rks of fiction," and of "novels"; people
used to read them with apologies, and did not like to be caught at it.
The cheerful audacity of Stevenson's declaration would have seemed
like blasphemy fifty years earlier.]

[Note 4: _Mrs. Scott Siddons_. Not for a moment to be confounded with
the great actress Sarah Siddons, who died in 1831. Mrs. Scott Siddons,
in spite of Stevenson's enthusiasm, was not an actress of remarkable
power.]

[Note 5: _Kent's brief speech_. Toward the end of _King Lear_.]

"Vex not his ghost: O, let him pass! he hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer."]

[Note 6: _D'Artagnan ... Vicomte de Bragelonne_. See Stevenson's
essay, _A Gossip on a Novel of Dumas's_ (1887), in _Memories and
Portraits_. See also Note 3 of Chapter II above and Note 43 of Chapter
IV above. _Vicomte de Bragelonne_ is the title of the sequel to
_Twenty Years After_, which is the sequel to the _Musketeers_. Dumas
wrote 257 volumes of romance, plays, travels etc.]

[Note 7: _Pilgrim's Progress_. See Note 13 of Chapter V above.]

[Note 8: _Essais of Montaigne_. See Note 6 of Chapter VI above. The
best translation in English of the _Essais_ is that by the
Elizabethan, John Florio (1550-1625), a contemporary of Montaigne. His
translation appeared in 1603, and may now be obtained complete in the
handy "Temple" classics. There is a copy of Florio's _Montaigne_ with
Ben Jonson's autograph, and also one that has what many believe to be
a genuine autograph of Shakspere.]

[Note 9: "_Linen decencies_." "The ghost of a linen decency yet haunts
us."--Milton, _Areopagitica_.]

[Note 10: _Whitman's Leaves of Grass_. See Stevenson's admirable essay
on _Walt Whitman_ (1878), also Note 12 of Chapter III above.]

[Note 11: _Have the gift of reading_. "Books are written to be read by
those who can understand them. Their possible effect on those who
cannot, is a matter of medical rather than of literary interest."
--Prof. W. Raleigh, _The English Novel_, remarks on _Tom Jones_,
Chap. VI.]

[Note 12: _Herbert_. See Note 18 of Chapter IV above.]

[Note 13: _Caput mortuum_. Dry kernel. Literary, "dead head."]

[Note 14: _Goethe's Life, by Lewes_. The standard Life of Goethe (in
English) is still that by George Henry Lewes (1817-1878), the husband
of George Eliot. His _Life of Goethe_ appeared in 1855; he later made
a simpler, abridged edition, called _The Story of Goethe's Life_.
Goethe, the