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An Apology For Idlers
by
[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: Lese-respectability. From the French verb leser, to hurt, to injure. The most common employment of this verb is in the phrase “lese-majeste,” 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.