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.]