Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson. Robert Louis Stevenson

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СКАЧАТЬ 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—

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