[Note 12: _Job_ ... _Walt Whitman_. The book of _Job_ is usually regarded as the most poetical work in the Bible, even exceeding _Psalms_ and _Isaiah_ in its splendid imaginative language and extraordinary figures of speech. For a literary study of it, the student is recommended to Professor Moulton's edition. Omar Khayyam was a Persian poet of mediaeval times, who became known to English readers through the beautiful paraphrase of some of his stanzas by Edward Fitzgerald, in 1859. If any one will take the trouble to compare a literal prose rendering of Omar (as in N.H. Dole's variorum edition) with the version by Fitzgerald, he will speedily see that the power and beauty of the poem is due far more to the skill of "Old Fitz" than to the original. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was perhaps the foremost writer of English prose in the nineteenth century. Although a consummate literary artist, he was even more influential as a moral tonic. His philosophy and that of Omar represent as wide a contrast as could easily be found. Walt Whitman, the strange American poet (1819-1892), whose famous _Leaves_ _of Grass_ (1855) excited an uproar in America, and gave the author a much more serious reputation in Europe. Stevenson's interest in him was genuine, but not partisan, and his essay, _The Gospel According to Walt Whitman (The New Quarterly Magazine_, Oct. 1878), is perhaps the most judicious appreciation in the English language of this singular poet. Job, Omar Khayyam, Carlyle and Whitman, taken together, certainly give a curious collection of what the Germans call _Weltanschauungen_.] [Note 13: _A vapour, or a show, or made out of the same stuff with dreams_. For constant comparisons of life with a vapour or a show, see Quarles's _Emblems_ (1635), though these conventional figures may be found thousands of times in general literature. The latter part of the sentence refers to the _Tempest_, Act IV, Scene I. "We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep."] [Note 14: _Permanent Possibility of Sensation_. "Matter then, may be defined, a Permanent Possibility of Sensation."--John Stuart Mill, _Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy_, Vol. I. Chap. XI.]