence. "Let me see," he will say. "Give me a moment. I +_should_ have some theory for that." A blither spectacle than the +vigour with which he sets about the task, it were hard to fancy. He is +possessed by a demoniac energy, welding the elements for his life, and +bending ideas, as an athlete bends a horseshoe, with a visible and +lively effort. He has, in theorising, a compass, an art; what I would +call the synthetic gusto; something of a Herbert Spencer,[18] who +should see the fun of the thing. You are not bound, and no more is he, +to place your faith in these brand-new opinions. But some of them are +right enough, durable even for life; and the poorest serve for a +cock-shy--as when idle people, after picnics, float a bottle on a pond +and have an hour's diversion ere it sinks. Whichever they are, serious +opinions or humours of the moment, he still defends his ventures with +indefatigable wit and spirit, hitting savagely himself, but taking +punishment like a man. He knows and never forgets that people talk, +first of all, for the sake of talking; conducts himself in the ring, +to use the old slang, like a thorough "glutton,"[19] and honestly +enjoys a telling facer from his adversary. Cockshot is bottled +effervescency, the sworn foe of sleep. Three-in-the-morning Cockshot, +says a victim. His talk is like the driest of all imaginable dry +champagnes. Sleight of hand and inimitable quickness are the qualities +by which he lives. Athelred,[20] on the other hand, presents you with +the spectacle of a sincere and somewhat slow nature thinking aloud. He +is the most unready man I ever knew to shine in conversation. You may +see him sometimes wrestle with a refractory jest for a minute or two +together, and perhaps fail to throw it in the end. And there is +something singularly engaging, often instructive, in the simplicity +with which he thus exposes the process as well as the result, the +works as well as the dial of the clock. Withal he has his hours of +inspiration. Apt words come to him as if by accident, and, coming from +deeper down, they smack the more personally, they have the more of +fine old crusted humanity, rich in sediment and humour. There are +sayings of his in which he has stamped himself into the very grain of +the language; you would think he must have worn the words next his +skin and slept with them. Yet it is not as a sayer of particular good +things that Athelred is most to be regarded, rather as the stalwart +woodman of thought. I have pulled on a light cord often enough, while +he has been wielding the broad-axe; and between us, on this unequal +division, many a specious fallacy has fallen. I have known him to +battle the same question night after night for years, keeping it in +the reign of talk, constantly applying it and re-applying it to life +with humorous or grave intention, and all the while, never hurrying, +nor flagging, nor taking an unfair advantage of the facts. Jack at a +given moment, when arising, as it were, from the tripod, can be more +radiantly just to those from whom he differs; but then the tenor of +his thoughts is even calumnious; while Athelred, slower to forge +excuses, is yet slower to condemn, and sits over the welter of the +world, vacillating but still judicial, and still faithfully contending +with his doubts. + +Both the last talkers deal much in points of conduct and religion +studied in the "dry light"[21] of prose. Indirectly and as if against +his will the same elements from time to time appear in the troubled +and poetic talk of Opalstein.[22] His various and exotic knowledge, +complete although unready sympathies, and fine, full, discriminative +flow of language, fit him out to be the best of talkers; so perhaps he +is with some, not _quite_ with me--_proxime accessit_,[23] I should +say. He sings the praises of the earth and the arts, flowers and +jewels, wine and music, in a moonlight, serenading manner, as to the +light guitar; even wisdom comes from his tongue like singing; no one +is, indeed, more tuneful in the upper notes. But even while he sings +the song of the Sirens, he still hearkens to the barking of the +Sphinx. Jarring Byronic notes interrupt the flow of his Horatian +humours. His mirth has something of the tragedy of the world for its +perpetual background; and he feasts like Don Giovanni to a double +orchestra, one lightly sounding for the dance, one pealing +Beethoven[24] in the distance. He is not truly reconciled either with +life or with himself; and this instant war in his members sometimes +divides the man's attention. He does not always, perhaps not often, +frankly surrender himself in conversation. He brings into the talk +other thoughts than those which he expresses; you are conscious that +he keeps an eye on something else, that he does not shake off the +world, nor quite forget himself. Hence arise occasional +disappointments; even an occasional unfairness for his companions, who +find themselves one day giving too much, and the next, when they are +wary out of season, giving perhaps too little. Purcel[25] is in +another class from any I have mentioned. He is no debater, but appears +in conversation, as occasion rises, in two distinct characters, one of +which I admire and fear, and the other love. In the first, he is +radiantly civil and rather silent, sits on a high, courtly hilltop, +and from that vantage-ground drops you his remarks like favours. He +seems not to share in our sublunary contentions; he wears no sign of +interest; when on a sudden there falls in a crystal of wit, so +polished that the dull do not perceive it, but so right that the +sensitive are silenced. True talk should have more body and blood, +should be louder, vainer and more declaratory of the man; the true +talker should not hold so steady an advantage over whom he speaks +with; and that is one reason out of a score why I prefer my Purcel in +his second character, when he unbends into a strain of graceful +gossip, singing like the fireside kettle. In these moods he has an +elegant homeliness that rings of the true Queen Anne. I know another +person[26] who attains, in his moments, to the insolence of a +Restoration comedy, speaking, I declare, as Congreve[27] wrote; but +that is a sport of nature, and scarce falls under the rubric, for +there is none, alas! to give him answer. + +One last remark occurs: It is the mark of genuine conversation that +the sayings can scarce be quoted with their full effect beyond the +circle of common friends. To have their proper weight they should +appear in a biography, and with the portrait of the speaker. Good talk +is dramatic; it is like an impromptu piece of acting where each should +represent himself to the greatest advantage; and that is the best kind +of talk where each speaker is most fully and candidly himself, and +where, if you were to shift the speeches round from one to another, +there would be the greatest loss in significance and perspicuity. It +is for this reason that talk depends so wholly on our company. We +should like to introduce Falstaff and Mercutio, or Falstaff and Sir +Toby; but Falstaff in talk with Cordelia seems even painful. Most of +us, by the Protean[28] quality of man, can talk to some degree with +all; but the true talk, that strikes out all the slumbering best of +us, comes only with the peculiar brethren of our spirits, is founded +as deep as love in the constitution of our being, and is a thing to +relish with all our energy, while, yet we have it, and to be grateful +for forever. + + +II[29] + +In the last paper there was perhaps too much about mere debate; and +there was nothing said at all about that kind of talk which is merely +luminous and restful, a higher power of silence, the quiet of the +evening shared by ruminating friends. There is something, aside from +personal preference, to be alleged in support of this omission. Those +who are no chimney-cornerers, who rejoice in the social thunderstorm, +have a ground in reason for their choice. They get little rest indeed; +but restfulness is a quality for cattle; the virtues are all active, +life is alert, and it is in repose that men prepare themselves for +evil. On the other hand, they are bruised into a knowledge of +themselves and others; they have in a high degree the fencer's +pleasure in dexterity displayed and proved; what they get they get +upon life's terms, paying for it as they go; and once the talk is +launched, they are assured of honest dealing from an adversary eager +like themselves. The aboriginal man within us, the cave-dweller, still +lusty as when he fought tooth and nail for roots and berries, scents +this kind of equal battle from afar; it is like his old primaeval days +upon the crags, a return to the sincerity of savage life from the +comfortable fictions of the civilised. And if it be delightful to the +Old Man, it is none the less profitable to his younger brother, the +conscientious gentleman. I feel never quite sure of your urbane and +smiling coteries; I fear they indulge a man's vanities in silence, +suffer him to encroach, encourage him on to be an ass, and send him +forth again, not merely contemned for the moment, but radically more +contemptible than when he entered. But if I have a flushed, blustering +fellow for my opposite, bent on carrying a point, my vanity is sure to +have its ears rubbed, once at least, in the course of the debate. He +will not spare me when we differ; he will not fear to demonstrate my +folly to my face. + +For many natures there is not much charm in the still, chambered +society, the circle of bland countenances, the digestive silence, the +admired remark, the flutter of affectionate approval. They demand more +atmosphere and exercise; "a gale upon their spirits," as our pious +ancestors would phrase it; to have their wits well breathed in an +uproarious Valhalla.[30] And I suspect that the choice, given their +character and faults, is one to be defended. The purely wise are +silenced by facts; they talk in a clear atmosphere, problems lying +around them like a view in nature; if they can be shown to be somewhat +in the wrong, they digest the reproof like a thrashing, and make +better intellectual blood. They stand corrected by a whisper; a word +or a glance reminds them of the great eternal law. But it is not so +with all. Others in conversation seek rather contact with their +fellow-men than increase of knowledge or clarity of thought. The +drama, not the philosophy, of life is the sphere of their intellectual +activity. Even when they pursue truth, they desire as much as possible +of what we may call human scenery along the road they follow. They +dwell in the heart of life; the blood sounding in their ears, their +eyes laying hold of what delights them with a brutal avidity that +makes them blind to all besides, their interest riveted on people, +living, loving, talking, tangible people. To a man of this +description, the sphere of argument seems very pale and ghostly. By a +strong expression, a perturbed countenance, floods of tears, an insult +which his conscience obliges him to swallow, he is brought round to +knowledge which no syllogism would have conveyed to him. His own +experience is so vivid, he is so superlatively conscious of himself, +that if, day after day, he is allowed to hector and hear nothing but +approving echoes, he will lose his hold on the soberness of things and +take himself in earnest for a god. Talk might be to such an one the +very way of moral ruin; the school where he might learn to be at once +intolerable and ridiculous. + +This character is perhaps commoner than philosophers suppose. And for +persons of that stamp to learn much by conversation, they must speak +with their superiors, not in intellect, for that is a superiority that +must be proved, but in station. If they cannot find a friend to bully +them for their good, they must find either an old man, a woman, or +some one so far below them in the artificial order of society, that +courtesy may be particularly exercised. + +The best teachers are the aged. To the old our mouths are always +partly closed; we must swallow our obvious retorts and listen. They +sit above our heads, on life's raised dais, and appeal at once to our +respect and pity. A flavour of the old school, a touch of something +different in their manner--which is freer and rounder, if they come of +what is called a good family, and often more timid and precise if they +are of the middle class--serves, in these days, to accentuate the +difference of age and add a distinction to gray hairs. But their +superiority is founded more deeply than by outward marks or gestures. +They are before us in the march of man; they have more or less solved +the irking problem; they have battled through the equinox of life; in +good and evil they have held their course; and now, without open +shame, they near the crown and harbour. It may be we have been struck +with one of fortune's darts; we can scarce be civil, so cruelly is our +spirit tossed. Yet long before we were so much as thought upon, the +like calamity befell the old man or woman that now, with pleasant +humour, rallies us upon our inattention, sitting composed in the holy +evening of man's life, in the clear shining after rain. We grow +ashamed of our distresses new and hot and coarse, like villainous +roadside brandy; we see life in aerial perspective, under the heavens +of faith; and out of the worst, in the mere presence of contented +elders, look forward and take patience. Fear shrinks before them "like +a thing reproved," not the flitting and ineffectual fear of death, but +the instant, dwelling terror of the responsibilities and revenges of +life. Their speech, indeed, is timid; they report lions in the path; +they counsel a meticulous[31] footing; but their serene, marred faces +are more eloquent and tell another story. Where they have gone, we +will go also, not very greatly fearing; what they have endured +unbroken, we also, God helping us, will make a shift to bear. + +Not only is the presence of the aged in itself remedial, but their +minds are stored with antidotes, wisdom's simples, plain +considerations overlooked by youth. They have matter to communicate, +be they never so stupid. Their talk is not merely literature, it is +great literature; classic in virtue of the speaker's detachment, +studded, like a book of travel, with things we should not otherwise +have learnt. In virtue, I have said, of the speaker's detachment--and +this is why, of two old men, the one who is not your father speaks to +you with the more sensible authority; for in the paternal relation the +oldest have lively interests and remain still young. Thus I have known +two young men great friends; each swore by the other's father; the +father of each swore by the other lad; and yet each pair of parent and +child were perpetually by the ears. This is typical: it reads like the +germ of some kindly[32] comedy. + +The old appear in conversation in two characters: the critically +silent and the garrulous anecdotic. The last is perhaps what we look +for; it is perhaps the more instructive. An old gentleman, well on in +years, sits handsomely and naturally in the bow-window of his age, +scanning experience with reverted eye; and chirping and smiling, +communicates the accidents and reads the lesson of his long career. +Opinions are strengthened, indeed, but they are also weeded out in the +course of years. What remains steadily present to the eye of the +retired veteran in his hermitage, what still ministers to his content, +what still quickens his old honest heart--these are "the real +long-lived things"[33] that Whitman tells us to prefer. Where youth +agrees with age, not where they differ, wisdom lies; and it is when +the young disciple finds his heart to beat in tune with his +grey-bearded teacher's that a lesson may be learned. I have known one +old gentleman, whom I may name, for he is now gathered to his +stock--Robert Hunter, Sheriff of Dumbarton,[34] and author of an +excellent law-book still re-edited and republished. Whether he was +originally big or little is more than I can guess. When I knew him he +was all fallen away and fallen in; crooked and shrunken; buckled into +a stiff waistcoat for support; troubled by ailments, which kept him +hobbling in and out of the room; one foot gouty; a wig for decency, +not for deception, on his head; close shaved, except under his +chin--and for that he never failed to apologise, for it went sore +against the traditions of his life. You can imagine how he would fare +in a novel by Miss Mather;[35] yet this rag of a Chelsea[36] veteran +lived to his last year in the plenitude of all that is best in man, +brimming with human kindness, and staunch as a Roman soldier under his +manifold infirmities. You could not say that he had lost his memory, +for he would repeat Shakespeare and Webster and Jeremy Taylor and +Burke[37] by the page together; but the parchment was filled up, there +was no room for fresh inscriptions, and he was capable of repeating +the same anecdote on many successive visits. His voice survived in its +full power, and he took a pride in using it. On his last voyage as +Commissioner of Lighthouses, he hailed a ship at sea and made himself +clearly audible without a speaking trumpet, ruffing the while with a +proper vanity in his achievement. He had a habit of eking out his +words with interrogative hems, which was puzzling and a little +wearisome, suited ill with his appearance, and seemed a survival from +some former stage of bodily portliness. Of yore, when he was a great +pedestrian and no enemy to good claret, he may have pointed with these +minute guns his allocutions to the bench. His humour was perfectly +equable, set beyond the reach of fate; gout, rheumatism, stone and +gravel might have combined their forces against that frail tabernacle, +but when I came round on Sunday evening, he would lay aside Jeremy +Taylor's _Life of Christ_ and greet me with the same open brow, the +same kind formality of manner. His opinions and sympathies dated the +man almost to a decade. He had begun life, under his mother's +influence, as an admirer of Junius,[38] but on maturer knowledge had +transferred his admiration to Burke. He cautioned me, with entire +gravity, to be punctilious in writing English; never to forget that I +was a Scotchman, that English was a foreign tongue, and that if I +attempted the colloquial, I should certainly be shamed: the remark was +apposite, I suppose, in the days of David Hume.[39] Scott was too new +for him; he had known the author--known him, too, for a Tory; and to +the genuine classic a contemporary is always something of a trouble. +He had the old, serious love of the play; had even, as he was proud to +tell, played a certain part in the history of Shakespearian revivals, +for he had successfully pressed on Murray, of the old Edinburgh +Theatre, the idea of producing Shakespeare's fairy pieces with great +scenic display.[40] A moderate in religion, he was much struck in the +last years of his life by a conversation with two young lads, +revivalists. "H'm," he would say--"new to me. I have had--h'm--no such +experience." It struck him, not with pain, rather with a solemn +philosophic interest, that he, a Christian as he hoped, and a +Christian of so old a standing, should hear these young fellows +talking of his own subject, his own weapons that he had fought the +battle of life with,--"and--h'm--not understand." In this wise and +grateful attitude he did justice to himself and others, reposed +unshaken in his old beliefs, and recognised their limits without anger +or alarm. His last recorded remark, on the last night of his life, was +after he had been arguing against Calvinism[41] with his minister and +was interrupted by an intolerable pang. "After all," he said, "of all +the 'isms, I know none so bad as rheumatism." My own last sight of him +was some time before, when we dined together at an inn; he had been on +circuit, for he stuck to his duties like a chief part of his +existence; and I remember it as the only occasion on which he ever +soiled his lips with slang--a thing he loathed. We were both Roberts; +and as we took our places at table, he addressed me with a twinkle: +"We are just what you would call two bob."[42] He offered me port, I +remember, as the proper milk of youth; spoke of "twenty-shilling +notes"; and throughout the meal was full of old-world pleasantry and +quaintness, like an ancient boy on a holiday. But what I recall +chiefly was his confession that he had never read _Othello_ to an +end.[43] Shakespeare was his continual study. He loved nothing better +than to display his knowledge and memory by adducing parallel passages +from Shakespeare, passages where the same word was employed, or the +same idea differently treated. But _Othello_ had beaten him. "That +noble gentleman and that noble lady--h'm--too painful for me." The +same night the boardings were covered with posters, "Burlesque of +_Othello_," and the contrast blazed up in my mind like a bonfire. An +unforgettable look it gave me into that kind man's soul. His +acquaintance was indeed a liberal and pious education.[44] All the +humanities were taught in that bare dining-room beside his gouty +footstool. He was a piece of good advice; he was himself the instance +that pointed and adorned his various talk. Nor could a young man have +found elsewhere a place so set apart from envy, fear, discontent, or +any of the passions that debase; a life so honest and composed; a soul +like an ancient violin, so subdued to harmony, responding to a touch +in music--as in that dining-room, with Mr. Hunter chatting at the +eleventh hour, under the shadow of eternity, fearless and gentle. + +The second class of old people are not anecdotic; they are rather +hearers than talkers, listening to the young with an amused and +critical attention. To have this sort of intercourse to perfection, I +think we must go to old ladies. Women are better hearers than men, to +begin with; they learn, I fear in anguish, to bear with the tedious +and infantile vanity of the other sex; and we will take more from a +woman than even from the oldest man in the way of biting comment. +Biting comment is the chief part, whether for profit or amusement, in +this business. The old lady that I have in my eye is a very caustic +speaker, her tongue, after years of practice, in absolute command, +whether for silence or attack. If she chance to dislike you, you will +be tempted to curse the malignity of age. But if you chance to please +even slightly, you will be listened to with a particular laughing +grace of sympathy, and from time to time chastised, as if in play, +with a parasol as heavy as a pole-axe. It requires a singular art, as +well as the vantage-ground of age, to deal these stunning corrections +among the coxcombs of the young. The pill is disguised in sugar of +wit; it is administered as a compliment--if you had not pleased, you +would not have been censured; it is a personal affair--a hyphen, _a +trait d'union,_[45] between you and your censor; age's philandering, +for her pleasure and your good. Incontestably the young man feels very +much of a fool; but he must be a perfect Malvolio,[46] sick with +self-love, if he cannot take an open buffet and still smile. The +correction of silence is what kills; when you know you have +transgressed, and your friend says nothing and avoids your eye. If a +man were made of gutta-percha, his heart would quail at such a moment. +But when the word is out, the worst is over; and a fellow with any +good-humour at all may pass through a perfect hail of witty criticism, +every bare place on his soul hit to the quick with a shrewd missile, +and reappear, as if after a dive, tingling with a fine moral reaction, +and ready, with a shrinking readiness, one-third loath, for a +repetition of the discipline. + +There are few women, not well sunned and ripened, and perhaps +toughened, who can thus stand apart from a man and say the true thing +with a kind of genial cruelty. Still there are some--and I doubt if +there be any man who can return the compliment. + +The class of men represented by Vernon Whitford in _The Egoist_,[47] +says, indeed, the true thing, but he says it stockishly. Vernon is a +noble fellow, and makes, by the way, a noble and instructive contrast +to Daniel Deronda; his conduct is the conduct of a man of honour; but +we agree with him, against our consciences, when he remorsefully +considers "its astonishing dryness." He is the best of men, but the +best of women manage to combine all that and something more. Their +very faults assist them; they are helped even by the falseness of +their position in life. They can retire into the fortified camp of the +proprieties. They can touch a subject and suppress it. The most adroit +employ a somewhat elaborate reserve as a means to be frank, much as +they wear gloves when they shake hands. But a man has the full +responsibility of his freedom, cannot evade a question, can scarce be +silent without rudeness, must answer for his words upon the moment, +and is not seldom left face to face with a damning choice, between the +more or less dishonourable wriggling of Deronda and the downright +woodenness of Vernon Whitford. + +But the superiority of women is perpetually menaced; they do not sit +throned on infirmities like the old; they are suitors as well as +sovereigns; their vanity is engaged, their affections are too apt to +follow; and hence much of the talk between the sexes degenerates into +something unworthy of the name. The desire to please, to shine with a +certain softness of lustre and to draw a fascinating picture of +oneself, banishes from conversation all that is sterling and most of +what is humorous. As soon as a strong current of mutual admiration +begins to flow, the human interest triumphs entirely over the +intellectual, and the commerce of words, consciously or not, becomes +secondary to the commercing of eyes. But even where this ridiculous +danger is avoided, and a man and woman converse equally and honestly, +something in their nature or their education falsifies the strain. An +instinct prompts them to agree; and where that is impossible, to agree +to differ. Should they neglect the warning, at the first suspicion of +an argument, they find themselves in different hemispheres. About any +point of business or conduct, any actual affair demanding settlement, +a woman will speak and listen, hear and answer arguments, not only +with natural wisdom, but with candour and logical honesty. But if the +subject of debate be something in the air, an abstraction, an excuse +for talk, a logical Aunt Sally, then may the male debater instantly +abandon hope; he may employ reason, adduce facts, be supple, be +smiling, be angry, all shall avail him nothing; what the woman said +first, that (unless she has forgotten it) she will repeat at the end. +Hence, at the very junctures when a talk between men grows brighter +and quicker and begins to promise to bear fruit, talk between the +sexes is menaced with dissolution. The point of difference, the point +of interest, is evaded by the brilliant woman, under a shower of +irrelevant conversational rockets; it is bridged by the discreet woman +with a rustle of silk, as she passes smoothly forward to the nearest +point of safety. And this sort of prestidigitation, juggling the +dangerous topic out of sight until it can be reintroduced with safety +in an altered shape, is a piece of tactics among the true drawing-room +queens. + +The drawing-room is, indeed, an artificial place; it is so by our +choice and for our sins. The subjection of women; the ideal imposed +upon them from the cradle; and worn, like a hair-shirt, with so much +constancy; their motherly, superior tenderness to man's vanity and +self-importance; their managing arts--the arts of a civilised slave +among good-natured barbarians--are all painful ingredients and all +help to falsify relations. It is not till we get clear of that amusing +artificial scene that genuine relations are founded, or ideas honestly +compared. In the garden, on the road or the hillside, or _tête-à-tête_ +and apart from interruptions, occasions arise when we may learn much +from any single woman; and nowhere more often than in, married life. +Marriage is one long conversation, chequered by disputes. The disputes +are valueless; they but ingrain the difference; the heroic heart of +woman prompting her at once to nail her colours to the mast. But in +the intervals, almost unconsciously and with no desire to shine, the +whole material of life is turned over and over, ideas are struck out +and shared, the two persons more and more adapt their notions one to +suit the other, and in process of time, without sound of trumpet, they +conduct each, other into new worlds of thought. + + +NOTES + +The two papers on _Talk and Talkers_ first appeared in the _Cornhill +Magazine_, for April and for August, 1882, Vol. XLV, pp. 410-418, Vol. +XLVI, pp. 151-158. The second paper had the title, _Talk and Talkers_. +(_A Sequel_.) For Stevenson's relations with the Editor, see our note +to _An Apology for Idlers_. With the publication of the second part, +Stevenson's connection with the _Cornhill_ ceased, as the magazine in +1883 passed from the hands of Leslie Stephen into those of James Payn. +The two papers next appeared in the volume _Memories and Portraits_ +(1887). The first was composed during the winter of 1881-2 at Davos in +the Alps, whither he had gone for his health, the second a few months +later. Writing to Charles Baxter, 22 Feb. 1882, he said, "In an +article which will appear sometime in the Cornhill, 'Talk and +Talkers,' and where I have full-lengthened the conversation of Bob, +Henley, Jenkin, Simpson, Symonds, and Gosse, I have at the end one +single word about yourself. It may amuse you to see it." (_Letters_, +I, 268.) Writing from Bournemouth, England, in February 1885 to Sidney +Colvin, he said, "See how my 'Talk and Talkers' went; every one liked +his own portrait, and shrieked about other people's; so it will be +with yours. If you are the least true to the essential, the sitter +will be pleased; very likely not his friends, and that from various +motives." (_Letters_, I, 413.) In a letter to his mother from Davos, +dated 9 April 1882, he gives the real names opposite each character in +the first paper, and adds, "But pray regard these as secrets." + +The art of conversation, like the art of letter-writing, reached its +highest point in the eighteenth century; cheap postage destroyed the +latter, and the hurly-burly of modern life has been almost too strong +for the former. In the French Salons of the eighteenth century, and in +the coffeehouses and drawing-rooms of England, good conversation was +regarded as a most desirable accomplishment, and was practised by many +with extraordinary wit and skill. Swift's satire on _Polite +Conversation_ (1738) as well as the number of times he discusses the +art of conversation in other places, shows how seriously he actually +regarded it. Stevenson, like many persons who are forced away from +active life, loved a good talk. Good writers are perhaps now more +common than good talkers. + + +FIRST PAPER + +[Note 1: _Sir, we had a good talk_. This remark was made by the Doctor +in 1768, the morning after a memorable meeting at the Crown and Anchor +tavern, where he had been engaged in conversation with seven or eight +notable literary men. "When I called upon Dr. Johnson next morning," +says Boswell, "I found him highly satisfied with his colloquial +prowess the preceding evening. 'Well,' said he, 'we had good talk.' +BOSWELL: 'Yes, sir, you tossed and gored several persons.'"] + +[Note 2: _As we must account_. This remark of Franklin's occurs in +_Poor Richard's Almanac_ for 1738.] + +[Note 3: _Flies ... in the amber_. Bartlett gives Martial.] + + "The bee enclosed and through the amber shown, + Seems buried in the juice which was his own." + +Bacon, Donne, Herrick, Pope and many other authors speak of flies in +amber.] + +[Note 4: _Fancy free_. See _Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act II, Sc. 2. + + "And the imperial votaress passed on, + In maiden meditation, fancy-free." + +This has been called the most graceful among all the countless +compliments received by Queen Elizabeth. The word "fancy" in the +Shaksperian quotation means simply "love."] + +[Note 5: _A spade a spade_. The phrase really comes from Aristophanes, +and is quoted by Plutarch, as Philip's description of the rudeness of +the Macedonians. _Kudos_. Greek word for "pride", used as slang by +school-boys in England.] + +[Note 6: _Trailing clouds of glory_. _Trailing with him clouds of +glory._ This passage, from Wordsworth's _Ode on the Intimations of +Immortality_ (1807), was a favorite one with Stevenson, and he quotes +it several times in various essays.] + +[Note 7: _The Flying Dutchman_. Wagner's _Der Fliegende Holländer_ +(1843), one of his earliest, shortest, and most beautiful operas. Many +German performances are given in the afternoon, and many German +theatres have pretty gardens attached, where, during the long +intervals (_grosse Pause_) between the acts, one may refresh himself +with food, drink, tobacco, and the open air. Germany and German art, +however, did not have anything like the influence on Stevenson exerted +by the French country, language, and literature.] + +[Note 8: _Theophrastus_. A Greek philosopher who died 287-B.C. His +most influential work was his _Characters_, which, subsequently +translated into many modern languages, produced a whole school of +literature known as the "Character Books," of which the best are +perhaps Sir Thomas Overbury's _Characters_ (1614), John Earle's +_Microcosmographie_ (1628), and the _Caractères_ (1688) of the great +French writer, La Bruyère.] + +[Note 9: _Consuelo, Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin, Steenie Steenson_. +_Consuelo_ is the title of one of the most notable novels by the +famous French authoress, George Sand, (1804-1876), whose real name was +Aurore Dupin. _Consuelo_ appeared in 1842.... _Clarissa_ (1747-8) was +the masterpiece of the novelist Samuel Richardson (1689-1761). This +great novel, in seven fat volumes, was a warm favorite with Stevenson, +as it has been with most English writers from Dr. Johnson to Macaulay. +Writing to a friend in December 1877, Stevenson said, "Please, if you +have not, and I don't suppose you have, already read it, institute a +search in all Melbourne for one of the rarest and certainly one of the +best of books--_Clarissa Harlowe._ For any man who takes an interest +in the problems of the two sexes, that book is a perfect mine of +documents. And it is written, sir, with the pen of an angel." +(_Letters_, I, 141.) Editions of _Clarissa_ are not so scarce now as +they were thirty years ago; several have appeared within the last few +years.... _Vautrin_ is one of the most remarkable characters in +several novels of Balzac; see especially _Pere Goriot_ (1834) ... +_Steenie Steenson_ in Scott's novel _Redgauntlet_ (1824).] + +[Note 10: _No human being, etc_. Stevenson loved action in novels, and +was impatient, as many readers are, when long-drawn descriptions of +scenery were introduced. Furthermore, the love for wild scenery has +become as fashionable as the love for music; the result being a very +general hypocrisy in assumed ecstatic raptures.] + +[Note 11: _You can keep no men long, nor Scotchmen at all_. Every +Scotchman is a born theologian. Franklin says in his _Autobiography_, +"I had caught this by reading my father's books of dispute on +Religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed seldom fall +into it, except lawyers, university men, and generally men of all +sorts who have been bred at Edinburgh." (Chap. I.)] + +[Note 12: _A court of love_. A mediaeval institution of chivalry, +where questions of knight-errantry, constancy in love, etc., were +discussed and for the time being, decided.] + +[Note 13: _Spring-Heel'd Jack_. This is Stevenson's cousin "Bob," +Robert Alan Mowbray Stevenson (1847-1900), an artist and later +Professor of Fine Arts at University College, Liverpool. He was one of +the best conversationalists in England. Stevenson said of him, + + "My cousin Bob, ... is the man likest and most unlike to me that I + have ever met.... What was specially his, and genuine, was his + faculty for turning over a subject in conversation. There was an + insane lucidity in his conclusions; a singular, humorous eloquence + in his language, and a power of method, bringing the whole of life + into the focus of the subject under hand; none of which I have ever + heard equalled or even approached by any other talker." (Balfour's + _Life of Stevenson_, I, 103. For further remarks on the cousin, see + note to page 104 of the _Life_.)] + +[Note 14: _From Shakespeare to Kant, from Kant to Major Dyngwell_. +Immanuel Kant, the foremost philosopher of the eighteenth century, +born at Königsberg in 1724, died 1804. His greatest work, the +_Critique of Pure Reason_ (_Kritick der reinen Vernunft_, 1781), +produced about the same revolutionary effect on metaphysics as that +produced by Copernicus in astronomy, or by Darwin in natural +science.... _Major Dyngwell I know not_.] + +[Note 15: _Burly_. Burly is Stevenson's friend, the poet William +Ernest Henley, who died in 1903. His sonnet on our author may be found +in the introduction to this book. Leslie Stephen introduced the two +men on 13 Feb. 1875, when Henley was in the hospital, and a very close +and intimate friendship began. Henley's personality was exceedingly +robust, in contrast with his health, and in his writings and talk he +delighted in shocking people. His philosophy of life is seen clearly +in his most characteristic poem: + + "Out of the night that covers me, + Black as the Pit from pole to pole, + I thank whatever Gods may be + For my unconquerable soul. + + In the fell clutch of circumstance + I have not winced nor cried aloud. + Under the bludgeonings of chance + My head is bloody, but unbowed. + + Beyond this place of wrath and tears + Looms but the Horror of the shade, + And yet the menace of the years + Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. + + It matters not how strait the gate, + How charged with punishments the scroll, + I am the master of my fate: + I am the Captain of my soul." + +After the publication of Balfour's _Life of Stevenson_ (1901), Mr. +Henley contributed to the _Pall Mall Magazine_ in December of that +year an article called _R.L.S._, which made a tremendous sensation. It +was regarded by many of Stevenson's friends as a wanton assault on his +private character. Whether justified or not, it certainly damaged +Henley more than the dead author. For further accounts of the +relations between the two men, see index to Balfour's _Life_, under +the title _Henley_.] + +[Note 16: _Pistol has been out-Pistol'd_. The burlesque character in +Shakspere's _King Henry IV_ and _V_.] + +[Note 17: _Cockshot_. (The Late Fleeming Jenkin.) As the note says, +this was Professor Fleeming Jenkin, who died 12 June 1885. He +exercised a great influence over the younger man. Stevenson paid the +debt of gratitude he owed him by writing the _Memoir of Fleeming +Jenkin_, published first in America by Charles Scribner's Sons, in +1887.] + +[Note 18: _Synthetic gusto; something of a Herbert Spencer_. The +English philosopher, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), whose many volumes +in various fields of science and metaphysics were called by their +author the _Synthetic Philosophy_. His most popular book is _First +Principles_ (1862), which has exercised an enormous influence in the +direction of agnosticism. His _Autobiography_, two big volumes, was +published in 1904, and fell rather flat.] + +[Note 19: _Like a thorough "glutton."_ This is still the slang of the +prize-ring. When a man is able to stand a great deal of punching +without losing consciousness or courage, he is called a "glutton for +punishment."] + +[Note 20: _Athelred_. Sir Walter Simpson, who was Stevenson's +companion on the _Inland Voyage_. For a good account of him, see +Balfour's _Life of Stevenson_, I, 106.] + +[Note 21: "_Dry light_." "The more perfect soul," says Heraclitus, "is +a dry light, which flies out of the body as lightning breaks from a +cloud." Plutarch, _Life of Romulus_.] + +[Note 22: _Opalstein_. This was the writer and art critic, John +Addington Symonds (1840-1893). Like Stevenson, he was afflicted with +lung trouble, and spent much of his time at Davos, Switzerland, where +a good part of his literary work was done. "The great feature of the +place for Stevenson was the presence of John Addington Symonds, who, +having come there three years before on his way to Egypt, had taken up +his abode in Davos, and was now building himself a house. To him the +newcomer bore a letter of introduction from Mr. Gosse. On November 5th +(1880) Louis wrote to his mother: 'We got to Davos last evening; and I +feel sure we shall like it greatly. I saw Symonds this morning, and +already like him; it is such sport to have a literary man around.... +Symonds is like a Tait to me; eternal interest in the same topics, +eternal cross-causewaying of special knowledge. That makes hours to +fly.' And a little later he wrote: 'Beyond its splendid climate, Davos +has but one advantage--the neighbourhood of J.A. Symonds. I dare say +you know his work, but the man is far more interesting.'" (Balfour's +_Life of Stevenson_, I, 214.) When Symonds first read the essay _Talk +and Talkers_, he pretended to be angry, and said, "Louis Stevenson, +what do you mean by describing me as a moonlight serenader?" (_Life_, +I, 233.)] + +[Note 23: _Proxime accessit_. "He comes very near to it."] + +[Note 24: _Sirens ... Sphinx Byronic ... Horatian ... Don Giovanni ... +Beethoven_. The Sirens were the famous women of Greek mythology, who +lured mariners to destruction by the overpowering sweetness of their +songs. How Ulysses outwitted them is well-known to all readers of the +_Odyssey_. One of Tennyson's earlier poems, _The Sea-Fairies_, deals +with the same theme, and indeed it has appeared constantly in the +literature of the world.... The _Sphinx_, a familiar subject in +Egyptian art, had a lion's body, the head of some other animal +(sometimes man) and wings. It was a symbolical figure. The most famous +example is of course the gigantic Sphinx near the Pyramids in Egypt, +which has proved to be an inexhaustible theme for speculation and for +poetry.... The theatrically tragic mood of _Byron_ is contrasted with +the easy-going, somewhat cynical epicureanism of Horace.... _Don +Giovanni_ (1787) the greatest opera of the great composer Mozart +(1756-1791), tells the same story told by Molière and so many others. +The French composer, Gounod, said that Mozart's _Don Giovanni_ was the +greatest musical composition that the world has ever seen.... +_Beethoven_ (1770-1827) occupies in general estimation about the same +place in the history of music that Shakspere fills in the history of +literature.] + +[Note 25: _Purcel_. This stands for Mr. Edmund Gosse (born 1849), a +poet and critic of some note, who writes pleasantly on many topics. +Many of Stevenson's letters were addressed to him. The two friends +first met in London in 1877, and the impression made by the novelist +on the critic may be seen in Mr. Gosse's book of essays, _Critical +Kitcats_ (1896).] + +[Note 26: _I know another person_. This is undoubtedly Stevenson's +friend Charles Baxter. See the quotation from a letter to him in our +introductory note to this essay. Compare what Stevenson elsewhere said +of him: "I cannot characterise a personality so unusual in the little +space that I can here afford. I have never known one of so mingled a +strain.... He is the only man I ever heard of who could give and take +in conversation with the wit and polish of style that we find in +Congreve's comedies." (Balfour's _Life of Stevenson_, I, 105.)] + +[Note 27: _Restoration comedy ... Congreve_. Restoration comedy is a +general name applied to the plays acted in England between 1660, the +year of the restoration of Charles II to the throne, and 1700, the +year of the death of Dryden. This comedy is as remarkable for the +brilliant wit of its dialogue as for its gross licentiousness. Perhaps +the wittiest dramatist of the whole group was William Congreve +(1670-1729).] + +[Note 28: _Falstaff ... Mercutio ... Sir Toby ... Cordelia ... +Protean_. Sir John Falstaff, who appears in Shakspere's _King Henry +IV_, and again in the _Merry Wives of Windsor_, is generally regarded +as the greatest comic character in literature.... _Mercutio_, the +friend of Romeo; one of the most marvellous of all Shakspere's +gentlemen. He is the Hotspur of comedy, and his taking off by Tybalt +"eclipsed the gaiety of nations."... _Sir Toby Belch_ is the genial +character in _Twelfth Night_, fond of singing and drinking, but no +fool withal. A conversation between Falstaff, Mercutio, and Sir Toby +would have taxed even the resources of a Shakspere, and would have +been intolerably excellent.... _Cordelia_, the daughter of King Lear, +whose sincerity and tenderness combined make her one of the greatest +women in the history of poetry.... _Protean_, something that +constantly assumes different forms. In mythology, Proteus was the son +of Oceanus and Tethys, whose special power was his faculty for +lightning changes. + + "Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea."--Wordsworth.] + +[Note 29: This sequel was called forth by an excellent article in _The +Spectator_, for 1 April 1882, and bore the title, _The Restfulness of +Talk_. The opening words of this article were as follows:--"The fine +paper on 'Talk,' by 'R.L.S.,' in the _Cornhill_ for April, a paper +which a century since would, by itself, have made a literary +reputation, does not cover the whole field."] + +[Note 30: _Valhalla_. In Scandinavian mythology, this was the heaven +for the brave who fell in battle. Here they had an eternity of +fighting and drinking.] + +[Note 31: _Meticulous_. Timid. From the Latin, _meticulosus_.] + +[Note 32: _Kindly_. Here used in the old sense of "natural." Compare +the Litany, "the kindly fruits of the earth."] + +[Note 33: "_The real long-lived things_." For Whitman, see our Note 12 +of Chapter III above.] + +[Note 34: _Robert Hunter, Sheriff of Dumbarton_. Hunter recognised the +genius in Stevenson long before the latter became known to the world, +and gave him much friendly encouragement. Dumbarton is a town about 16 +miles north-west of Glasgow, in Scotland. It contains a castle famous +in history and in literature.] + +[Note 35: _A novel by Miss Mather_. The name should be "Mathers." +Helen Mathers (Mrs. Henry Reeves), born in 1853, has written a long +series of novels, of which _My Lady Greensleeves, The Sin of Hagar_ +and _Venus Victrix_ are perhaps as well-known as they deserve to be.] + +[Note 36: _Chelsea_. Formerly a suburb, now a part of London, to the +S.W. It is famous for its literary associations. Swift, Thomas +Carlyle, Leigh Hunt, George Eliot, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and many +other distinguished writers lived in Chelsea at various times. It +contains a great hospital, to which Stevenson seems to refer here.] + +[Note 37: _Webster, Jeremy Taylor, Burke_. John Webster was one of the +Elizabethan dramatists, who, in felicity of diction, approached more +nearly to Shakspere than most of his contemporaries. His greatest play +was _The Duchess of Malfi_ (acted in 1616). Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), +often called the "Shakspere of Divines," was one of the greatest +pulpit orators in English history. His most famous work, still a +classic, is _Holy Living and Holy Dying_ (1650-1). Edmund Burke +(1729-1797) the parliamentary orator and author of the _Sublime and +Beautiful_ (1756), whose speeches on America are only too familiar to +American schoolboys.] + +[Note 38: _Junius_. No one knows yet who "Junius" was. In the _Public +Advertiser_ from 21 Jan. 1769 to 21 Jan. 1772, appeared letters signed +by this name, which made a sensation. The identity of the author was a +favorite matter for dispute during many years.] + +[Note 39: _David Hume_. The great Scotch skeptic and philosopher +(1711-1776).] + +[Note 40: _Shakespeare's fairy pieces with great scenic display._ So +far from this being a novelty to-day, it has become rather nauseating, +and there are evidences of a reaction in favour of _hearing_ Shakspere +on the stage rather than _seeing_ him.] + +[Note 41: _Calvinism_. If this word does not need a note yet, it +certainly will before long. The founder of the theological system +Calvinism was John Calvin, born in France in 1509. The chief doctrines +are Predestination, the Atonement (by which the blood of Christ +appeased the wrath of God toward those persons only who had been +previously chosen for salvation--on all others the sacrifice was +ineffectual), Original Sin, and the Perseverance of the Saints (once +saved, one could not fall from grace). These doctrines remained intact +in the creed of Presbyterian churches in America until a year or two +ago.] + +[Note 42: _Two bob_. A pun, for "bob" is slang for "shilling."] + +[Note 43: _Never read Othello to an end_. In _A Gossip on a Novel of +Dumas's,_ Stevenson confessed that there were four plays of Shakspere +he had never been able to read through, though for a different reason: +they were _Richard III, Henry VI, Titus Andronicus_, and _All's Well +that Ends Well_. It is still an open question as to whether or not +Shakspere wrote _Titus_.] + +[Note 44: _A liberal and pious education_. It was Sir Richard Steele +who made the phrase, in _The Tatler_, No. 49: "to love her (Lady +Elizabeth Hastings) was a liberal education."] + +[Note 45: _Trait d'union_. The French expression simply means +"hyphen": literally, "mark of connection."] + +[Note 46: _Malvolio_. The conceited but not wholly contemptible +character in _Twelfth Night_.] + +[Note 47: _The Egoist_. _The Egoist_ (1879) is one of the best-known +novels of Mr. George Meredith, born 1828. It had been published only a +very short time before Stevenson wrote this essay, so he is commenting +on one of the "newest" books. Stevenson's enthusiasm for Meredith knew +no bounds, and he regarded the _Egoist_ and _Richard Feverel_ (1859), +as among the masterpieces of English literature. _Daniel Deronda_, the +last and by no means the best novel of George Eliot (1820-1880), had +appeared in 1876.] + + +V + +A GOSSIP ON ROMANCE + +In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process +itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a +book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our +mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable +of sleep or of continuous thought. The words, if the book be eloquent, +should run thence-forward in our ears like the noise of breakers, and +the story, if it be a story, repeat itself in a thousand coloured +pictures to the eye. It was for this last pleasure that we read so +closely, and loved our books so dearly, in the bright, troubled period +of boyhood. Eloquence and thought, character and conversation, were +but obstacles to brush aside as we dug blithely after a certain sort +of incident, like a pig for truffles.[1] For my part, I liked a story +to begin with an old wayside inn where, "towards the close of the year +17--," several gentlemen in three-cocked hats were playing bowls. A +friend of mine preferred the Malabar coast[2] in a storm, with a ship +beating to windward, and a scowling fellow of Herculean proportions +striding along the beach; he, to be sure, was a pirate. This was +further afield than my home-keeping fancy loved to travel, and +designed altogether for a larger canvas than the tales that I +affected. Give me a highwayman and I was full to the brim; a +Jacobite[3] would do, but the highwayman was my favourite dish. I can +still hear that merry clatter of the hoofs along the moonlit lane; +night and the coming of day are still related in my mind with the +doings of John Rann or Jerry Abershaw;[4] and the words "postchaise," +the "great North road,"[5] "ostler," and "nag" still sound in my ears +like poetry. One and all, at least, and each with his particular +fancy, we read story-books in childhood; not for eloquence or +character or thought, but for some quality of the brute incident. That +quality was not mere bloodshed or wonder. Although each of these was +welcome in its place, the charm for the sake of which we read depended +on something different from either. My elders used to read novels +aloud; and I can still remember four different passages which I heard, +before I was ten, with the same keen and lasting pleasure. One I +discovered long afterwards to be the admirable opening of _What will +he Do with It?_[6] It was no wonder I was pleased with that. The other +three still remain unidentified. One is a little vague; it was about a +dark, tall house at night, and people groping on the stairs by the +light that escaped from the open door of a sickroom. In another, a +lover left a ball, and went walking in a cool, dewy park, whence he +could watch the lighted windows and the figures of the dancers as they +moved. This was the most sentimental impression I think I had yet +received, for a child is somewhat deaf to the sentimental. In the +last, a poet, who had been tragically wrangling with his wife, walked +forth on the sea-beach on a tempestuous night and witnessed the +horrors of a wreck.[7] Different as they are, all these early +favourites have a common note--they have all a touch of the romantic. + +Drama is the poetry of conduct, romance the poetry of circumstance. +The pleasure that we take in life is of two sorts--the active and the +passive. Now we are conscious of a great command over our destiny; +anon we are lifted up by circumstance, as by a breaking wave, and +dashed we know not how into the future. Now we are pleased by our +conduct, anon merely pleased by our surroundings. It would be hard to +say which of these modes of satisfaction is the more effective, but +the latter is surely the more constant. Conduct is three parts of +life,[8] they say; but I think they put it high. There is a vast deal +in life and letters both which is not immoral, but simply a-moral; +which either does not regard the human will at all, or deals with it +in obvious and healthy relations; where the interest turns, not upon +what a man shall choose to do, but on how he manages to do it; not on +the passionate slips and hesitations of the conscience, but on the +problems of the body and of the practical intelligence, in clean, +open-air adventure, the shock of arms or the diplomacy of life. With +such material as this it is impossible to build a play, for the +serious theatre exists solely on moral grounds, and is a standing +proof of the dissemination of the human conscience. But it is possible +to build, upon this ground, the most joyous of verses, and the most +lively, beautiful and buoyant tales. + +One thing in life calls for another; there is a fitness in events and +places. The sight of a pleasant arbour[9] puts it in our minds to sit +there. One place suggests work, another idleness, a third early rising +and long rambles in the dew. The effect of night, of any flowing +water, of lighted cities, of the peep of day, of ships, of the open +ocean, calls up in the mind an army of anonymous desires and +pleasures. Something, we feel, should happen; we know not what, yet we +proceed in quest of it. And many of the happiest hours of life fleet +by us in this vain attendance on the genius of the place and moment. +It is thus that tracts of young fir, and low rocks that reach into +deep soundings, particularly torture and delight me. Something must +have happened in such places, and perhaps ages back, to members of my +race; when I was a child I tried in vain to invent appropriate games +for them, as I still try, just as vainly, to fit them with the proper +story. Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry aloud +for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts +are set apart for ship-wreck. Other spots again seem to abide their +destiny, suggestive and impenetrable, "miching mallecho."[10] The inn +at Burford Bridge,[11] with its arbours and green garden and silent, +eddying river--though it is known already as the place where Keats +wrote some of his _Endymion_ and Nelson parted from his Emma--still +seems to wait the coming of the appropriate legend. Within these ivied +walls, behind these old green shutters, some further business +smoulders, waiting for its hour. The old Hawes Inn at the Queen's +Ferry makes a similar call upon my fancy. There it stands, apart from +the town, beside the pier, in a climate of its own, half inland, half +marine--in front, the ferry bubbling with the tide and the guard-ship +swinging to her anchor; behind, the old garden with the trees. +Americans seek it already for the sake of Lovel and Oldbuck, who dined +there at the beginning of the _Antiquary_. But you need not tell +me--that is not all; there is some story, unrecorded or not yet +complete, which must express the meaning of that inn more fully. So it +is with names and faces; so it is with incidents that are idle and +inconclusive in themselves, and yet seem like the beginning of some +quaint romance, which the all-careless author leaves untold. How many +of these romances have we not seen determine at their birth; how many +people have met us with a look of meaning in their eye, and sunk at +once into trivial acquaintances; to how many places have we not drawn +near, with express intimations--"here my destiny awaits me"--and we +have but dined there and passed on! I have lived both at the Hawes and +Burford in a perpetual flutter, on the heels, as it seemed, of some +adventure that should justify the place; but though the feeling had me +to bed at night and called me again at morning in one unbroken round +of pleasure and suspense, nothing befell me in either worth remark. +The man or the hour had not yet come; but some day, I think, a boat +shall put off from the Queen's Ferry, fraught with a dear cargo, and +some frosty night a horseman, on a tragic errand, rattle with his whip +upon the green shutters of the inn at Burford.[12] + +Now, this is one of the natural appetites with which any lively +literature has to count. The desire for knowledge, I had almost added +the desire for meat, is not more deeply seated than this demand for +fit and striking incident. The dullest of clowns tells, or tries to +tell, himself a story, as the feeblest of children uses invention in +his play; and even as the imaginative grown person, joining in the +game, at once enriches it with many delightful circumstances, the +great creative writer shows us the realisation and the apotheosis of +the day-dreams of common men. His stories may be nourished with the +realities of life, but their true mark is to satisfy the nameless +longings of the reader, and to obey the ideal laws of the day-dream. +The right kind of thing should fall out in the right kind of place; +the right kind of thing should follow; and not only the characters +talk aptly and think naturally, but all the circumstances in a tale +answer one to another like notes in music. The threads of a story come +from time to time together and make a picture in the web; the +characters fall from time to time into some attitude to each other or +to nature, which stamps the story home like an illustration. +Crusoe[13] recoiling from the footprint, Achilles shouting over +against the Trojans, Ulysses bending the great bow, Christian running +with his fingers in his ears, these are each culminating moments in +the legend, and each has been printed on the mind's eye forever. Other +things we may forget; we may forget the words, although they are +beautiful; we may forget the author's comment, although perhaps it was +ingenious and true; but these epoch-making scenes, which put the last +mark of truth upon a story and fill up, at one blow, our capacity for +sympathetic pleasure, we so adopt into the very bosom of our mind that +neither time nor tide can efface or weaken the impression. This, then, +is the plastic part of literature: to embody character, thought, or +emotion in some act or attitude that shall be remarkably striking to +the mind's eye. This is the highest and hardest thing to do in words; +the thing which, once accomplished, equally delights the schoolboy and +the sage, and makes, in its own right, the quality of epics. Compared +with this, all other purposes in literature, except the purely lyrical +or the purely philosophic, are bastard in nature, facile of execution, +and feeble in result. It is one thing to write about the inn at +Burford, or to describe scenery with the word-painters; it is quite +another to seize on the heart of the suggestion and make a country +famous with a legend. It is one thing to remark and to dissect, with +the most cutting logic, the complications of life, and of the human +spirit; it is quite another to give them body and blood in the story +of Ajax[14] or of Hamlet. The first is literature, but the second is +something besides, for it is likewise art. + +English people of the present day[15] are apt, I know not why, to look +somewhat down on incident, and reserve their admiration for the clink +of teaspoons and the accents of the curate. It is thought clever to +write a novel with no story at all, or at least with a very dull one. +Reduced even to the lowest terms, a certain interest can be +communicated by the art of narrative; a sense of human kinship +stirred; and a kind of monotonous fitness, comparable to the words and +air of _Sandy's Mull_, preserved among the infinitesimal occurrences +recorded. Some people work, in this manner, with even a strong touch. +Mr. Trollope's inimitable clergymen naturally arise to the mind in +this connection. But even Mr. Trollope[16] does not confine himself to +chronicling small beer. Mr. Crawley's collision with the Bishop's +wife, Mr. Melnette dallying in the deserted banquet-room, are typical +incidents, epically conceived, fitly embodying a crisis. Or again look +at Thackeray. If Rawdon Crawley's blow were not delivered, _Vanity +Fair_ would cease to be a work of art. That scene is the chief +ganglion of the tale; and the discharge of energy from Rawdon's fist +is the reward and consolation of the reader. The end of _Esmond_ is a +yet wider excursion from the author's customary fields; the scene at +Castlewood is pure Dumas;[17] the great and wily English borrower has +here borrowed from the great, unblushing French thief; as usual, he +has borrowed admirably well, and the breaking of the sword rounds off +the best of all his books with a manly, martial note. But perhaps +nothing can more strongly illustrate the necessity for marking +incident than to compare the living fame of _Robinson Crusoe_ with the +discredit of _Clarissa Harlowe_.[18] _Clarissa_ is a book of a far +more startling import, worked out, on a great canvas, with inimitable +courage and unflagging art. It contains wit, character, passion, plot, +conversations full of spirit and insight, letters sparkling with +unstrained humanity; and if the death of the heroine be somewhat +frigid and artificial, the last days of the hero strike the only note +of what we now call Byronism,[19] between the Elizabethans and Byron +himself. And yet a little story of a ship-wrecked sailor, with not a +tenth part of the style nor a thousandth part of the wisdom, exploring +none of the arcana of humanity and deprived of the perennial interest +of love, goes on from edition to edition, ever young, while _Clarissa_ +lies upon the shelves unread. A friend of mine, a Welsh blacksmith, +was twenty-five years old and could neither read nor write, when he +heard a chapter of _Robinson_ read aloud in a farm kitchen. Up to that +moment he had sat content, huddled in his ignorance, but he left that +farm another man. There were day-dreams, it appeared, divine +day-dreams, written and printed and bound, and to be bought for money +and enjoyed at pleasure. Down he sat that day, painfully learned to +read Welsh, and returned to borrow the book. It had been lost, nor +could he find another copy but one that was in English. Down he sat +once more, learned English, and at length, and with entire delight, +read _Robinson_. It is like the story of a love-chase. If he had heard +a letter from _Clarissa_, would he have been fired with the same +chivalrous ardour? I wonder. Yet _Clarissa_ has every quality that can +be shown in prose, one alone excepted--pictorial or picture-making +romance. While _Robinson_ depends, for the most part and with the +overwhelming majority of its readers, on the charm of circumstance. + +In the highest achievements of the art of words, the dramatic and the +pictorial, the moral and romantic interest, rise and fall together by +a common and organic law. Situation is animated with passion, passion +clothed upon with situation. Neither exists for itself, but each +inheres indissolubly with the other. This is high art; and not only +the highest art possible in words, but the highest art of all, since +it combines the greatest mass and diversity of the elements of truth +and pleasure. Such are epics, and the few prose tales that have the +epic weight. But as from a school of works, aping the creative, +incident and romance are ruthlessly discarded, so may character and +drama be omitted or subordinated to romance. There is one book, for +example, more generally loved than Shakespeare, that captivates in +childhood, and still delights in age--I mean the _Arabian +Nights_--where you shall look in vain for moral or for intellectual +interest. No human face or voice greets us among that wooden crowd of +kings and genies, sorcerers and beggarmen. Adventure, on the most +naked terms, furnishes forth the entertainment and is found enough. +Dumas approaches perhaps nearest of any modern to these Arabian +authors in the purely material charm of some of his romances. The +early part of _Monte Cristo_, down to the finding of the treasure, is +a piece of perfect story-telling; the man never breathed who shared +these moving incidents without a tremor; and yet Faria is a thing of +packthread and Dantès[20] little more than a name. The sequel is one +long-drawn error, gloomy, bloody, unnatural and dull; but as for these +early chapters, I do not believe there is another volume extant where +you can breathe the same unmingled atmosphere of romance. It is very +thin and light, to be sure, as on a high mountain; but it is brisk and +clear and sunny in proportion. I saw the other day, with envy, an old +and a very clever lady setting forth on a second or third voyage into +_Monte Cristo_. Here are stories which powerfully affect the reader, +which can be reperused at any age, and where the characters are no +more than puppets. The bony fist of the showman visibly propels them; +their springs are an open secret; their faces are of wood, their +bellies filled with bran; and yet we thrillingly partake of their +adventures. And the point may be illustrated still further. The last +interview between Lucy and Richard Feveril[21] is pure drama; more +than that, it is the strongest scene, since Shakespeare, in the +English tongue. Their first meeting by the river, on the other hand, +is pure romance; it has nothing to do with character; it might happen +to any other boy and maiden, and be none the less delightful for the +change. And yet I think he would be a bold man who should choose +between these passages. Thus, in the same book, we may have two +scenes, each capital in its order: in the one, human passion, deep +calling unto deep, shall utter its genuine voice; in the second, +according circumstances, like instruments in tune, shall build up a +trivial but desirable incident, such as we love to prefigure for +ourselves; and in the end, in spite of the critics, we may hesitate to +give the preference to either. The one may ask more genius--I do not +say it does; but at least the other dwells as clearly in the memory. + +True romantic art, again, makes a romance of all things. It reaches +into the highest abstraction of the ideal; it does not refuse the most +pedestrian realism. _Robinson Crusoe_ is as realistic as it is +romantic:[22] both qualities are pushed to an extreme, and neither +suffers. Nor does romance depend upon the material importance of the +incidents. To deal with strong and deadly elements, banditti, pirates, +war and murder, is to conjure with great names, and, in the event of +failure, to double the disgrace. The arrival of Haydn[23] and Consuelo +at the Canon's villa is a very trifling incident; yet we may read a +dozen boisterous stories from beginning to end, and not receive so +fresh and stirring an impression of adventure. It was the scene of +Crusoe at the wreck, if I remember rightly, that so bewitched my +blacksmith. Nor is the fact surprising. Every single article the +castaway recovers from the hulk is "a joy for ever"[24] to the man who +reads of them. They are the things that should be found, and the bare +enumeration stirs the blood. I found a glimmer of the same interest +the other day in a new book, _The Sailor's Sweetheart_,[25] by Mr. +Clark Russell. The whole business of the brig _Morning Star_ is very +rightly felt and spiritedly written; but the clothes, the books and +the money satisfy the reader's mind like things to eat. We are dealing +here with the old cut-and-dry legitimate interest of treasure trove. +But even treasure trove can be made dull. There are few people who +have not groaned under the plethora of goods that fell to the lot of +the _Swiss Family Robinson_,[26] that dreary family. They found +article after article, creature after creature, from milk kine to +pieces of ordnance, a whole consignment; but no informing taste had +presided over the selection, there was no smack or relish in the +invoice; and these riches left the fancy cold. The box of goods in +Verne's _Mysterious Island_[27] is another case in point: there was no +gusto and no glamour about that; it might have come from a shop. But +the two hundred and seventy-eight Australian sovereigns on board the +_Morning Star_ fell upon me like a surprise that I had expected; whole +vistas of secondary stories, besides the one in hand, radiated forth +from that discovery, as they radiate from a striking particular in +life; and I was made for the moment as happy as a reader has the right +to be. + +To come at all at the nature of this quality of romance, we must bear +in mind the peculiarity of our attitude to any art. No art produces +illusion; in the theatre we never forget that we are in the theatre; +and while we read a story, we sit wavering between two minds, now +merely clapping our hands at the merit of the performance, now +condescending to take an active part in fancy with the characters. +This last is the triumph of romantic story-telling: when the reader +consciously plays at being the hero, the scene is a good scene. Now in +character-studies the pleasure that we take is critical; we watch, we +approve, we smile at incongruities, we are moved to sudden heats of +sympathy with courage, suffering or virtue. But the characters are +still themselves, they are not us; the more clearly they are depicted, +the more widely do they stand away from us, the more imperiously do +they thrust us back into our place as a spectator. I cannot identify +myself with Rawdon Crawley or with Eugène de Rastignac,[28] for I have +scarce a hope or fear in common with them. It is not character but +incident that woos us out of our reserve. Something happens as we +desire to have it happen to ourselves; some situation, that we have +long dallied with in fancy, is realised in the story with enticing and +appropriate details. Then we forget the characters; then we push the +hero aside; then we plunge into the tale in our own person and bathe +in fresh experience; and then, and then only, do we say we have been +reading a romance. It is not only pleasurable things that we imagine +in our day-dreams; there are lights in which we are willing to +contemplate even the idea of our own death; ways in which it seems as +if it would amuse us to be cheated, wounded or calumniated. It is thus +possible to construct a story, even of tragic import, in which every +incident, detail and trick of circumstance shall be welcome to the +reader's thoughts. Fiction is to the grown man what play is to the +child; it is there that he changes the atmosphere and tenor of his +life; and when the game so chimes with his fancy that he can join in +it with all his heart, when it pleases him with every turn, when he +loves to recall it and dwells upon its recollection with entire +delight, fiction is called romance. + +Walter Scott is out and away the king of the romantics. _The Lady of +the Lake_ has no indisputable claim to be a poem beyond the inherent +fitness and desirability of the tale. It is just such a story as a man +would make up for himself, walking, in the best health and temper, +through just such scenes as it is laid in. Hence it is that a charm +dwells undefinable among these slovenly verses, as the unseen cuckoo +fills the mountains with his note; hence, even after we have flung the +book aside, the scenery and adventures remain present to the mind, a +new and green possession, not unworthy of that beautiful name, _The +Lady of the Lake_,[29] or that direct, romantic opening,--one of the +most spirited and poetical in literature,--"The stag at eve had drunk +his fill." The same strength and the same weaknesses adorn and +disfigure the novels. In that ill-written, ragged book, _The +Pirate_,[30] the figure of Cleveland--cast up by the sea on the +resounding foreland of Dunrossness--moving, with the blood on his +hands and the Spanish words on his tongue, among the simple +islanders--singing a serenade under the window of his Shetland +mistress--is conceived in the very highest manner of romantic +invention. The words of his song, "Through groves of palm," sung in +such a scene and by such a lover, clench, as in a nutshell, the +emphatic contrast upon which the tale is built. In _Guy +Mannering_,[31] again, every incident is delightful to the +imagination; and the scene when Harry Bertram lands at Ellangowan is a +model instance of romantic method. + +"'I remember the tune well,' he says, 'though I cannot guess what +should at present so strongly recall it to my memory.' He took his +flageolet from his pocket and played a simple melody. Apparently the +tune awoke the corresponding associations of a damsel.... She +immediately took up the song-- + + "'Are these the links of Forth, she said; + Or are they the crooks of Dee, + Or the bonny woods of Warroch Head + That I so fain would see?' + +"'By heaven!' said Bertram, 'it is the very ballad.'" + +On this quotation two remarks fall to be made. First, as an instance +of modern feeling for romance, this famous touch of the flageolet and +the old song is selected by Miss Braddon for omission. Miss Braddon's +idea[32] of a story, like Mrs. Todgers's idea of a wooden leg,[33] +were something strange to have expounded. As a matter of personal +experience, Meg's appearance to old Mr. Bertram on the road, the ruins +of Derncleugh, the scene of the flageolet, and the Dominie's +recognition of Harry, are the four strong notes that continue to ring +in the mind after the book is laid aside. The second point is still +more curious. The reader will observe a mark of excision in the +passage as quoted by me. Well, here is how it runs in the original: "a +damsel, who, close behind a fine spring about half-way down the +descent, and which had once supplied the castle with water, was +engaged in bleaching linen." A man who gave in such copy would be +discharged from the staff of a daily paper. Scott has forgotten to +prepare the reader for the presence of the "damsel"; he has forgotten +to mention the spring and its relation to the ruin; and now, face to +face with his omission, instead of trying back and starting fair, +crams all this matter, tail foremost, into a single shambling +sentence. It is not merely bad English, or bad style; it is abominably +bad narrative besides. + +Certainly the contrast is remarkable; and it is one that throws a +strong light upon the subject of this paper. For here we have a man of +the finest creative instinct touching with perfect certainty and charm +the romantic junctures of his story; and we find him utterly careless, +almost, it would seem, incapable, in the technical matter of style, +and not only frequently weak, but frequently wrong in points of drama. +In character parts, indeed, and particularly in the Scotch, he was +delicate, strong and truthful; but the trite, obliterated features of +too many of his heroes have already wearied two generations of +readers. At times his characters will speak with something far beyond +propriety with a true heroic note; but on the next page they will be +wading wearily forward with an ungrammatical and undramatic rigmarole +of words. The man who could conceive and write the character of +Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot,[34] as Scott has conceived and written +it, had not only splendid romantic, but splendid tragic gifts. How +comes it, then, that he could so often fob us off with languid, +inarticulate twaddle? + +It seems to me that the explanation is to be found in the very quality +of his surprising merits. As his books are play to the reader, so +were, they play to him. He conjured up the romantic with delight, but +he had hardly patience to describe it. He was a great day-dreamer, a +seer of fit and beautiful and humorous visions, but hardly a great +artist; hardly, in the manful sense, an artist at all. He pleased +himself, and so he pleases us. Of the pleasures of his art he tasted +fully; but of its toils and vigils and distresses never man knew less. +A great romantic--an idle child. + + +NOTES + +This essay first appeared in _Longman's Magazine_ for November 1882, +Vol. I, pp. 69-79. Five years later it was published in the volume +_Memories and Portraits_ (1887), followed by an article called _A +Humble Remonstrance_, which should really be read in connection with +this essay, as it is a continuation of the same line of thought. In +the eternal conflict between Romanticism and Realism, Stevenson was +heart and soul with the former, and fortunately he lived long enough +to see the practical effects of his own precepts and influence. When +he began to write, Realism in fiction seemed to have absolute control; +when he died, a tremendous reaction in favor of the historical romance +had already set in, that reached its climax with the death of the +century. Stevenson's share in this Romantic revival was greater than +that of any other English writer, and as an English review remarked, +if it had not been for him most of the new authors would have been +Howells and James young men. + +This paper was written at Davos in the winter of 1881-2, and in +February, writing to Henley, the author said, "I have just finished a +paper, 'A Gossip on Romance,' in which I have tried to do, very +popularly, about one-half of the matter you wanted me to try. In a +way, I have found an answer to the question. But the subject was +hardly fit for so chatty a paper, and it is all loose ends. If ever I +do my book on the Art of Literature, I shall gather them together and +be clear." (_Letters_, I, 269). On Dec. 8, 1884--the same month in +which _A Humble Remonstrance_ was printed, Stevenson wrote an +interesting letter to Henry James, whose views on the art of fiction +were naturally contrary to those of his friend. See _Letters_, I, 402. + +[Note 1: _Like a pig for truffles_. See the _Epilogue_ to Browning's +_Pacchiarotto etc_., Stanza XVIII:--"Your product is--truffles, you +hunt with a pig!"] + +[Note 2: _The Malabar coast_. A part of India.] + +[Note 3: _Jacobite_. After James II was driven from the throne in +1688, his supporters and those of his descendants were called +Jacobites. Jacobus is the Latin for James.] + +[Note 4: _John Rann or Jerry Abershaw_. John Rann I cannot find. Louis +Jeremiah (or Jerry) Abershaw was a highway robber, who infested the +roads near London; he was hung in 1795, when scarcely over twenty-one +years old.] + +[Note 5: "_Great North road_." The road that runs on the east of +England up to Edinburgh. Stevenson yielded to the charm that these +words had for him, for he began a romance with the title, _The Great +North Road_, which however, he never finished. It was published as a +fragment in _The Illustrated London News_, in 1895.] + +[Note 6: _What will he Do with It_? One of Bulwer-Lytton's novels, +published in 1858.] + +[Note 7: Since traced by many obliging correspondents to the gallery +of Charles Kingsley.] + +[Note 8: _Conduct is three parts of life_. In _Literature and Dogma_ +(1873) Matthew Arnold asserted with great emphasis, that conduct was +three-fourths of life.] + +[Note 9: _The sight of a pleasant arbour_. Possibly a reminiscence of +the arbour in _Pilgrim's Progress_, where Christian fell asleep, and +lost his roll. "Now about the midway to the top of the hill was a +pleasant arbour."] + +[Note 10: "_Miching mallecho." Hamlet's_ description of the meaning of +the Dumb Show in the play-scene, Act III, Sc. 2. "Hidden +treachery"--see any annotated edition of _Hamlet_.] + +[Note 11: _Burford Bridge ... Keats ... Endymion ... Nelson ... Emma +... the old Hawes Inn at the Queen's Ferry_. Burford Bridge is close +to Dorking in Surrey, England: in the old inn, Keats wrote a part of +his poem _Endymion_ (published 1818). The room where he composed is +still on exhibition. Two letters by Keats, which are exceedingly +important to the student of his art as a poet, were written from +Burford Bridge in November 1817. See Colvin's edition of Keats's +Letters, pp. 40-46.... "Emma" is Lady Hamilton, whom Admiral Nelson +loved.... Queen's Ferry (properly _Queensferry_) is on the Firth of +Forth, Scotland. See a few lines below in the text, where Stevenson +gives the reference to the opening pages of Scott's novel the +_Antiquary_, which begins in the old inn at this place. See also page +105 of the text, and Stevenson's foot note, where he declares that he +did make use of Queensferry in his novel _Kidnapped_ (1886)(Chapter +XXVI).] + +[Note 12: Since the above was written I have tried to launch the boat +with my own hands in _Kidnapped_. Some day, perhaps, I may try a +rattle at the shutters.] + +[Note 13: _Crusoe ... Achilles ... Ulysses ... Christian_. When +Robinson Crusoe saw the footprint on the sand, and realised he was not +alone.... To a reader of to-day the great hero Achilles seems to be +all bluster and selfish childishness; the true gentleman of the Iliad +is _Hector_.... When Ulysses returned home in the _Odyssey_, he bent +with ease the bow that had proved too much for all the suitors of his +lonely and faithful wife Penelope.... Christian "had not run far from +his own door when his wife and children, perceiving it, began to cry +after him to return; but the man put his fingers in his ears and ran +on crying, 'Life! Life! eternal Life!'"_--Pilgrim's Progress_.] + +[Note 14: _]_. The Greek heavy-weight in Homer's _Iliad_. + +[Note 15: _English people of the present day_. This was absolutely +true in 1882. But in 1892 a complete revolution in taste had set in, +and many of the most hardened realists were forced to write wild +romances, or lose their grip on the public. At this time, Stevenson +naturally had no idea how powerfully his as yet unwritten romances +were to affect the literary market.] + +[Note 16: _Mr. Trollope's ... chronicling small beer ... Rawdon +Crawley's blow_. Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) wrote an immense number +of mildly entertaining novels concerned with the lives and ambitions +of English clergymen and their satellites. His best-known book is +probably _Barchester Towers_ (1857).... _Chronicling small beer_ is +the "lame and impotent conclusion" with which Iago finishes his poem +(_Othello_, Act II, Sc. I).... _Rawdon Crawley's blow_ refers to the +most memorable scene in Thackeray's great novel, _Vanity Fair_ +(1847-8), where Rawdon Crawley, the husband of Becky Sharp, strikes +Lord Steyne in the face (Chap. LIII). After writing this powerful +scene, Thackeray was in a state of tremendous excitement, and slapping +his knee, said, "That's Genius!"] + +[Note 17: _The end of Esmond ... pure Dumas_. Thackeray's romance +_Henry Esmond_ (1852) is regarded by many critics as the greatest work +of fiction in the English language; Stevenson here calls it "the best +of all his books." The scene Stevenson refers to is where Henry is +finally cured of his love for Beatrix, and theatrically breaks his +sword in the presence of the royal admirer (Book III, Chap. 13). +Alexander Dumas (1803-1370), author of _Monte Cristo_ and _Les Trois +Mousquetaires_. Stevenson playfully calls him "the great, unblushing +French thief"; all he means is that Dumas never hesitated to +appropriate material wherever he found it, and work it into his +romances.] + +[Note 18: _The living fame of Robinson Crusoe with the discredit of +Clarissa Harlowe_. A strong contrast between the romance of incident +and the analytical novel. For remarks on _Clarissa_, see our Note 9 of +Chapter IV above.] + +[Note 19: _Byronism_. About the time Lord Byron was publishing _Childe +Harold_ (1812-1818) a tremendous wave of romantic melancholy swept +over all the countries of Europe. Innumerable poems and romances +dealing with mysteriously-sad heroes were written in imitation of +Byron; and young authors wore low, rolling collars, and tried to look +depressed. See Gautier's _Histoire du Romantisme._ Now the death of +Lovelace (in a duel) in Richardson's _Clarissa_, was pitched in +exactly the Byronic key, though at that time Byron had not been +born.... The Elizabethans were of course thoroughly romantic.] + +[Note 20: _Faria_..._Dantès_. Characters in Dumas's _Monte Cristo_ +(1841-5).] + +[Note 21: _Lucy and Richard Feveril_. Usually spelled "Feverel." +Stevenson strangely enough, was always a bad speller. The reference +here is to one of Stevenson's favorite novels _The Ordeal of Richard +Feverel_ (1859) by George Meredith. Stevenson's idolatrous praise of +this particular scene in the novel is curious, for no greater contrast +in English literary style can be found than that between Meredith's +and his own. For another reference by Stevenson to the older novelist, +see our Note 47 of Chapter IV above.] + +[Note 22: _Robinson Crusoe is as realistic as it is romantic_. Therein +lies precisely the charm of this book for boyish minds; the details +are given with such candour that it seems as if they must all be true. +At heart, Defoe was an intense realist, as well as the first English +novelist.] + +[Note 23: _The arrival of Haydn_. For a note on George Sand's novel +_Consuelo_ see Note 9 of Chapter IV above.] + +[Note 24: _A joy for ever_. The first line of Keats's poem _Endymion_ +is "A thing of beauty is a joy forever."] + +[Note 25: _The Sailor's Sweetheart_. Mr. W. Clark Russell, born in New +York in 1844, has written many popular tales of the sea. His first +success was _The Wreck of the Grosvenor_ (1876); _The Sailor's +Sweetheart_, more properly, _A Sailor's Sweetheart_, was published in +1877.] + +[Note 26: _Swiss Family Robinson_. A German story, _Der schweizerische +Robinson_ (1812) by J.D. Wyss (1743-1818). This story is not so +popular as it used to be.] + +[Note 27: _Verne's Mysterious Island_. Jules Verne, who died at +Amiens, France, in 1904, wrote an immense number of romances, which, +translated into many languages, have delighted young readers all over +the world. _The Mysterious Island_ is a sequel to _Twenty Thousand +Leagues under the Sea_.] + +[Note 28: _Eugène de Rastignac_. A character in Balzac's novel, Père +Goriot.] + +[Note 29: _The Lady of the Lake_. This poem, published in 1810, is as +Stevenson implies, not so much a poem as a rattling good story told in +rime.] + +[Note 30: _The Pirate_. A novel by Scott, published in 1821. It was +the cause of Cooper's writing _The Pilot_. See Cooper's preface to the +latter novel.] + +[Note 31: _Guy Mannering_. Also by Scott. Published 1815.] + +[Note 32: _Miss Braddon's idea_. Mary Elizabeth Braddon (Maxwell), +born in 1837, published her first novel, _The Trail of the Serpent_, +in 1860. She has written a large number of sensational works of +fiction, very popular with an uncritical class of readers. Perhaps her +best-known book is _Lady Audley's Secret_ (1862). It would be well for +the student to refer to the scenes in _Guy Mannering_ which Stevenson +calls the "_Four strong notes_."] + +[Note 33: _Mrs. Todgers's idea of a wooden leg_. Mrs. Todgers is a +character in Dickens's novel, _Martin Chuzzlewit_ (1843-4).] + +[Note 34: _Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot_. A character in the +_Antiquary_ (1816).] + + +VI + +THE CHARACTER OF DOGS + +The civilisation, the manners, and the morals of dog-kind[1] are to a +great extent subordinated to those of his ancestral master, man. This +animal, in many ways so superior, has accepted a position of +inferiority, shares the domestic life, and humours the caprices of the +tyrant. But the potentate, like the British in India, pays small +regard to the character of his willing client, judges him with +listless glances, and condemns him in a byword. Listless have been the +looks of his admirers, who have exhausted idle terms of praise, and +buried the poor soul below exaggerations. And yet more idle and, if +possible, more unintelligent has been the attitude of his express +detractors; those who are very fond of dogs "but in their proper +place"; who say "poo' fellow, poo' fellow," and are themselves far +poorer; who whet the knife of the vivisectionist or heat his oven;[2] +who are not ashamed to admire "the creature's instinct"; and flying +far beyond folly, have dared to resuscitate the theory of animal +machines. The "dog's instinct" and the "automaton-dog," in this age of +psychology and science, sound like strange anachronisms. An automaton +he certainly is; a machine working independently of his control, the +heart like the mill-wheel, keeping all in motion, and the +consciousness, like a person shut in the mill garret, enjoying the +view out of the window and shaken by the thunder of the stones; an +automaton in one corner of which a living spirit is confined: an +automaton like man. Instinct again he certainly possesses. Inherited +aptitudes are his, inherited frailties. Some things he at once views +and understands, as though he were awakened from a sleep, as though he +came "trailing clouds of glory."[3] But with him, as with man, the +field of instinct is limited; its utterances are obscure and +occasional; and about the far larger part of life both the dog and his +master must conduct their steps by deduction and observation. + +The leading distinction[4] between dog and man, after and perhaps +before the different duration of their lives, is that the one can +speak and that the other cannot. The absence of the power of speech +confines the dog in the development of his intellect. It hinders him +from many speculations, for words are the beginning of metaphysic. At +the same blow it saves him from many superstitions, and his silence +has won for him a higher name for virtue than his conduct justifies. +The faults of the dog[5] are many. He is vainer than man, singularly +greedy of notice, singularly intolerant of ridicule, suspicious like +the deaf, jealous to the degree of frenzy, and radically devoid of +truth. The day of an intelligent small dog is passed in the +manufacture and the laborious communication of falsehood; he lies with +his tail, he lies with his eye, he lies with his protesting paw; and +when he rattles his dish or scratches at the door his purpose is other +than appears. But he has some apology to offer for the vice. Many of +the signs which form his dialect have come to bear an arbitrary +meaning, clearly understood both by his master and himself; yet when a +new want arises he must either invent a new vehicle of meaning or +wrest an old one to a different purpose; and this necessity frequently +recurring must tend to lessen his idea of the sanctity of symbols. +Meanwhile the dog is clear in his own conscience, and draws, with a +human nicety, the distinction between formal and essential truth. Of +his punning perversions, his legitimate dexterity with symbols, he is +even vain; but when he has told and been detected in a lie, there is +not a hair upon his body but confesses guilt. To a dog of gentlemanly +feeling theft and falsehood are disgraceful vices. The canine, like +the human, gentleman demands in his misdemeanours Montaigne's "_je ne +sais quoi de genéréux_."[6] He is never more than half ashamed of +having barked or bitten; and for those faults into which he has been +led by the desire to shine before a lady of his race, he retains, even +under physical correction, a share of pride. But to be caught lying, +if he understands it, instantly uncurls his fleece. + +Just as among dull observers he preserves a name for truth, the dog +has been credited with modesty. It is amazing how the use of language +blunts the faculties of man---that because vainglory finds no vent in +words, creatures supplied with eyes have been unable to detect a fault +so gross and obvious. If a small spoiled dog were suddenly to be +endowed with speech, he would prate interminably, and still about +himself; when we had friends, we should be forced to lock him in a +garret; and what with his whining jealousies and his foible for +falsehood, in a year's time he would have gone far to weary out our +love. I was about to compare him to Sir Willoughby Patterne,[7] but +the Patternes have a manlier sense of their own merits; and the +parallel, besides, is ready. Hans Christian Andersen,[8] as we behold +him in his startling memoirs, thrilling from top to toe with an +excruciating vanity, and scouting even along the street for shadows of +offence--here was the talking dog. + +It is just this rage for consideration that has betrayed the dog into +his satellite position as the friend of man. The cat, an animal of +franker appetites, preserves his independence. But the dog, with one +eye ever on the audience, has been wheedled into slavery, and praised +and patted into the renunciation of his nature. Once he ceased +hunting[9] and became man's plate-licker, the Rubicon was crossed. +Thenceforth he was a gentleman of leisure; and except the few whom we +keep working, the whole race grew more and more self-conscious, +mannered and affected. The number of things that a small dog does +naturally is strangely small. Enjoying better spirits and not crushed +under material cares, he is far more theatrical than average man. His +whole life, if he be a dog of any pretension to gallantry, is spent in +a vain show, and in the hot pursuit of admiration. Take out your puppy +for a walk, and you will find the little ball of fur clumsy, stupid, +bewildered, but natural. Let but a few months pass, and when you +repeat the process you will find nature buried in convention. He will +do nothing plainly; but the simplest processes of our material life +will all be bent into the forms of an elaborate and mysterious +etiquette. Instinct, says the fool, has awakened. But it is not so. +Some dogs--some, at the very least--if they be kept separate from +others, remain quite natural; and these, when at length they meet with +a companion of experience, and have the game explained to them, +distinguish themselves by the severity of their devotion to its rules. +I wish I were allowed to tell a story which would radiantly illuminate +the point; but men, like dogs, have an elaborate and mysterious +etiquette. It is their bond of sympathy that both are the children of +convention. + +The person, man or dog, who has a conscience is eternally condemned to +some degree of humbug; the sense of the law in their members[10] +fatally precipitates either towards a frozen and affected bearing. And +the converse is true; and in the elaborate and conscious manners of +the dog, moral opinions and the love of the ideal stand confessed. To +follow for ten minutes in the street some swaggering, canine cavalier, +is to receive a lesson in dramatic art and the cultured conduct of the +body; in every act and gesture you see him true to a refined +conception; and the dullest cur, beholding him, pricks up his ear and +proceeds to imitate and parody that charming ease. For to be a +high-mannered and high-minded gentleman, careless, affable, and gay, +is the inborn pretension of the dog. The large dog, so much lazier, so +much more weighed upon with matter, so majestic in repose, so +beautiful in effort, is born with the dramatic means to wholly +represent the part. And it is more pathetic and perhaps more +instructive to consider the small dog in his conscientious and +imperfect efforts to outdo Sir Philip Sidney.[11] For the ideal of the +dog is feudal and religious;[12] the ever-present polytheism, the +whip-bearing Olympus of mankind, rules them on the one hand; on the +other, their singular difference of size and strength among themselves +effectually prevents the appearance of the democratic notion. Or we +might more exactly compare their society to the curious spectacle +presented by a school--ushers, monitors, and big and little +boys--qualified by one circumstance, the introduction of the other +sex. In each, we should observe a somewhat similar tension of manner, +and somewhat similar points of honour. In each the larger animal keeps +a contemptuous good humour; in each the smaller annoys him with +wasp-like impudence, certain of practical immunity; in each we shall +find a double life producing double characters, and an excursive and +noisy heroism combined with a fair amount of practical timidity. I +have known dogs, and I have known school heroes that, set aside the +fur, could hardly have been told apart; and if we desire to understand +the chivalry of old, we must turn to the school playfields or the +dungheap where the dogs are trooping. + +Woman, with the dog, has been long enfranchised. Incessant massacre of +female innocents has changed the proportions of the sexes and +perverted their relations. Thus, when we regard the manners of the +dog, we see a romantic and monogamous animal, once perhaps as delicate +as the cat, at war with impossible conditions. Man has much to answer +for; and the part he plays is yet more damnable and parlous[13] than +Corin's in the eyes of Touchstone. But his intervention has at least +created an imperial situation for the rare surviving ladies. In that +society they reign without a rival: conscious queens; and in the only +instance of a canine wife-beater that has ever fallen under my notice, +the criminal was somewhat excused by the circumstances of his story. +He is a little, very alert, well-bred, intelligent Skye, as black as a +hat, with a wet bramble for a nose and two cairn-gorms[14] for eyes. +To the human observer, he is decidedly well-looking; but to the ladies +of his race he seems abhorrent. A thorough elaborate gentleman, of the +plume and sword-knot order, he was born with the nice sense of +gallantry to women. He took at their hands the most outrageous +treatment; I have heard him bleating like a sheep, I have seen him +streaming blood, and his ear tattered like a regimental banner; and +yet he would scorn to make reprisals. Nay more, when a human lady +upraised the contumelious whip against the very dame who had been so +cruelly misusing him, my little great-heart gave but one hoarse cry +and fell upon the tyrant tooth and nail. This is the tale of a soul's +tragedy.[15] After three years of unavailing chivalry, he suddenly, in +one hour, threw off the yoke of obligation; had he been Shakespeare he +would then have written _Troilus and Cressida_[16] to brand the +offending sex; but being only a little dog, he began to bite them. The +surprise of the ladies whom he attacked indicated the monstrosity of +his offence; but he had fairly beaten off his better angel, fairly +committed moral suicide; for almost in the same hour, throwing aside +the last rags of decency, he proceeded to attack the aged also. The +fact is worth remark, showing as it does, that ethical laws are common +both to dogs and men; and that with both a single deliberate violation +of the conscience loosens all. "But while the lamp holds on to burn," +says the paraphrase, "the greatest sinner may return."[17] I have been +cheered to see symptoms of effectual penitence in my sweet ruffian; +and by the handling that he accepted uncomplainingly the other day +from an indignant fair one, I begin to hope the period of _Sturm und +Drang_[18] is closed. + +All these little gentlemen are subtle casuists. The duty to the female +dog is plain; but where competing duties rise, down they will sit and +study them out like Jesuit confessors.[19] I knew another little Skye, +somewhat plain in manner and appearance, but a creature compact of +amiability and solid wisdom. His family going abroad for a winter, he +was received for that period by an uncle in the same city. The winter +over, his own family home again, and his own house (of which he was +very proud) reopened, he found himself in a dilemma between two +conflicting duties of loyalty and gratitude. His old friends were not +to be neglected, but it seemed hardly decent to desert the new. This +was how he solved the problem. Every morning, as soon as the door was +opened, off posted Coolin to his uncle's, visited the children in the +nursery, saluted the whole family, and was back at home in time for +breakfast and his bit of fish. Nor was this done without a sacrifice +on his part, sharply felt; for he had to forego the particular honour +and jewel of his day--his morning's walk with my father. And perhaps, +from this cause, he gradually wearied of and relaxed the practice, and +at length returned entirely to his ancient habits. But the same +decision served him in another and more distressing case of divided +duty, which happened not long after. He was not at all a kitchen dog, +but the cook had nursed him with unusual kindness during the +distemper; and though he did not adore her as he adored my +father--although (born snob) he was critically conscious of her +position as "only a servant"--he still cherished for her a special +gratitude. Well, the cook left, and retired some streets away to +lodgings of her own; and there was Coolin in precisely the same +situation with any young gentleman who has had the inestimable benefit +of a faithful nurse. The canine conscience did not solve the problem +with a pound of tea at Christmas. No longer content to pay a flying +visit, it was the whole forenoon that he dedicated to his solitary +friend. And so, day by day, he continued to comfort her solitude until +(for some reason which I could never understand and cannot approve) he +was kept locked up to break him of the graceful habit. Here, it is not +the similarity, it is the difference, that is worthy of remark; the +clearly marked degrees of gratitude and the proportional duration of +his visits. Anything further removed from instinct it were hard to +fancy; and one is even stirred to a certain impatience with a +character so destitute of spontaneity, so passionless in justice, and +so priggishly obedient to the voice of reason. + +There are not many dogs like this good Coolin. and not many people. +But the type is one well marked, both in the human and the canine +family. Gallantry was not his aim, but a solid and somewhat oppressive +respectability. He was a sworn foe to the unusual and the conspicuous, +a praiser of the golden mean, a kind of city uncle modified by +Cheeryble.[20] And as he was precise and conscientious in all the +steps of his own blameless course, he looked for the same precision +and an even greater gravity in the bearing of his deity, my father. It +was no sinecure to be Coolin's idol; he was exacting like a rigid +parent; and at every sign of levity in the man whom he respected, he +announced loudly the death of virtue and the proximate fall of the +pillars of the earth. + +I have called him a snob; but all dogs are so, though in varying +degrees. It is hard to follow their snobbery among themselves; for +though I think we can perceive distinctions of rank, we cannot grasp +what is the criterion. Thus in Edinburgh, in a good part of the town, +there were several distinct societies or clubs that met in the morning +to--the phrase is technical--to "rake the backets"[21] in a troop. A +friend of mine, the master of three dogs, was one day surprised to +observe that they had left one club and joined another; but whether it +was a rise or a fall, and the result of an invitation or an expulsion, +was more than he could guess. And this illustrates pointedly our +ignorance of the real life of dogs, their social ambitions and their +social hierarchies. At least, in their dealings with men they are not +only conscious of sex, but of the difference of station. And that in +the most snobbish manner; for the poor man's dog is not offended by +the notice of the rich, and keeps all his ugly feeling for those +poorer or more ragged than his master. And again, for every station +they have an ideal of behaviour, to which the master, under pain of +derogation, will do wisely to conform. How often has not a cold glance +of an eye informed me that my dog was disappointed; and how much more +gladly would he not have taken a beating than to be thus wounded in +the seat of piety! + +I knew one disrespectable dog. He was far liker a cat; cared little or +nothing for men, with whom he merely coexisted as we do with cattle, +and was entirely devoted to the art of poaching. A house would not +hold him, and to live in a town was what he refused. He led, I +believe, a life of troubled but genuine pleasure, and perished beyond +all question in a trap. But this was an exception, a marked reversion +to the ancestral type; like the hairy human infant. The true dog of +the nineteenth century, to judge by the remainder of my fairly large +acquaintance, is in love with respectability. A street-dog was once +adopted by a lady. While still an Arab, he had done as Arabs do, +gambolling in the mud, charging into butchers' stalls, a cat-hunter, a +sturdy beggar, a common rogue and vagabond; but with his rise into +society he laid aside these inconsistent pleasures. He stole no more, +he hunted no more cats; and conscious of his collar he ignored his old +companions. Yet the canine upper class was never brought to recognize +the upstart, and from that hour, except for human countenance, he was +alone. Friendless, shorn of his sports and the habits of a lifetime, +he still lived in a glory of happiness, content with his acquired +respectability, and with no care but to support it solemnly. Are we to +condemn or praise this self-made dog! We praise his human brother. And +thus to conquer vicious habits is as rare with dogs as with men. With +the more part, for all their scruple-mongering and moral thought, the +vices that are born with them remain invincible throughout; and they +live all their years, glorying in their virtues, but still the slaves +of their defects. Thus the sage Coolin was a thief to the last; among +a thousand peccadilloes, a whole goose and a whole cold leg of mutton +lay upon his conscience; but Woggs,[22] whose soul's shipwreck in the +matter of gallantry I have recounted above, has only twice been known +to steal, and has often nobly conquered the temptation. The eighth is +his favourite commandment. There is something painfully human in these +unequal virtues and mortal frailties of the best. Still more painful +is the bearing of those "stammering professors"[23] in the house of +sickness and under the terror of death. It is beyond a doubt to me +that, somehow or other, the dog connects together, or confounds, the +uneasiness of sickness and the consciousness of guilt. To the pains of +the body he often adds the tortures of the conscience; and at these +times his haggard protestations form, in regard to the human deathbed, +a dreadful parody or parallel. + +I once supposed that I had found an inverse relation between the +double etiquette which dogs obey; and that those who were most +addicted to the showy street life among other dogs were less careful +in the practice of home virtues for the tyrant man. But the female +dog, that mass of carneying[24] affectations, shines equally in either +sphere; rules her rough posse of attendant swains with unwearying tact +and gusto; and with her master and mistress pushes the arts of +insinuation to their crowning point. The attention of man and the +regard of other dogs flatter (it would thus appear) the same +sensibility; but perhaps, if we could read the canine heart, they +would be found to flatter it in very marked degrees. Dogs live with +man as courtiers round a monarch, steeped in the flattery of his +notice and enriched with sinecures. To push their favour in this world +of pickings and caresses is, perhaps, the business of their lives; and +their joys may lie outside. I am in despair at our persistent +ignorance. I read in the lives of our companions the same processes of +reason, the same antique and fatal conflicts of the right against the +wrong, and of unbitted nature with too rigid custom; I see them with +our weaknesses, vain, false, inconstant against appetite, and with our +one stalk of virtue, devoted to the dream of an ideal; and yet, as +they hurry by me on the street with tail in air, or come singly to +solicit my regard, I must own the secret purport of their lives is +still inscrutable to man. Is man the friend, or is he the patron only? +Have they indeed forgotten nature's voice? or are those moments +snatched from courtiership when they touch noses with the tinker's +mongrel, the brief reward and pleasure of their artificial lives? +Doubtless, when man shares with his dog the toils of a profession and +the pleasures of an art, as with the shepherd or the poacher, the +affection warms and strengthens till it fills the soul. But doubtless, +also, the masters are, in many cases, the object of a merely +interested cultus, sitting aloft like Louis Quatorze,[25] giving and +receiving flattery and favour; and the dogs, like the majority of men, +have but forgotten their true existence and become the dupes of their +ambition. + + +NOTES + +This article originally appeared in _The English Illustrated Magazine_ +for May 1883, Vol. I, pp. 300-305. It was accompanied with +illustrations by Randolph Caldecott. The essay was later included in +the volume _Memories and Portraits_ (1887). + +The astonishing fidelity and devotion of the dog to his master have +certainly been in part repaid by men of letters in all times. A +valuable essay might be written on the Dog's Place in Literature; in +the poetry of the East, hundreds of years before Christ, the dog's +faithfulness was more than once celebrated. One of the most marvellous +passages in Homer's _Odyssey_ is the recognition of the ragged Ulysses +by the noble old dog, who dies of joy. In recent years, since the +publication of Dr. John Brown's _Rab and his Friends_ (1858), the dog +has approached an apotheosis. Among innumerable sketches and stories +with canine heroes may be mentioned Bret Harte's extraordinary +portrait of _Boonder_: M. Maeterlinck's essay on dogs: Richard Harding +Davis's _The Bar Sinister_: Jack London's _The Call of the Wild_: and +best of all, Alfred Ollivant's splendid story _Bob, Son of Battle_ +(1898) which has every indication of becoming an English classic. It +is a pity that dogs cannot read. + +[Note 1: _The morals of dog-kind_. Stevenson discusses this subject +again in his essay _Pulvis et Umbra_ (1888).] + +[Note 2: _Who whet the knife of the vivisectionist or heat his oven_. +Stevenson was so sympathetic by nature that once, seeing a man beating +a dog, he interfered, crying, "It's not your dog, it's God's dog." On +the subject of vivisection, however his biographer says: "It must be +laid to the credit of his reason and the firm balance of his judgment +that although vivisection was a subject he could not endure even to +have mentioned, yet, with all his imagination and sensibility, he +never ranged himself among the opponents of this method of inquiry, +provided, of course, it was limited, as in England, with the utmost +rigour possible."--Balfour's _Life_, II, 217. The two most powerful +opponents of vivisection among Stevenson's contemporaries were Ruskin +and Browning. The former resigned the Professorship of Poetry at +Oxford because vivisection was permitted at the University: and the +latter in two poems _Tray_ and _Arcades Ambo_ treated the +vivisectionists with contempt, implying that they were cowards. In +Bernard Shaw's clever novel _Cashel Byron's Profession_, The +prize-fighter maintains that his profession is more honorable than +that of a man who bakes dogs in an oven. This novel, by the way, which +he read in the winter of 1887-88, made an extraordinary impression on +Stevenson; he recognised its author's originality and cleverness +immediately, and was filled with curiosity as to what kind of person +this Shaw might be. "Tell me more of the inimitable author," he cried. +It is a pity that Stevenson did not live to see the vogue of Shaw as a +dramatist, for the latter's early novels produced practically no +impression on the public. See Stevenson's highly entertaining letter +to William Archer, _Letters_, II, 107.] + +[Note 3: "_Trailing clouds of glory_." _Trailing with him clouds of +glory._ This passage, from Wordsworth's _Ode on the Intimations of +Immortality_ (1807), was a favorite one with Stevenson, and he quotes +it several times in various essays.] + +[Note 4: _The leading distinction_. Those who know dogs will fully +agree with Stevenson here.] + +[Note 5: _The faults of the dog_. All lovers of dogs will by no means +agree with Stevenson in his enumeration of canine sins.] + +[Note 6: _Montaigne's "je ne sais quoi de généreux_." A bit of +generosity. Montaigne's _Essays_ (1580) had an enormous influence on +Stevenson, as they have had on nearly all literary men for three +hundred years. See his article in this volume, _Books Which Save +Influenced Me_, and the discussion of the "personal essay" in our +general Introduction.] + +[Note 7: _Sir Willoughby Patterne_. Again a character in Meredith's +_Egoist_. See our Note 47 of Chapter IV above.] + +[Note 8: _Hans Christian Andersen_. A Danish writer of prodigious +popularity: born 1805, died 1875. His books were translated into many +languages. The "memoirs" Stevenson refers to, were called _The Story +of My Life_, in which the author brought the narrative only so far as +1847: it was, however, finished by another hand. He is well known to +juvenile readers by his _Stories for Children_.] + +[Note 9: _Once he ceased hunting and became man's plate-licker, the +Rubicon was crossed_. For a reversion to type, where the plate-licker +goes back to hunting, see Mr. London's powerful story, _The Call of +the Wild_. ... The "Rubicon" was a small stream separating Cisalpine +Gaul from Italy. Caesar crossed it in 49 B. C, thus taking a decisive +step in deliberately advancing into Italy. "Plutarch, in his life of +Caesar, makes quite a dramatic scene out of the crossing of the +Rubicon. Caesar does not even mention it."--B. Perrin's ed. of +_Caesar's Civil War_, p. 142.] + +[Note 10: _The law in their members. Romans_, VII, 23. "But I see +another law in my members."] + +[Note 11: _Sir Philip Sidney_. The stainless Knight of Elizabeth's +Court, born 1554, died 1586. The pages of history afford no better +illustration of the "gentleman and the scholar." Poet, romancer, +critic, courtier, soldier, his beautiful life was crowned by a noble +death.] + +[Note 12: _The ideal of the dog is feudal and religious_. Maeterlinck +says the dog is the only being who has found and is absolutely sure of +his God.] + +[Note 13: _Damnable and parlous than Corin's in the eyes of +Touchstone_. See _As You Like It_, Act III, Sc. 2. "Sin is damnation: +Thou art in a parlous state, shepherd."] + +[Note 14: _Cairn-gorms_. Brown or yellow quartz, found in the mountain +of Cairngorm, Scotland, over 4000 feet high. Stevenson's own dog, +"Woggs" or "Bogue," was a black Skye terrier, whom the author seems +here to have in mind. See Note 20 of this Chapter, below, "Woggs."] + +[Note 15: _A Soul's Tragedy_. The title of a tragedy by Browning, +published in 1846.] + +[Note 16: _Troilus and Cressida_. One of the most bitter and cynical +plays ever written; practically never seen on the English stage, it +was successfully revived at Berlin, in September 1904.] + +[Note 17: "_While the lamp holds on to burn ... the greatest sinner +may return_." From a hymn by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), beginning + + "Life is the time to serve the Lord, + The time to insure the great reward; + And while the lamp holds out to burn, + The vilest sinner may return." + +Although this stanza has no remarkable merit, many of Watts's hymns +are genuine poetry.] + +[Note 18: _Sturm und Drang_. This German expression has been well +translated "Storm and Stress." It was applied to the literature in +Germany (and in Europe) the latter part of the XVIIIth century, which +was characterised by emotional excess of all kinds. A typical book of +the period was Goethe's _Sorrows of Werther_ (_Die Leiden des jungen +Werthers_, 1774). The expression is also often applied to the period +of adolescence in the life of the individual.] + +[Note 19: _Jesuit confessors_. The Jesuits, or Society of Jesus, one +of the most famous religious orders of the Roman Catholic Church, was +founded in 1534 by Ignatius of Loyola and a few others.] + +[Note 20: _Modified by Cheeryble_. The Cheeryble Brothers are +characters in Dickens's _Nicholas Nickleby_ (1838-9). Dickens said in +his Preface, "Those who take an interest in this tale, will be glad to +learn that the BROTHERS CHEERYBLE live: that their liberal charity, +their singleness of heart, their noble nature ... are no creations of +the Author's brain."] + +[Note 21: "_Rake the backets_." The "backet" is a small, square, +wooden trough generally used for ashes and waste.] + +[Note 22: _Woggs_ (_and Note: Walter, Watty, Woggy, Woggs, Wog, and +lastly Bogue; under which last name he fell in battle some twelve +months ago. Glory was his aim and he attained it; for his icon, by the +hand of Caldecott, now lies among the treasures of the nation.) +Stevenson's well-beloved black Skye terrier. See Balfour's _Life_, I, +212, 223. Stevenson was so deeply affected by Woggs's death that he +could not bear ever to own another dog. A Latin inscription was placed +on his tombstone.... This Note was added in 1887, when the essay +appeared in _Memories and Portraits_. "Icon" means image (cf. +_iconoclast_); the word has lately become familiar through the +religious use of icons by the Russians in the war with Japan. Randolph +Caldecott (1846-1886) was a well-known artist and prominent +contributor of sketches to illustrated magazines.] + +[Note 23: "_Stammering Professors_." A "professor" here means simply a +professing Christian. Stevenson alludes to the fact that dogs howl +fearfully if some one in the house is dying.] + +[Note 24: "_Carneying_." This means coaxing, wheedling.] + +[Note 25: _Louis Quatorze_. Louis XIV of France, who died in 1715, +after a reign of 72 years, the longest reign of any monarch in +history. His absolutism and complete disregard of the people +unconsciously prepared the way for the French Revolution in 1789.] + + +VII + +A COLLEGE MAGAZINE + +I + +All through my boyhood and youth, I was known and pointed out for the +pattern of an idler;[1] and yet I was always busy on my own private +end, which was to learn to write. I kept always two books in my +pocket, one to read, one to write in. As I walked, my mind was busy +fitting what I saw with appropriate words; when I sat by the roadside, +I would either read, or a pencil and a penny version-book would be in +my hand, to note down the features of the scene or commemorate some +halting stanzas. Thus I lived with words. And what I thus wrote was +for no ulterior use, it was written consciously for practice. It was +not so much that I wished to be an author (though I wished that too) +as that I had vowed that I would learn to write. That was a +proficiency that tempted me; and I practised to acquire it, as men +learn to whittle, in a wager with myself. Description was the +principal field of my exercise; for to any one with senses there is +always something worth describing, and town and country are but one +continuous subject. But I worked in other ways also; often accompanied +my walks with dramatic dialogues, in which I played many parts; and +often exercised myself in writing down conversations from memory. + +This was all excellent, no doubt; so were the diaries I sometimes +tried to keep, but always and very speedily discarded, finding them a +school of posturing[2] and melancholy self-deception. And yet this was +not the most efficient part of my training. Good though it was, it +only taught me (so far as I have learned them at all) the lower and +less intellectual elements of the art, the choice of the essential +note and the right word: things that to a happier constitution had +perhaps come by nature. And regarded as training, it had one grave +defect; for it set me no standard of achievement. So that there was +perhaps more profit, as there was certainly more effort, in my secret +labours at home. Whenever I read a book or a passage that particularly +pleased me, in which a thing was said or an effect rendered with +propriety, in which there was either some conspicuous force or some +happy distinction in the style, I must sit down at once and set myself +to ape that quality. I was unsuccessful, and I knew it; and tried +again, and was again unsuccessful and always unsuccessful; but at +least in these vain bouts, I got some practice in rhythm, in harmony, +in construction and the co-ordination of parts. I have thus played the +sedulous ape to Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, +to Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Baudelaire and to +Obermann.[3] I remember one of these monkey tricks, which was called +_The Vanity of Morals_: it was to have had a second part, _The Vanity +of Knowledge_; and as I had neither morality nor scholarship, the +names were apt; but the second part was never attempted, and the first +part was written (which is my reason for recalling it, ghostlike, from +its ashes) no less than three times: first in the manner of Hazlitt, +second in the manner of Ruskin,[4] who had cast on me a passing spell, +and third, in a laborious pasticcio of Sir Thomas Browne. So with my +other works: _Cain_, an epic, was (save the mark!) an imitation of +_Sordello: Robin Hood_, a tale in verse, took an eclectic middle +course among the fields of Keats, Chaucer and Morris: in _Monmouth,_ a +tragedy, I reclined on the bosom of Mr. Swinburne; in my innumerable +gouty-footed lyrics, I followed many masters; in the first draft of +_The King's Pardon_, a tragedy, I was on the trail of no lesser man +than John Webster; in the second draft of the same piece, with +staggering versatility, I had shifted my allegiance to Congreve, and +of course conceived my fable in a less serious vein--for it was not +Congreve's verse, it was his exquisite prose, that I admired and +sought to copy. Even at the age of thirteen I had tried to do justice +to the inhabitants of the famous city of Peebles[5] in the style of +the _Book of Snobs_. So I might go on for ever, through all my +abortive novels, and down to my later plays,[6] of which I think more +tenderly, for they were not only conceived at first under the bracing +influence of old Dumas, but have met with, resurrections: one, +strangely bettered by another hand, came on the stage itself and was +played by bodily actors; the other, originally known as _Semiramis: a +Tragedy_, I have observed on bookstalls under the _alias_ of _Prince +Otto_. But enough has been said to show by what arts of impersonation, +and in what purely ventriloquial efforts I first saw my words on +paper. + +That, like it or not, is the way to learn to write; whether I have +profited or not, that is the way. It was so Keats learned,[7] and +there was never a finer temperament for literature than Keats's; it +was so, if we could trace it out, that all men have learned; and that +is why a revival of letters is always accompanied or heralded by a +cast back to earlier and fresher models. Perhaps I hear someone cry +out: But this is not the way to be original! It is not; nor is there +any way but to be born so. Nor yet, if you are born original, is there +anything in this training that shall clip the wings of your +originality. There can be none more original than Montaigne,[8] +neither could any be more unlike Cicero; yet no craftsman can fail to +see how much the one must have tried in his time to imitate the other. +Burns[9] is the very type of a prime force in letters: he was of all +men the most imitative. Shakespeare himself, the imperial, proceeds +directly from a school. It is only from a school that we can expect to +have good writers; it is almost invariably from a school that great +writers, these lawless exceptions, issue. Nor is there anything here +that should astonish the considerate. Before he can tell what cadences +he truly prefers, the student should have tried all that are possible; +before he can choose and preserve a fitting key of words, he should +long have practised the literary scales;[10] and it is only after +years of such gymnastic that he can sit down at last, legions of words +swarming to his call, dozens of turns of phrase simultaneously bidding +for his choice, and he himself knowing what he wants to do and (within +the narrow limit of a man's ability) able to do it. + +And it is the great point of these imitations that there still shines +beyond the student's reach his inimitable model. Let him try as he +please, he is still sure of failure; and it is a very old and a very +true saying that failure is the only highroad to success. I must have +had some disposition to learn; for I clear-sightedly condemned my own +performances. I liked doing them indeed; but when they were done, I +could see they were rubbish. In consequence, I very rarely showed them +even to my friends; and such friends as I chose to be my confidants I +must have chosen well, for they had the friendliness to be quite plain +with me. "Padding," said one. Another wrote: "I cannot understand why +you do lyrics so badly." No more could I! Thrice I put myself in the +way of a more authoritative rebuff, by sending a paper to a magazine. +These were returned; and I was not surprised nor even pained. If they +had not been looked at, as (like all amateurs) I suspected was the +case, there was no good in repeating the experiment; if they had been +looked at--well, then I had not yet learned to write, and I must keep +on learning and living. Lastly, I had a piece of good fortune which is +the occasion of this paper, and by which I was able to see my +literature in print, and to measure experimentally how far I stood +from the favour of the public. + + +II + +The Speculative Society is a body of some antiquity, and has counted +among its members Scott, Brougham, Jeffrey, Horner, Benjamin Constant, +Robert Emmet, and many a legal and local celebrity besides. By an +accident, variously explained, it has its rooms in the very buildings +of the University of Edinburgh: a hall, Turkey-carpeted, hung with +pictures, looking, when lighted up at night with fire and candle, like +some goodly dining-room; a passage-like library, walled with books in +their wire cages; and a corridor with a fireplace, benches, a table, +many prints of famous members, and a mural tablet to the virtues of a +former secretary. Here a member can warm himself and loaf and read; +here, in defiance of Senatus-consults, he can smoke. The Senatus looks +askance at these privileges; looks even with a somewhat vinegar aspect +on the whole society; which argues a lack of proportion in the learned +mind, for the world, we may be sure, will prize far higher this haunt +of dead lions than all the living dogs of the professorate. + +I sat one December morning in the library of the Speculative; a very +humble-minded youth, though it was a virtue I never had much credit +for; yet proud of my privileges as a member of the Spec.; proud of the +pipe I was smoking in the teeth of the Senatus; and in particular, +proud of being in the next room to three very distinguished students, +who were then conversing beside the corridor fire. One of these has +now his name on the back of several volumes, and his voice, I learn, +is influential in the law courts. Of the death of the second, you have +just been reading what I had to say. And the third also has escaped +out of that battle of life in which be fought so hard, it may be so +unwisely. They were all three, as I have said, notable students; but +this was the most conspicuous. Wealthy, handsome, ambitious, +adventurous, diplomatic, a reader of Balzac, and of all men that I +have known, the most like to one of Balzac's characters, he led a +life, and was attended by an ill fortune, that could be properly set +forth only in the _Comédie Humaine_. He had then his eye on +Parliament; and soon after the time of which I write, he made a showy +speech at a political dinner, was cried up to heaven next day in the +_Courant_, and the day after was dashed lower than earth with a charge +of plagiarism in the _Scotsman_. Report would have it (I daresay, very +wrongly) that he was betrayed by one in whom he particularly trusted, +and that the author of the charge had learned its truth from his own +lips. Thus, at least, he was up one day on a pinnacle, admired and +envied by all; and the next, though still but a boy, he was publicly +disgraced. The blow would have broken a less finely tempered spirit; +and even him I suppose it rendered reckless; for he took flight to +London, and there, in a fast club, disposed of the bulk of his +considerable patrimony in the space of one winter. For years +thereafter he lived I know not how; always well dressed, always in +good hotels and good society, always with empty pockets. The charm of +his manner may have stood him in good stead; but though my own manners +are very agreeable, I have never found in them a source of livelihood; +and to explain the miracle of his continued existence, I must fall +back upon the theory of the philosopher, that in his case, as in all +of the same kind, "there was a suffering relative in the background." +From this genteel eclipse he reappeared upon the scene, and presently +sought me out in the character of a generous editor. It is in this +part that I best remember him; tall, slender, with a not ungraceful +stoop; looking quite like a refined gentleman, and quite like an +urbane adventurer; smiling with an engaging ambiguity; cocking at you +one peaked eyebrow with a great appearance of finesse; speaking low +and sweet and thick, with a touch of burr; telling strange tales with +singular deliberation and, to a patient listener, excellent effect. +After all these ups and downs, he seemed still, like the rich student +that he was of yore, to breathe of money; seemed still perfectly sure +of himself and certain of his end. Yet he was then upon the brink of +his last overthrow. He had set himself to found the strangest thing in +our society: one of those periodical sheets from which men suppose +themselves to learn opinions; in which young gentlemen from the +universities are encouraged, at so much a line, to garble facts, +insult foreign nations and calumniate private individuals; and which +are now the source of glory, so that if a man's name be often enough +printed there, he becomes a kind of demigod; and people will pardon +him when he talks back and forth, as they do for Mr. Gladstone; and +crowd him to suffocation on railway platforms, as they did the other +day to General Boulanger; and buy his literary works, as I hope you +have just done for me. Our fathers, when they were upon some great +enterprise, would sacrifice a life; building, it may be, a favourite +slave into the foundations of their palace. It was with his own life +that my companion disarmed the envy of the gods. He fought his paper +single-handed; trusting no one, for he was something of a cynic; up +early and down late, for he was nothing of a sluggard; daily +earwigging influential men, for he was a master of ingratiation. In +that slender and silken fellow there must have been a rare vein of +courage, that he should thus have died at his employment; and +doubtless ambition spoke loudly in his ear, and doubtless love also, +for it seems there was a marriage in his view had he succeeded. But he +died, and his paper died after him; and of all this grace, and tact, +and courage, it must seem to our blind eyes as if there had come +literally nothing. + +These three students sat, as I was saying, in the corridor, under the +mural tablet that records the virtues of Machean, the former +secretary. We would often smile at that ineloquent memorial, and +thought it a poor thing to come into the world at all and leave no +more behind one than Machean. And yet of these three, two are gone and +have left less; and this book, perhaps, when it is old and foxy, and +some one picks it up in a corner of a book-shop, and glances through +it, smiling at the old, graceless turns of speech, and perhaps for the +love of _Alma Mater_ (which may be still extant and flourishing) buys +it, not without haggling, for some pence--this book may alone preserve +a memory of James Walter Ferrier and Robert Glasgow Brown. + +Their thoughts ran very differently on that December morning; they +were all on fire with ambition; and when they had called me in to +them, and made me a sharer in their design, I too became drunken with +pride and hope. We were to found a University magazine. A pair of +little, active brothers--Livingstone by name, great skippers on the +foot, great rubbers of the hands, who kept a book-shop over against +the University building--had been debauched to play the part of +publishers. We four were to be conjunct editors, and, what was the +main point of the concern, to print our own works; while, by every +rule of arithmetic--that flatterer of credulity--the adventure must +succeed and bring great profit. Well, well: it was a bright vision. I +went home that morning walking upon air. To have been chosen by these +three distinguished students was to me the most unspeakable advance; +it was my first draught of consideration; it reconciled me to myself +and to my fellow-men; and as I steered round the railings at the Tron, +I could not withhold my lips from smiling publicly. Yet, in the bottom +of my heart, I knew that magazine would be a grim fiasco; I knew it +would not be worth reading; I knew, even if it were, that nobody would +read it; and I kept wondering, how I should be able, upon my compact +income of twelve pounds per annum, payable monthly, to meet my share +in the expense. It was a comfortable thought to me that I had a +father. + +The magazine appeared, in a yellow cover which was the best part of +it, for at least it was unassuming; it ran four months in undisturbed +obscurity, and died without a gasp. The first number was edited by all +four of us with prodigious bustle; the second fell principally into +the hands of Ferrier and me; the third I edited alone; and it has long +been a solemn question who it was that edited the fourth. It would +perhaps be still more difficult to say who read it. Poor yellow sheet, +that looked so hopefully in the Livingstones' window! Poor, harmless +paper, that might have gone to print a _Shakespeare_ on, and was +instead so clumsily defaced with nonsense! And, shall I say, Poor +Editors? I cannot pity myself, to whom it was all pure gain. It was no +news to me, but only the wholesome confirmation of my judgment, when +the magazine struggled into half-birth, and instantly sickened and +subsided into night. I had sent a copy to the lady with whom my heart +was at that time somewhat engaged, and who did all that in her lay to +break it; and she, with some tact, passed over the gift and my +cherished contributions in silence. I will not say that I was pleased +at this; but I will tell her now, if by any chance she takes up the +work of her former servant, that I thought the better of her taste. I +cleared the decks after this lost engagement; had the necessary +interview with my father, which passed off not amiss; paid over my +share of the expense to the two little, active brothers, who rubbed +their hands as much, but methought skipped rather less than formerly, +having perhaps, these two also, embarked upon the enterprise with some +graceful illusions; and then, reviewing the whole episode, I told +myself that the time was not yet ripe, nor the man ready; and to work +I went again with my penny version-books, having fallen back in one +day from the printed author to the manuscript student. + + +III + +From this defunct periodical I am going to reprint one of my own +papers. The poor little piece is all tail-foremost. I have done my +best to straighten its array, I have pruned it fearlessly, and it +remains invertebrate and wordy. No self-respecting magazine would +print the thing; and here you behold it in a bound volume, not for any +worth of its own, but for the sake of the man whom it purports dimly +to represent and some of whose sayings it preserves; so that in this +volume of Memories and Portraits, Robert Young, the Swanston gardener, +may stand alongside of John Todd, the Swanston shepherd. Not that John +and Robert drew very close together in their lives; for John was +rough, he smelt of the windy brae; and Robert was gentle, and smacked +of the garden in the hollow. Perhaps it is to my shame that I liked +John the better of the two; he had grit and dash, and that salt of the +Old Adam that pleases men with any savage inheritance of blood; and he +was a wayfarer besides, and took my gipsy fancy. But however that may +be, and however Robert's profile may be blurred in the boyish sketch +that follows, he was a man of a most quaint and beautiful nature, +whom, if it were possible to recast a piece of work so old, I should +like well to draw again with a maturer touch. And as I think of him +and of John, I wonder in what other country two such men would be +found dwelling together, in a hamlet of some twenty cottages, in the +woody fold of a green hill. + + +NOTES + +This article made its first appearance in the volume _Memories and +Portraits_ (1887). It was divided into three parts. The interest of +this essay is almost wholly autobiographical, telling us, with more or +less seriousness, how its author "learned to write." After Stevenson +became famous, this confession attracted universal attention, and is +now one of the best-known of all his compositions. Many youthful +aspirants for literary fame have been moved by its perusal to adopt a +similar method; but while Stevenson's system, if faithfully followed, +would doubtless correct many faults, it would not of itself enable a +man to write another _Aes Triplex_ or _Treasure Island_. It was +genius, not industry, that placed Stevenson in English literature. + +[Note 1: _Pattern of an Idler_. See his essay in this volume, _An +Apology for Idlers_.] + +[Note 2: _A school of posturing_. It is a nice psychological question +whether or not it is possible for one to write a diary with absolutely +no thought of its being read by some one else.] + +[Note 3: _Hazlitt, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Browne, to +Defoe, to Hawthorne, to Montaigne, to Beaudelaire, and to Obermann_. +For Hazlitt, see Note 19 of Chapter II above. Charles Lamb +(1775-1834), author of the delightful _Essays of Elia_ (1822-24), the +_tone_ of which book is often echoed in Stevenson's essays.... Sir +Thomas Browne (1605-1682), regarded by many as the greatest prose +writer of the seventeenth century; his best books are _Religio Medici_ +(the religion of a physician), 1642, and _Urn Burial_ (1658). The +300th anniversary of his birth was widely celebrated on 19 October +1905.... Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), an enormously prolific writer; his +first important novel, _Robinson Crusoe_ (followed by many others) was +written when he was 58 years old.... Nathaniel Hawthorne, the greatest +literary artist that America has ever produced was born 4 July 1804, +and died in 1864. His best novel (the finest in American Literature) +was _The Scarlet Letter_ (1850).... Montaigne. Stevenson was heavily +indebted to this wonderful genius. See Note 4 of Chapter VI above. ... +Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) wrote the brilliant and decadent +_Fleurs du Mai_ (1857-61). He translated Poe into French, and was +partly responsible for Poe's immense vogue in France. Had Baudelaire's +French followers possessed the power of their master, we should be +able to forgive them for writing.... Obermann. _Òbermann_ is the title +of a story by the French writer Etienne Pivert de Sénancour +(1770-1846). The book, which appeared in 1804, is full of vague +melancholy, in the Werther fashion, and is more of a psychological +study than a novel. In recent years, _Amiel's Journal_ and +Sienkiewicz's _Without Dogma_ belong to the same school of literature. +Matthew Arnold was fond of quoting from Sénancour's _Obermann_.] + +[Note 4: _Ruskin ... Pasticcio ... Bordello ... Morris ... Swinburne +... John Webster ... Congreve_. These names exhibit the astonishing +variety of Stevenson's youthful attempts, for they represent nearly +every possible style of composition. John Ruskin (1819-1900) exercised +a greater influence thirty years ago than he does to-day Stevenson in +the words "a passing spell," seems to apologise for having been +influenced by him at all.... Pasticcio, an Italian word, meaning +"pie": Swinburne uses it in the sense of "medley," which is about the +same as its significance here. _Sordello_: Stevenson naturally +accompanies this statement with a parenthetical exclamation. +_Sordello_, published in 1840, is the most obscure of all Browning's +poems, and for many years blinded critics to the poet's genius. +Innumerable are the witticisms aimed at this opaque work. See, for +example, W. Sharp's _Life of Browning_ ... William Morris (1834-96), +author of the _Earthly Paradise_ (1868-70): for his position and +influence in XIXth century literature see H.A. Beers, _History of +English Romanticism_, Vol. II.... Algernon Charles Swinburne, born +1837, generally regarded (1906) as England's foremost living poet, is +famous chiefly for the melodies of his verse. His influence seems to +be steadily declining and he is certainly not so much read as +formerly.... For John Webster and Congreve, see Notes 37 and 26 of +Chapter IV above.] + +[Note 5: _City of Peebles in the style of the Book of Snobs._ +Thackeray's _Book of Snobs_ was published in 1848. Peebles is the +county town of Peebles County in the South of Scotland.] + +[Note 6: _My later plays_, etc. Stevenson's four plays were not +successful. They were all written in collaboration with W.E. Henley. +_Deacon Brodie_ was printed in 1880: _Admiral Guinea_ and _Beau +Austin_ in 1884: _Macaire_ in 1885. In 1892, the first three were +published in one volume, under the title _Three Plays_: In 1896 all +four appeared in a volume called _Four Plays_. At the time the essay +_A College Magazine_ was published, only one of these plays had been +acted, _Deacon Brodie_, to which Stevenson refers in our text. This +"came on the stage itself and was played by bodily actors" at Pullan's +_Theatre of Varieties_, Bradford, England, 28 December 1882, and in +March 1883 at Her Majesty's Theatre, Aberdeen, "when it was styled a +'New Scotch National Drama.'"--Prideaux, _Bibliography_, p. 10. It was +later produced at Prince's Theatre, London, 2 July 1884, and in +Montreal, 26 September 1887. _Beau Austin_ was played at the Haymarket +Theatre, London, 3 Nov. 1890. _Admiral Guinea_ was played at the +_Avenue Theatre_, on the afternoon of 29 Nov. 1897, and, like the +others, was not successful. _The Athenaeum_ for 4 Dec. 1897 contains +an interesting criticism of this drama.... _Semiramis_ was the +original plan of a "tragedy," which Stevenson afterwards rewrote as a +novel, _Prince Otto_, and published in 1885.] + +[Note 7: _It was so Keats learned_. This must be swallowed with a +grain of salt. The best criticism of the poetry of Keats is contained +in his own _Letters_, which have been edited by Colvin and by Forman.] + +[Note 8: _Montaigne ... Cicero_. Montaigne, as a child, spoke Latin +before he could French: see his _Essays_. Montaigne is always +original, frank, sincere: Cicero (in his orations) is always a +_Poseur_.] + +[Note 9: _Burns ... Shakespeare_. Some reflection on, and +investigation of these statements by Stevenson, will be highly +beneficial to the student.] + +[Note 10: The literary scales. It is very interesting to note that +Thomas Carlyle had completely mastered the technique of ordinary prose +composition, before he deliberately began to write in his own +picturesque style, which has been called "Carlylese"; note the +enormous difference in style between his _Life of Schiller_ (1825) and +his _Sartor Resartus_ (1833-4). Carlyle would be a shining +illustration of the point Stevenson is trying to make.] + +No notes have been added to the second and third parts of this essay, +as these portions are unimportant, and may be omitted by the student; +they are really introductory to something quite different, and are +printed in our edition only to make this essay complete. + + +VIII + +BOOKS WHICH HAVE INFLUENCED ME[1] + + +The Editor[2] has somewhat insidiously laid a trap for his +correspondents, the question put appearing at first so innocent, truly +cutting so deep. It is not, indeed, until after some reconnaissance +and review that the writer awakes to find himself engaged upon +something in the nature of autobiography, or, perhaps worse, upon a +chapter in the life of that little, beautiful brother whom we once all +had, and whom we have all lost and mourned, the man we ought to have +been, the man we hoped to be. But when word has been passed (even to +an editor), it should, if possible, be kept; and if sometimes I am +wise and say too little, and sometimes weak and say too much, the +blame must lie at the door of the person who entrapped me. + +The most influential books,[3] and the truest in their influence, are +works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must +afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach him a lesson, +which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they +clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they +constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web +of experience, not as we can see it for ourselves, but with a singular +change--that monstrous, consuming _ego_ of ours being, for the nonce, +struck out. To be so, they must be reasonably true to the human +comedy; and any work that is so serves the turn of instruction. But +the course of our education is answered best by those poems and +romances where we breathe a magnanimous atmosphere of thought and meet +generous and pious characters. Shakespeare has served me best. Few +living friends have had upon me an influence so strong for good as +Hamlet or Rosalind. The last character, already well beloved in the +reading, I had the good fortune to see, I must think, in an +impressionable hour, played by Mrs. Scott Siddons.[4] Nothing has ever +more moved, more delighted, more refreshed me; nor has the influence +quite passed away. Kent's brief speech[5] over the dying Lear had a +great effect upon my mind, and was the burthen of my reflections for +long, so profoundly, so touchingly generous did it appear in sense, so +overpowering in expression. Perhaps my dearest and best friend outside +of Shakespeare is D'Artagnan--the elderly D'Artagnan of the _Vicomte +de Bragelonne_.[6] I know not a more human soul, nor, in his way, a +finer; I shall be very sorry for the man who is so much of a pedant in +morals that he cannot learn from the Captain of Musketeers. Lastly, I +must name the _Pilgrim's Progress_,[7] a book that breathes of every +beautiful and valuable emotion. + +But of works of art little can be said; their influence is profound +and silent, like the influence of nature; they mould by contact; we +drink them up like water, and are bettered, yet know not how. It is in +books more specifically didactic that we can follow out the effect, +and distinguish and weigh and compare. A book which has been very +influential upon me fell early into my hands, and so may stand first, +though I think its influence was only sensible later on, and perhaps +still keeps growing, for it is a book not easily outlived: the +_Essais_ of Montaigne.[8] That temperate and genial picture of life is +a great gift to place in the hands of persons of to-day; they will +find in these smiling pages a magazine of heroism and wisdom, all of +an antique strain; they will have their "linen decencies"[9] and +excited orthodoxies fluttered, and will (if they have any gift of +reading) perceive that these have not been fluttered without some +excuse and ground of reason; and (again if they have any gift of +reading) they will end by seeing that this old gentleman was in a +dozen ways a finer fellow, and held in a dozen ways a nobler view of +life, than they or their contemporaries. + +The next book, in order of time, to influence me, was the New +Testament, and in particular the Gospel according to St. Matthew. I +believe it would startle and move any one if they could make a certain +effort of imagination and read it freshly like a book, not droningly +and dully like a portion of the Bible. Any one would then be able to +see in it those truths which we are all courteously supposed to know +and all modestly refrain from applying. But upon this subject it is +perhaps better to be silent. + +I come next to Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_,[10] a book of singular +service, a book which tumbled the world upside down for me, blew into +space a thousand cobwebs of genteel and ethical illusion, and, having +thus shaken my tabernacle of lies, set me back again upon a strong +foundation of all the original and manly virtues. But it is, once +more, only a book for those who have the gift of reading.[11] I will +be very frank--I believe it is so with all good books except, perhaps, +fiction. The average man lives, and must live, so wholly in +convention, that gun-powder charges of the truth are more apt to +discompose than to invigorate his creed. Either he cries out upon +blasphemy and indecency, and crouches the closer round that little +idol of part-truths and part-conveniences which is the contemporary +deity, or he is convinced by what is new, forgets what is old, and +becomes truly blasphemous and indecent himself. New truth is only +useful to supplement the old; rough truth is only wanted to expand, +not to destroy, our civil and often elegant conventions. He who cannot +judge had better stick to fiction and the daily papers. There he will +get little harm, and, in the first at least, some good. + +Close upon the back of my discovery of Whitman, I came under the +influence of Herbert Spencer.[12] No more persuasive rabbi exists. How +much of his vast structure will bear the touch of time, how much is +clay and how much brass, it were too curious to inquire. But his +words, if dry, are always manly and honest; there dwells in his pages +a spirit of highly abstract joy, plucked naked like an algebraic +symbol but still joyful; and the reader will find there a _caput +mortuum_[13] of piety, with little indeed of its loveliness, but with +most of its essentials; and these two qualities make him a wholesome, +as his intellectual vigour makes him a bracing, writer. I should be +much of a hound if I lost my gratitude to Herbert Spencer. + +_Goethe's Life_, by Lewes,[14] had a great importance for me when it +first fell into my hands--a strange instance of the partiality of +man's good and man's evil. I know no one whom I less admire than +Goethe; he seems a very epitome of the sins of genius, breaking open +the doors of private life, and wantonly wounding friends, in that +crowning offence of _Werther_, and in his own character a mere +pen-and-ink Napoleon, conscious of the rights and duties of superior +talents as a Spanish inquisitor was conscious of the rights and duties +of his office. And yet in his fine devotion to his art, in his honest +and serviceable friendship for Schiller, what lessons are contained! +Biography, usually so false to its office, does here for once perform +for us some of the work of fiction, reminding us, that is, of the +truly mingled tissue of man's nature, and how huge faults and shining +virtues cohabit and persevere in the same character. History serves us +well to this effect, but in the originals, not in the pages of the +popular epitomiser, who is bound, by the very nature of his task, to +make us feel the difference of epochs instead of the essential +identity of man, and even in the originals only to those who can +recognise their own human virtues and defects in strange forms, often +inverted and under strange names, often interchanged. Martial[15] is a +poet of no good repute, and it gives a man new thoughts to read his +works dispassionately, and find in this unseemly jester's serious +passages the image of a kind, wise, and self-respecting gentleman. It +is customary, I suppose, in reading Martial, to leave out these +pleasant verses; I never heard of them, at least, until I found them +for myself; and this partiality is one among a thousand things that +help to build up our distorted and hysterical conception of the great +Roman Empire. + +This brings us by a natural transition to a very noble book--the +_Meditations_ of Marcus Aurelius.[16] The dispassionate gravity, the +noble forgetfulness of self, the tenderness of others, that are there +expressed and were practised on so great a scale in the life of its +writer, make this book a book quite by itself. No one can read it and +not be moved. Yet it scarcely or rarely appeals to the feelings--those +very mobile, those not very trusty parts of man. Its address lies +further back: its lesson comes more deeply home; when you have read, +you carry away with you a memory of the man himself; it is as though +you had touched a loyal hand, looked into brave eyes, and made a noble +friend; there is another bond on you thenceforward, binding you to +life and to the love of virtue. + +Wordsworth[17] should perhaps come next. Every one has been influenced +by Wordsworth, and it is hard to tell precisely how. A certain +innocence, a rugged austerity of joy, a night of the stars, "the +silence that is in the lonely hills," something of the cold thrill of +dawn, cling to his work and give it a particular address to what is +best in us. I do not know that you learn a lesson; you need not--Mill +did not--agree with any one of his beliefs; and yet the spell is cast. +Such are the best teachers: a dogma learned is only a new error--the +old one was perhaps as good; but a spirit communicated is a perpetual +possession. These best teachers climb beyond teaching to the plane of +art; it is themselves, and what is best in themselves, that they +communicate. + +I should never forgive myself if I forgot _The Egoist_. It is art, if +you like, but it belongs purely to didactic art, and from all the +novels I have read (and I have read thousands) stands in a place by +itself. Here is a Nathan for the modern David;[18] here is a book to +send the blood into men's faces. Satire, the angry picture of human +faults, is not great art; we can all be angry with our neighbour; what +we want is to be shown, not his defects, of which we are too +conscious, but his merits, to which we are too blind. And _The +Egoist_[19] is a satire; so much must be allowed; but it is a satire +of a singular quality, which tells you nothing of that obvious mote, +which is engaged from first to last with that invisible beam. It is +yourself that is hunted down; these are your own faults that are +dragged into the day and numbered, with lingering relish, with cruel +cunning and precision. A young friend of Mr. Meredith's (as I have the +story) came to him in an agony. "This is too bad of you," he cried. +"Willoughby is me!" "No, my dear fellow," said the author; "he is all +of us." I have read _The Egoist_ five or six times myself, and I mean +to read it again; for I am like the young friend of the anecdote--I +think Willoughby an unmanly but a very serviceable exposure of myself. + +I suppose, when I am done, I shall find that I have forgotten much +that was most influential, as I see already I have forgotten +Thoreau,[20] and Hazlitt, whose paper "On the Spirit of Obligations" +was a turning-point in my life, and Penn, whose little book of +aphorisms had a brief but strong effect on me, and Mitford's +_Tales[21] of Old Japan_, wherein I learned for the first time the +proper attitude of any rational man to his country's laws--a secret +found, and kept, in the Asiatic islands. That I should commemorate all +is more than I can hope or the Editor could ask. It will be more to +the point, after having said so much upon improving books, to say a +word or two about the improvable reader. The gift of reading, as I +have called it, is not very common, nor very generally understood. It +consists, first of all, in a vast intellectual endowment--a free +grace, I find I must call it--by which a man rises to understand that +he is not punctually right, nor those from whom he differs absolutely +wrong. He may hold dogmas; he may hold them passionately; and he may +know that others hold them but coldly, or hold them differently, or +hold them not at all. Well, if he has the gift of reading, these +others will be full of meat for him. They will see the other side of +propositions and the other side of virtues. He need not change his +dogma for that, but he may change his reading of that dogma, and he +must supplement and correct his deductions from it. A human truth, +which is always very much a lie, hides as much of life as it displays. +It is men who hold another truth, or, as it seems to us, perhaps, a +dangerous lie, who can extend our restricted field of knowledge, and +rouse our drowsy consciences. Something that seems quite new, or that +seems insolently false or very dangerous, is the test of a reader. If +he tries to see what it means, what truth excuses it, he has the gift, +and let him read. If he is merely hurt, or offended, or exclaims upon +his author's folly, he had better take to the daily papers; he will +never be a reader. + +And here, with the aptest illustrative force, after I have laid down +my part-truth, I must step in with its opposite. For, after all, we +are vessels of a very limited content. Not all men can read all books; +it is only in a chosen few that any man will find his appointed food; +and the fittest lessons are the most palatable, and make themselves +welcome to the mind. A writer learns this early, and it is his chief +support; he goes on unafraid, laying down the law; and he is sure at +heart that most of what he says is demonstrably false, and much of a +mingled strain, and some hurtful, and very little good for service; +but he is sure besides that when his words fall into the hands of any +genuine reader, they will be weighed and winnowed, and only that which +suits will be assimilated; and when they fall into the hands of one +who cannot intelligently read, they come there quite silent and +inarticulate, falling upon deaf ears, and his secret is kept as if he +had not written. + + +NOTES + +This article first appeared in the _British Weekly_ for 13 May 1887, +forming Stevenson's contribution to a symposium on this subject by +some of the celebrated writers of the day, including Gladstone, +Ruskin, Hamerton; and others as widely different as Archdeacon Farrar +and Rider Haggard. In the same year (1887) the papers were all +collected and published by the _Weekly_ in a volume, with the title +_Books Which Have Influenced Me_. This essay was later included in the +complete editions of Stevenson's _Works_ (Edinburgh ed., Vol. XI, +Thistle ed., Vol. XXII). + +[Note 1: First published in the _British Weekly_, May 13, 1887.] + +[Note 2: Of the _British Weekly_.] + +[Note 3: _The most influential books ... are works of fiction_. This +statement is undoubtedly true, if we use the word "fiction" in the +sense understood here by Stevenson. It is curious, however, to note +the rise in dignity of "works of fiction," and of "novels"; people +used to read them with apologies, and did not like to be caught at it. +The cheerful audacity of Stevenson's declaration would have seemed +like blasphemy fifty years earlier.] + +[Note 4: _Mrs. Scott Siddons_. Not for a moment to be confounded with +the great actress Sarah Siddons, who died in 1831. Mrs. Scott Siddons, +in spite of Stevenson's enthusiasm, was not an actress of remarkable +power.] + +[Note 5: _Kent's brief speech_. Toward the end of _King Lear_.] + + "Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass! he hates him + That would upon the rack of this tough world + Stretch him out longer."] + +[Note 6: _D'Artagnan ... Vicomte de Bragelonne_. See Stevenson's +essay, _A Gossip on a Novel of Dumas's_ (1887), in _Memories and +Portraits_. See also Note 3 of Chapter II above and Note 43 of Chapter +IV above. _Vicomte de Bragelonne_ is the title of the sequel to +_Twenty Years After_, which is the sequel to the _Musketeers_. Dumas +wrote 257 volumes of romance, plays, travels etc.] + +[Note 7: _Pilgrim's Progress_. See Note 13 of Chapter V above.] + +[Note 8: _Essais of Montaigne_. See Note 6 of Chapter VI above. The +best translation in English of the _Essais_ is that by the +Elizabethan, John Florio (1550-1625), a contemporary of Montaigne. His +translation appeared in 1603, and may now be obtained complete in the +handy "Temple" classics. There is a copy of Florio's _Montaigne_ with +Ben Jonson's autograph, and also one that has what many believe to be +a genuine autograph of Shakspere.] + +[Note 9: "_Linen decencies_." "The ghost of a linen decency yet haunts +us."--Milton, _Areopagitica_.] + +[Note 10: _Whitman's Leaves of Grass_. See Stevenson's admirable essay +on _Walt Whitman_ (1878), also Note 12 of Chapter III above.] + +[Note 11: _Have the gift of reading_. "Books are written to be read by +those who can understand them. Their possible effect on those who +cannot, is a matter of medical rather than of literary interest." +--Prof. W. Raleigh, _The English Novel_, remarks on _Tom Jones_, +Chap. VI.] + +[Note 12: _Herbert_. See Note 18 of Chapter IV above.] + +[Note 13: _Caput mortuum_. Dry kernel. Literary, "dead head."] + +[Note 14: _Goethe's Life, by Lewes_. The standard Life of Goethe (in +English) is still that by George Henry Lewes (1817-1878), the husband +of George Eliot. His _Life of Goethe_ appeared in 1855; he later made +a simpler, abridged edition, called _The Story of Goethe's Life_. +Goethe, the greatest literary genius since Shakspere, and now +generally ranked among the four supreme writers of the world, Homer, +Dante, Shakspere, Goethe, was born in 1749, and died in 1832. +Stevenson, like most British critics, is rather severe on Goethe's +character. The student should read Eckermann's _Conversations with +Goethe_, a book full of wisdom and perennial delight. For _Werther_, +see Note 18 of Chapter VI above. The friendship between Goethe and +Schiller (1759-1805), "his honest and serviceable friendship," as +Stevenson puts it, is among the most beautiful things to contemplate +in literary history. Before the theatre in Weimar, Germany, where the +two men lived, stands a remarkable statue of the pair: and their +coffins lie side by side in a crypt in the same town.] + +[Note 15: _Martial_. Poet, wit and epigrammatist, born in Spain 43 A. +D., died 104. He lived in Rome from 66 to 100, enjoying a high +reputation as a writer.] + +[Note 16: _Meditations of Marcus Aurelius_. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, +often called "the noblest of Pagans" was born 121 A. D., and died 180. +His _Meditations_ have been translated into the chief modern +languages, and though their author was hostile to Christianity, the +ethics of the book are much the same as those of the New Testament.] + +[Note 17: _Wordsworth ... Mill_. William Wordsworth (1770-1850), +poet-laureate (1843-1850), is by many regarded as the third poet in +English literature, after Shakspere and Milton, whose places are +unassailable. Other candidates for the third place are Chaucer and +Spenser. "The silence that is in the lonely hills" is loosely quoted +from Wordsworth's _Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, Upon the +Restoration of Lord Clifford_, published in 1807. The passage reads: + + "The silence that is in the starry sky, + The sleep that is among the lonely hills." + +... In the _Autobiography_ (1873) of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), +there is a remarkable passage where he testifies to the influence +exerted upon him by Wordsworth.] + +[Note 18: _A Nathan for the modern David_. The famous accusation of +the prophet to the king, "Thou art the man." See II _Sam_. 12.] + +[Note 19: _The Egoist_. See Note 47 of Chapter IV above. Stevenson +never tired of singing the praises of this novel.] + +[Note 20: _Thoreau ... Hazlitt ... Penn ... Mitford's Tales.._. Henry +David Thoreau (1817-1862), the American naturalist and writer, whose +works impressed Stevenson deeply. See the latter's excellent essay on +Thoreau (1880), in _Familiar Studies of Men and Books_.... Hazlitt, +See Note 19 of Chapter II above. His paper, _On the Spirit of +Obligations_, appeared in _The Plain Speaker_, 2 Vols., 1826. _Penn, +whose little book of aphorisms_. This refers to William Penn's famous +book, _Some Fruits of Solitude: in Reflections and Maxims relating to +the Conduct of Human Life_ (1693). Edmund Gosse says, in his +Introduction to a charming little edition of this book in 1900, +"Stevenson had intended to make this book and its author the subject +of one of his critical essays. In February 1880 he was preparing to +begin it... He never found the opportunity... But it has left an +indelible stamp on the tenor of his moral writings. The philosophy of +B. L. S. ... is tinctured through and through with the honest, shrewd, +and genial maxims of Penn." Stevenson himself, in his _Letters_ (Vol. +I, pp. 232, 233), spoke of this little book in the highest terms of +praise.] + +[Note 21: _Mitford's Tales_. Mary Russell Mitford (1787-1855), a +novelist and dramatist who enjoyed an immense vogue. "Her inimitable +series of country sketches, drawn from her own experiences at Three +Mile Cross, entitled 'Our Village,' began to appear in 1819 in the +'Lady's Magazine,' a little-known periodical, whose sale was thereby +increased from 250 to 2,000. ... The sketches had an enormous success, +and were collected in five volumes, published respectively in 1824, +1826, 1828, 1830, and 1832. ... The book may be said to have laid the +foundation of a branch of literature hitherto untried. The sketches +resemble Dutch paintings in their fidelity of detail."--_Dic. Nat. +Biog_.] + + +IX + +PULVIS ET UMBRA + +We look for some reward of our endeavors and are disappointed; not +success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our +ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, are +virtues barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of +the sun. The canting moralist tells us of right and wrong; and we look +abroad, even on the face of our small earth, and find them change with +every climate,[1] and no country where some action is not honoured for +a virtue and none where it is not branded for a vice; and we look in +our experience, and find no vital congruity in the wisest rules, but +at the best a municipal fitness. It is not strange if we are tempted +to despair of good. We ask too much. Our religions and moralities have +been trimmed to flatter us, till they are all emasculate and +sentimentalised, and only please and weaken. Truth is of a rougher +strain. In the harsh face of life, faith can read a bracing gospel. +The human race is a thing more ancient than the ten commandments; and +the bones and revolutions of the Kosmos, in whose joints we are but +moss and fungus, more ancient still. + + +I + +Of the Kosmos in the last resort, science reports many doubtful things +and all of them appalling. There seems no substance to this solid +globe on which we stamp: nothing but symbols and ratios. Symbols and +ratios carry us and bring us forth and beat us down; gravity that +swings the incommensurable suns and worlds through space, is but a +figment varying inversely as the squares of distances; and the suns +and worlds themselves, imponderable figures of abstraction, NH3 and +H2O.[2] Consideration dares not dwell upon this view; that way madness +lies;[3] science carries us into zones of speculation, where there is +no habitable city for the mind of man. + +But take the Kosmos with a grosser faith, as our senses give it to us. +We behold space sown with rotatory islands; suns and worlds and the +shards and wrecks of systems: some, like the sun, still blazing; some +rotting, like the earth; others, like the moon, stable in desolation. +All of these we take to be made of something we call matter: a thing +which no analysis can help us to conceive; to whose incredible +properties no familiarity can reconcile our minds. This stuff, when +not purified by the lustration of fire, rots uncleanly into something +we call life; seized through all its atoms with a pediculous malady; +swelling in tumours that become independent, sometimes even (by an +abhorrent prodigy) locomotory;[4] one splitting into millions, +millions cohering into one, as the malady proceeds through varying +stages. This vital putrescence of the dust, used as we are to it, yet +strikes us with occasional disgust, and the profusion of worms in a +piece of ancient turf, or the air of a marsh darkened with insects, +will sometimes check our breathing so that we aspire for cleaner +places. But none is clean: the moving sand is infected with lice; the +pure spring, where it bursts out of the mountain, is a mere issue of +worms; even in the hard rock the crystal is forming. + +In two main shapes this eruption covers the countenance of the earth: +the animal and the vegetable: one in some degree the inversion of the +other: the second rooted to the spot; the first coming detached out of +its natal mud, and scurrying abroad with the myriad feet of insects or +towering into the heavens on the wings of birds: a thing so +inconceivable that, if it be well considered, the heart stops. To what +passes with the anchored vermin, we have little clue: doubtless they +have their joys and sorrows, their delights and killing agonies: it +appears not how. But of the locomotory, to which we ourselves belong, +we can tell more. These share with us a thousand miracles: the +miracles of sight, of hearing, of the projection of sound, things that +bridge space; the miracles of memory and reason, by which the present +is conceived, and when it is gone, its image kept living in the brains +of man and brute; the miracle of reproduction, with its imperious +desires and staggering consequences. And to put the last touch upon +this mountain mass of the revolting and the inconceivable, all these +prey upon each other, lives tearing other lives in pieces, cramming +them inside themselves, and by that summary process, growing fat: the +vegetarian, the whale, perhaps the tree, not less than the lion of the +desert; for the vegetarian is only the eater of the dumb. + +Meanwhile our rotary island loaded with predatory life, and more +drenched with blood, both animal and vegetable, than ever mutinied +ship, scuds through space with unimaginable speed, and turns alternate +cheeks to the reverberation of a blazing world, ninety million miles +away. + + +II + +What a monstrous spectre is this man, the disease of the agglutinated +dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, +feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon +with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his +face; a thing to set children screaming;--and yet looked at nearlier, +known as his fellows know him, how surprising are his attributes! Poor +soul, here for so little, cast among so many hardships, filled with +desires so incommensurate and so inconsistent, savagely surrounded, +savagely descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow +lives: who should have blamed him had he been of a piece with his +destiny and a being merely barbarous? And we look and behold him +instead filled with imperfect virtues: infinitely childish, often +admirably valiant, often touchingly kind; sitting down, amidst his +momentary life, to debate of right and wrong and the attributes of the +deity; rising up to do battle for an egg or die for an idea; singling +out his friends and his mate with cordial affection; bringing forth in +pain, rearing with long-suffering solicitude, his young. To touch the +heart of his mystery,[5] we find in him one thought, strange to the +point of lunacy: the thought of duty;[6] the thought of something +owing to himself, to his neighbour, to his God: an ideal of decency, +to which he would rise if it were possible; a limit of shame, below +which, if it be possible, he will not stoop. The design in most men is +one of conformity; here and there, in picked natures, it transcends +itself and soars on the other side, arming martyrs with independence; +but in all, in their degrees, it is a bosom thought:--Not in man +alone, for we trace it in dogs and cats whom we know fairly well, and +doubtless some similar point of honour sways the elephant, the oyster, +and the louse, of whom we know so little:--But in man, at least, it +sways with so complete an empire that merely selfish things come +second, even with the selfish: that appetites are starved, fears are +conquered, pains supported; that almost the dullest shrinks from the +reproof of a glance, although it were a child's; and all but the most +cowardly stand amid the risks of war; and the more noble, having +strongly conceived an act as due to their ideal, affront and embrace +death. Strange enough if, with their singular origin and perverted +practice, they think they are to be rewarded in some future life: +stranger still, if they are persuaded of the contrary, and think this +blow, which they solicit, will strike them senseless for eternity. I +shall be reminded what a tragedy of misconception and misconduct man +at large presents: of organised injustice, cowardly violence and +treacherous crime; and of the damning imperfections of the best. They +cannot be too darkly drawn. Man is indeed marked for failure in his +efforts to do right. But where the best consistently miscarry, how +tenfold more remarkable that all should continue to strive; and surely +we should find it both touching and inspiriting, that in a field from +which success is banished, our race should not cease to labour. + +If the first view of this creature, stalking in his rotatory isle, be +a thing to shake the courage of the stoutest, on this nearer sight, he +startles us with an admiring wonder. It matters not where we look, +under what climate we observe him, in what stage of society, in what +depth of ignorance, burthened with what erroneous morality; by +camp-fires in Assiniboia,[7] the snow powdering his shoulders, the +wind plucking his blanket, as he sits, passing the ceremonial calumet +and uttering his grave opinions like a Roman senator; in ships at sea, +a man inured to hardship and vile pleasures, his brightest hope a +fiddle in a tavern and a bedizened trull who sells herself to rob him, +and he for all that simple, innocent, cheerful, kindly like a child, +constant to toil, brave to drown, for others; in the slums of cities, +moving among indifferent millions to mechanical employments, without +hope of change in the future, with scarce a pleasure in the present, +and yet true to his virtues, honest up to his lights, kind to his +neighbours, tempted perhaps in vain by the bright gin-palace, perhaps +long-suffering with the drunken wife that ruins him; in India (a woman +this time) kneeling with broken cries and streaming tears, as she +drowns her child in the sacred river;[8] in the brothel, the discard +of society, living mainly on strong drink, fed with affronts, a fool, +a thief, the comrade of thieves, and even here keeping the point of +honour and the touch of pity,[9] often repaying the world's scorn with +service, often standing firm upon a scruple, and at a certain cost, +rejecting riches:--everywhere some virtue cherished or affected, +everywhere some decency of thought and carriage, everywhere the ensign +of man's ineffectual goodness:--ah! if I could show you this! if I +could show you these men and women, all the world over, in every stage +of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of +failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely +fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging, in the brothel or +on the scaffold, to some rag of honour, the poor jewel of their souls! +They may seek to escape, and yet they cannot; it is not alone their +privilege and glory, but their doom; they are condemned to some +nobility; all their lives long, the desire of good is at their heels, +the implacable hunter. + +Of all earth's meteors, here at least is the most strange and +consoling: that this ennobled lemur, this hair-crowned bubble of the +dust, this inheritor of a few years and sorrows, should yet deny +himself his rare delights, and add to his frequent pains, and live for +an ideal, however misconceived. Nor can we stop with man. A new +doctrine,[10] received with screams a little while ago by canting +moralists, and still not properly worked into the body of our +thoughts, lights us a step farther into the heart of this rough but +noble universe. For nowadays the pride of man denies in vain his +kinship with the original dust. He stands no longer like a thing +apart. Close at his heels we see the dog, prince of another genius: +and in him too, we see dumbly testified the same cultus[11] of an +unattainable ideal, the same constancy in failure. Does it stop with +the dog? We look at our feet where the ground is blackened with the +swarming ant: a creature so small, so far from us in the hierarchy of +brutes, that we can scarce trace and scarce comprehend his doings; and +here also, in his ordered polities and rigorous justice, we see +confessed the law of duty and the fact of individual sin. Does it +stop, then, with the ant? Rather this desire of well-doing and this +doom of frailty run through all the grades of life: rather is this +earth, from the frosty top of Everest[12] to the next margin of the +internal fire, one stage of ineffectual virtues and one temple of +pious tears and perseverance. The whole creation groaneth[13] and +travaileth together. It is the common and the god-like law of life. +The browsers, the biters, the barkers, the hairy coats of field and +forest, the squirrel in the oak, the thousand-footed creeper in the +dust, as they share with us the gift of life, share with us the love +of an ideal: strive like us--like us are tempted to grow weary of the +struggle--to do well; like us receive at times unmerited refreshment, +visitings of support, returns of courage; and are condemned like us to +be crucified between that double law[14] of the members and the will. +Are they like us, I wonder in the timid hope of some reward, some +sugar with the drug? do they, too, stand aghast at unrewarded virtues, +at the sufferings of those whom, in our partiality, we take to be +just, and the prosperity of such as, in our blindness, we call wicked? +It may be, and yet God knows what they should look for. Even while +they look, even while they repent, the foot of man treads them by +thousands in the dust, the yelping hounds burst upon their trail, the +bullet speeds, the knives are heating in the den of the +vivisectionist;[15] or the dew falls, and the generation of a day is +blotted out. For these are creatures, compared with whom our weakness +is strength, our ignorance wisdom, our brief span eternity. + +And as we dwell, we living things, in our isle of terror[16] and under +the imminent hand of death, God forbid it should be man the erected, +the reasoner, the wise in his own eyes--God forbid it should be man +that wearies in well-doing,[17] that despairs of unrewarded effort, or +utters the language of complaint. Let it be enough for faith, that the +whole creation groans in mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable +constancy: Surely not all in vain.[18] + + +NOTES + +During the year 1888, part of which was spent by Stevenson at Saranac +Lake in the Adirondacks he published one article every month in +_Scribner's Magazine_. _Pulvis et Umbra_ appeared in the April number, +and was later included in the volume _Across the Plains_ (1892). He +wrote this particular essay with intense feeling. Writing to Sidney +Colvin in December 1887, he said, "I get along with my papers for +_Scribner_ not fast, nor so far specially well; only this last, the +fourth one.... I do believe is pulled off after a fashion. It is a +mere sermon: ... but it is true, and I find it touching and +beneficial, to me at least; and I think there is some fine writing in +it, some very apt and pregnant phrases. _Pulvis et Umbra_, I call it; +I might have called it a _Darwinian Sermon_, if I had wanted. Its +sentiments, although parsonic, will not offend even you, I believe." +(_Letters_, II, 100.) Writing to Miss Adelaide Boodle in April 1888, +he said, "I wrote a paper the other day--_Pulvis et Umbra_;--I wrote +it with great feeling and conviction: to me it seemed bracing and +healthful, it is in such a world (so seen by me), that I am very glad +to fight out my battle, and see some fine sunsets, and hear some +excellent jests between whiles round the camp fire. But I find that to +some people this vision of mine is a nightmare, and extinguishes all +ground of faith in God or pleasure in man. Truth I think not so much +of; for I do not know it. And I could wish in my heart that I had not +published this paper, if it troubles folk too much: all have not the +same digestion nor the same sight of things.... Well, I cannot take +back what I have said; but yet I may add this. If my view be +everything but the nonsense that it may be--to me it seems +self-evident and blinding truth--surely of all things it makes this +world holier. There is nothing in it but the moral side--but the great +battle and the breathing times with their refreshments. I see no more +and no less. And if you look again, it is not ugly, and it is filled +with promise." (_Letters_, II, 123.) The words _Pulvis et Umbra_ mean +literally "dust and shadow": the phrase, however, is quoted from +Horace "pulvis et umbra sumus"--_we are dust and ashes_. It forms the +text of one of Stevenson's familiar discourses on Death, like _Aes +Triplex_. + +[Note 1: _Find them change with every climate_, etc. For some striking +illustrations of this, see Sudermann's drama, _Die Ehre_ (Honour).] + +[Note 2: NH3 and H2O. The first is the chemical formula for ammonia: +the second, for water.] + +[Note 3: _That way madness lies. King Lear_, III, 4, 21.] + +[Note 4: _A pediculous malady ... locomotory_. Stevenson was fond of +strange words. "Pediculous" means covered with lice, lousy.] + +[Note 5: _The heart of his mystery. Hamlet_, Act III, Sc. 2, "you +would pluck out the heart of my mystery." Mystery here means "secret," +as in I. _Cor_. XIII, "Behold, I tell you a mystery."] + +[Note 6: _The thought of duty_. Kant said, "Two things fill the mind +with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the +more steadily we reflect on them: _the starry heavens above and the +moral law within_." (Conclusion to the _Practical Reason_--_Kritik der +praktischen Vernunft_, 1788.)] + +[Note 7: _Assiniboia ... Calumet_. Assinibioia is a district of +Canada, just west of Manitoba. _Calumet_ is the pipe of peace, used by +North American Indians when solemnizing treaties etc. Its stem is over +two feet long, heavily decorated with feathers etc.] + +[Note 8: _Drowns her child in the sacred river_. The sacred river of +India is the Ganges; before British control, children were often +sacrificed there by drowning to appease the angry divinity.] + +[Note 9: _The touch of pity_. "No beast so fierce but knows some touch +of pity." _Richard III_, Act I, Sc. 2, vs. 71. _This ennobled lemur_. +A lemur is a nocturnal animal, something like a monkey.] + +[Note 10: _A new doctrine_. Evolution. Darwin's _Origin of Species_ +was published in 1859. Many ardent Christians believe in its general +principles to-day; but at first it was bitterly attacked by orthodox +and conservative critics. A Princeton professor cried, "Darwinism is +Atheism!"] + +[Note 11: _Cultus_. Stevenson liked this word. _The swarming ant_. +"The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the +summer."--_Proverbs_, XXX. 25. For a wonderful description of an ant +battle, see Thoreau's _Walden_.] + +[Note 12: _Everest_. Mount Everest in the Himalayas, is the highest +mountain in the world, with an altitude of about 29,000 feet.] + +[Note 13: _The whole creation groaneth. Romans_, VIII, 22.] + +[Note 14: _That double law of the members_. See Note 10 of Chapter VI +above.] + +[Note 15: _Den of the vivisectionist_. See Note 2 of Chapter VI +above.] + +[Note 16: _In our isle of terror_. Cf. Herriet, _The White Island_. + + "In this world, the isle of dreams, + While we sit by sorrow's streams, + Tears and terrors are our themes."] + +[Note 17: _Man that wearies in well-doing. Galatians_, VI, 9.] + +[Note 18: _Surely not all in vain_. At heart, Stevenson belongs not to +the pessimists nor the skeptics, but to the optimists and the +believers. A man may have no formal creed, and yet be a believer. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson +by Robert Louis Stevenson + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10761 *** |