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Talk And Talkers
by
[Note 2: As we must account. This remark of Franklin’s occurs in Poor Richard’s Almanac for 1738.]
[Note 3: Flies … in the amber. Bartlett gives Martial.]
“The bee enclosed and through the amber shown,
Seems buried in the juice which was his own.”
Bacon, Donne, Herrick, Pope and many other authors speak of flies in amber.]
[Note 4: Fancy free. See Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act II, Sc. 2.
“And the imperial votaress passed on,
In maiden meditation, fancy-free.”
This has been called the most graceful among all the countless compliments received by Queen Elizabeth. The word “fancy” in the Shaksperian quotation means simply “love.”]
[Note 5: A spade a spade. The phrase really comes from Aristophanes, and is quoted by Plutarch, as Philip’s description of the rudeness of the Macedonians. Kudos. Greek word for “pride”, used as slang by school-boys in England.]
[Note 6: Trailing clouds of glory. Trailing with him clouds of glory. This passage, from Wordsworth’s Ode on the Intimations of Immortality (1807), was a favorite one with Stevenson, and he quotes it several times in various essays.]
[Note 7: The Flying Dutchman. Wagner’s Der Fliegende Hollaender (1843), one of his earliest, shortest, and most beautiful operas. Many German performances are given in the afternoon, and many German theatres have pretty gardens attached, where, during the long intervals (grosse Pause) between the acts, one may refresh himself with food, drink, tobacco, and the open air. Germany and German art, however, did not have anything like the influence on Stevenson exerted by the French country, language, and literature.]
[Note 8: Theophrastus. A Greek philosopher who died 287-B.C. His most influential work was his Characters, which, subsequently translated into many modern languages, produced a whole school of literature known as the “Character Books,” of which the best are perhaps Sir Thomas Overbury’s Characters (1614), John Earle’s Microcosmographie (1628), and the Caracteres (1688) of the great French writer, La Bruyere.]
[Note 9: Consuelo, Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin, Steenie Steenson. Consuelo is the title of one of the most notable novels by the famous French authoress, George Sand, (1804-1876), whose real name was Aurore Dupin. Consuelo appeared in 1842…. Clarissa (1747-8) was the masterpiece of the novelist Samuel Richardson (1689-1761). This great novel, in seven fat volumes, was a warm favorite with Stevenson, as it has been with most English writers from Dr. Johnson to Macaulay. Writing to a friend in December 1877, Stevenson said, “Please, if you have not, and I don’t suppose you have, already read it, institute a search in all Melbourne for one of the rarest and certainly one of the best of books–Clarissa Harlowe. For any man who takes an interest in the problems of the two sexes, that book is a perfect mine of documents. And it is written, sir, with the pen of an angel.” (Letters, I, 141.) Editions of Clarissa are not so scarce now as they were thirty years ago; several have appeared within the last few years…. Vautrin is one of the most remarkable characters in several novels of Balzac; see especially Pere Goriot (1834) … Steenie Steenson in Scott’s novel Redgauntlet (1824).]
[Note 10: No human being, etc. Stevenson loved action in novels, and was impatient, as many readers are, when long-drawn descriptions of scenery were introduced. Furthermore, the love for wild scenery has become as fashionable as the love for music; the result being a very general hypocrisy in assumed ecstatic raptures.]
[Note 11: You can keep no men long, nor Scotchmen at all. Every Scotchman is a born theologian. Franklin says in his Autobiography, “I had caught this by reading my father’s books of dispute on Religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and generally men of all sorts who have been bred at Edinburgh.” (Chap. I.)]
[Note 12: A court of love. A mediaeval institution of chivalry, where questions of knight-errantry, constancy in love, etc., were discussed and for the time being, decided.]