s "hungering for calm."_ This
passage occurs in the poem _Prometheus Unbound_, Act III, end of Scene
2.

"Behold the Nereids under the green sea--
Their wavering limbs borne on the wind like stream,
Their white arms lifted o'er their streaming hair,
With garlands pied and starry sea-flower crowns,--
Hastening to grace their mighty Sister's joy.
It is the unpastured sea hungering for calm."]

[Note 23: _Whin-pods._ "Whin" is from the Welsh _cwyn_, meaning
"weed." Whin is gorse or furze, and the sound Stevenson alludes to is
frequently heard in Scotland.]

[Note 24: "_Mon coeur est un luth suspendu_." These beautiful words
are from the poet Beranger (1780-1857). It is probable that Stevenson
found them first not in the original, but in reading the tales of Poe,
for the "two lines of French verse" that "haunted" Stevenson are
quoted by Poe at the beginning of one of his most famous pieces, _The
Fall of the House of Usher_, where, however, the third, and not the
first person is used:--

"_Son_ coeur est un luth suspendu;
Sitot qu'on le touche il resonne."]

[Note 25: "_Out of the strong came forth sweetness_." Alluding to the
riddle propounded by Samson. See the book of _Judges_, Chapter XIV.]

II

AN APOLOGY FOR IDLERS

BOSWELL: "We grow weary when idle."

JOHNSON: "That is, sir, because others being busy, we want company;
but if we were idle, there would be no growing weary; we should all
entertain one another."[1]

Just now, when every one is bound, under pain of a decree in absence
convicting them of _lese_-respectability,[2] to enter on some
lucrative profession, and labour therein with something not far short
of enthusiasm, a cry from the opposite party who are content when they
have enough, and like to look on and enjoy in the meanwhile, savours a
little of bravado and gasconade.[3] And yet this should not be.
Idleness so called, which does not consist in doing nothing, but in
doing a great deal not recognised in the dogmatic formularies of the
ruling class, has as good a right to state its position as industry
itself. It is admitted that the presence of people who refuse to enter
in the great handicap race for sixpenny pieces, is at once an insult
and a disenchantment for those who do. A fine fellow (as we see so
many) takes his determination, votes for the sixpences, and in the
emphatic Americanism, "goes for" them.[4] And while such an one is
ploughing distressfully up the road, i