Selected Essays Of Robert Louis Stevenson

NOTES 141

protects the entrance to the Sound of Islay. Compare the essay
on Thomas Stevenson in Memories and Portraits.

lona contains the ruined monastery of St. Coiumba (521-597
A.C.), the famous Irish saint who converted the Picts and ancient
Britons. lona was the centre of Celtic, as distinct from Roman,
Christianity.

dulse, seaweed.

bothies, huts.

Spurgeon (1834-1892), the well-known evangelical preacher of
the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

slater, a wood-louse.

French battle-fields. The Franco-German War was then raging.

PORTRAIT OF ROBERT HUNTER

Another of Stevenson's delightful pen-portraits of an old-
fashioned Scottish gentleman. Mr. Hunter, as Commissioner of the
Northern Lights, was well known to the Stevenson family.

Miss Mathers. Authoress of the once-popular novel, Comin*
thro' the Eye (1875).

Chelsea veteran. Chelsea Hospital, for invalid soldiers, was
founded by Charles II. Here a large number of veterans, grown
old in the service of their country, end their days in peace.

Webster. Daniel Webster (1782-1852), American statesman
and orator.

Burke. Edmund Burke (1729-1797), the great Whig politician
whose works, especially his Reflections on the French Revolution,
are full of florid declamation and * purple patches.'

Junius, the author of certain brilliant but scurrilous anonymous
letters, attacking all the statesmen of the day, which began to
appear in the Public Advertiser in 1769. He is usually identified
with Sir Philip Francis.

XI

BEGGARS

Two clever sketches of beggars whom Stevenson met in the course
of his wanderings in the south of Scotland.

* Queen Mab.' An early poem of Shelley's, reflecting his
atheistical and revolutionary views.

glimpses ol tlie moon, Hamlet, i. iv. 54.

Mr. Burfoage, the famous actor-manager, owner of the Globe.,
Blackfriars and other theatres, and patron of Shakespeare.

onhousel'd, Hamlet, i. v. 77.

Tannahill, a Scotch lyric poet (1774-1810) and disciple of Burns.

teres, totus teres atque rotwidus, * four square to all the winds
that blow,' Horace Sat. 2. 7-87.

Wilson. Sir Archdale Wilson, commanding the forces before
Delhi.