In July 1876 he wrote to Mrs. Sitwell, “A paper called ‘A Defence of Idlers’ (which is really a defence of R.L.S.) is in a good way.”  A year later, after the publication of the article, he wrote (in August 1877) to Sidney Colvin, “Stephen has written to me apropos of ‘Idlers,’ that something more in that vein would be agreeable to his views.  From Stephen I count that a devil of a lot.”  It is noteworthy that this charming essay had been refused by Macmillan’s Magazine before Stephen accepted it for the Cornhill. (Life, I, 180).

[Note 1:  The conversation between Boswell and Johnson, quoted at the beginning of the essay, occurred on the 26 October 1769, at the famous Mitre Tavern.  In Stevenson’s quotation, the word “all” should be inserted after the word “were” to correspond with the original text, and to make sense.  Johnson, though constitutionally lazy, was no defender of Idlers, and there is a sly humour in Stevenson’s appealing to him as authority.  Boswell says in his Life, under date of 1780, “He would allow no settled indulgence of idleness upon principle, and always repelled every attempt to urge excuses for it.  A friend one day suggested, that it was not wholesome to study soon after dinner.  JOHNSON:  ’Ah, sir, don’t give way to such a fancy.  At one time of my life I had taken it into my head that it was not wholesome to study between breakfast and dinner.’”]

[Note 2:  Lese-respectability. From the French verb leser, to hurt, to injure.  The most common employment of this verb is in the phrase “lese-majeste," high treason.  Stevenson’s mood here is like that of Lowell, when he said regretfully, speaking of the eighteenth century, “Responsibility for the universe had not then been invented.” (Essay on Gray.)]

[Note 3:  Gasconade.  Boasting.  The inhabitants of Gascony (Gascogne) a province in the south-west of France, are proverbial not only for their impetuosity and courage, but for their willingness to brag of the possession of these qualities.  Excellent examples of the typical Gascon in literature are D’Artagnan in Dumas’s Trois Mousquetaires (1844) and Cyrano in Rostand’s splendid drama, Cyrano de Bergerac (1897).]

[Note 4:  In the emphatic Americanism, “goes for” them. When Stevenson wrote this (1876-77), he had not yet been in America.  Two years later, in 1879, when he made the journey across the plains, he had many opportunities to record Americanisms far more emphatic than the harmless phrase quoted here, which can hardly be called an Americanism.  Murray’s New English Dictionary gives excellent English examples of this particular sense of “go for” in the years 1641, 1790, 1864, and 1882!]