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Talk And Talkers
by
[Note 39: David Hume. The great Scotch skeptic and philosopher (1711-1776).]
[Note 40: Shakespeare’s fairy pieces with great scenic display. So far from this being a novelty to-day, it has become rather nauseating, and there are evidences of a reaction in favour of hearing Shakspere on the stage rather than seeing him.]
[Note 41: Calvinism. If this word does not need a note yet, it certainly will before long. The founder of the theological system Calvinism was John Calvin, born in France in 1509. The chief doctrines are Predestination, the Atonement (by which the blood of Christ appeased the wrath of God toward those persons only who had been previously chosen for salvation–on all others the sacrifice was ineffectual), Original Sin, and the Perseverance of the Saints (once saved, one could not fall from grace). These doctrines remained intact in the creed of Presbyterian churches in America until a year or two ago.]
[Note 42: Two bob. A pun, for “bob” is slang for “shilling.”]
[Note 43: Never read Othello to an end. In A Gossip on a Novel of Dumas’s, Stevenson confessed that there were four plays of Shakspere he had never been able to read through, though for a different reason: they were Richard III, Henry VI, Titus Andronicus, and All’s Well that Ends Well. It is still an open question as to whether or not Shakspere wrote Titus.]
[Note 44: A liberal and pious education. It was Sir Richard Steele who made the phrase, in The Tatler, No. 49: “to love her (Lady Elizabeth Hastings) was a liberal education.”]
[Note 45: Trait d’union. The French expression simply means “hyphen”: literally, “mark of connection.”]
[Note 46: Malvolio. The conceited but not wholly contemptible character in Twelfth Night.]
[Note 47: The Egoist. The Egoist (1879) is one of the best-known novels of Mr. George Meredith, born 1828. It had been published only a very short time before Stevenson wrote this essay, so he is commenting on one of the “newest” books. Stevenson’s enthusiasm for Meredith knew no bounds, and he regarded the Egoist and Richard Feverel (1859), as among the masterpieces of English literature. Daniel Deronda, the last and by no means the best novel of George Eliot (1820-1880), had appeared in 1876.]