[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.