Part 4 (2/2)
[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 a.s.serted 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 Gra.s.s_ (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 Moliere'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 G.o.d, 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 pa.s.sed 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 bra.s.s ... 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 d.i.c.kens had each fallen in mid-course?_ Thackeray and d.i.c.kens, 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 ma.s.s Called ”work,” must sentence pa.s.s, 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 coa.r.s.e thumb And finger failed to plumb, So pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.”]
[Note 24: _Whom the G.o.ds love die young._ ”Quem di diligunt adolescens moritur.”--Plautus, _Bacchides_, Act IV, Sc. 7.]
[Note 25: _Trailing with him clouds of glory._ This pa.s.sage, 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.]
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