the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.  And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced:  is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? and does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas?  When the Greeks made their fine saying that those whom the gods love die young,[24] I cannot help believing they had this sort of death also in their eye.  For surely, at whatever age it overtake the man, this is to die young.  Death has not been suffered to take so much as an illusion from his heart.  In the hot-fit of life, a tip-toe on the highest point of being, he passes at a bound on to the other side.  The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of glory,[25] this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the spiritual land.

NOTES

This essay, which is commonly (and justly) regarded as Stevenson’s masterpiece of literary composition, was first printed in the Cornhill Magazine for April 1878, Vol.  XXXVII, pp. 432-437.  In 1881 it was published in the volume Virginibus Puerisque.  For the success of this volume, as well as for its author’s relations with the editor of the Cornhill, see our note to An Apology for Idlers.  It was this article which was selected for reprinting in separate form by the American Committee of the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial Fund; to every subscriber of ten dollars or more, was given a copy of this essay, exquisitely printed at the De Vinne Press, 1898.  Copies of this edition are now eagerly sought by book-collectors; five of them were taken by the Robert Louis Stevenson Club of Yale College, consisting of a few undergraduates of the class of 1898, who subscribed fifty dollars to the fund.

Stevenson’s cheerful optimism was constantly shadowed by the thought of Death, and in Aes Triplex he gives free rein to his fancies on this universal theme.

[Note 1:  The title, AEs Triplex, is taken from Horace, aes triplex circa pectus, “breast enclosed by triple brass,” “aes” used by Horace as a “symbol of indomitable courage.”—­Lewis’s Latin Dictionary.]

[Note 2:  Thug.  This word, which sounds to-day so slangy, really comes from the Hindoos (Hindustani thaaa, deceive).  It is the name of a religious order in India, ostensibly devoted to the worship of a goddess, but really given to murder for the sake of booty.  The Englishmen in India called them Thugs, hence the name in its modern general sense.]

[Note 3:  Pyramids ... dule trees.  For pyramids, see our note 25 of chapter II above... Dule trees.  More properly spelled “dool.”  A dool was a stake or post used to mark boundaries.]