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.]