Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
England who was Elizabeth's kinsman and successor; he reigned in
England from 1603 to 1625.]
[Footnote 601: Essexes. Walter Devereux was a brave English gentleman
whom Elizabeth made Earl of Essex in 1572. His son Robert, the second
Earl of Essex, was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth's.]
[Footnote 602: Leicester. The Earl of Leicester, famous in
Shakespeare's time, was Robert Dudley, an English courtier,
politician, and general, the favorite of Queen Elizabeth.]
[Footnote 603: Burleighs or Burghleys: William Cecil, baron of
Burghley, was an English statesman, who, for forty years, was
Elizabeth's chief minister.]
[Footnote 604: Buckinghams. George Villiers, the first duke of
Buckingham, was an English courtier and politician, a favorite of
James I. and Charles I.]
[Footnote 605: Tudor dynasty. The English dynasty of sovereigns
descended on the male side from Owen Tudor. It began with Henry VII.
and ended with Elizabeth.]
[Footnote 606: Bacon. Consult English literature and history for an
account of the great statesman and author, Francis Bacon, "the wisest,
brightest, meanest of mankind."]
[Footnote 607: Ben Jonson, etc. In his _Timber or Discoveries_, Ben
Jonson, a famous classical dramatist contemporary with Shakespeare,
says: "I loved the man and do honor his memory on this side idolatry
as much as any. He was indeed honest and of an open and free nature:
had an excellent fancy; brave notions and gentle expressions: wherein
he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should
be stopped.... His wit was in his own power; would the rule of it had
been so, too. Many times he fell into those things could not escape
laughter.... But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There was
ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned."]
[Footnote 608: Sir Henry Wotton. An English diplomatist and author of
wide culture.]
[Footnote 609: The following persons, etc. The persons enumerated were
all people of note of the seventeenth century. Sir Philip Sidney, Earl
of Essex, Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Milton, Sir Henry Vane,
Isaac Walton, Dr. John Donne, Abraham Cowley, Charles Cotton, John
Pym, and John Hales were Englishmen, scholars, statesmen, and authors.
Theodore Beza was a French theologian; Isaac Casaubon was a
French-Swiss scholar; Roberto Berlarmine was an Italian cardinal;
Johann Kepler was a German astronomer; Francis Vieta was a French
mathematician; Albericus Gentilis was an Italian jurist; Paul Sarpi
was an Italian historian; Arminius was a Dutch theologian.]
[Footnote 610: Many others whom doubtless, etc. Emerson here
enumerates some famous English authors of the same period, not
mentioned in the preceeding list.]
[Footnote 611: Pericles. See note on _Heroism_, 352.]
[Footnote 612: Lessing. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a German critic and
poet of the eighteenth century.]
[Footnote 613: Wieland. Christopher Martin Wieland was a German
contemporary of Lessing's, who made a prose translation into German of
Shakespeare's plays.]
[Footnote 614: Schlegel. August Wilhelm von Schlegel, a German critic
and poet, who about the first of the nineteenth century translated
some of Shakespeare's plays into classical German.]
[Footnote 615: Hamlet. The hero of Shakespeare's play of the same
name.]
[Footnote 616: Coleridge. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet,
author of critical lectures and notes on Shakespeare.]
[Footnote 617: Goethe. (See note 85.)]
[Footnote 618: Blackfriar's Theater. A famous London theater in which
nearly all the great dramas of the Elizabethan age were performed.]
[Footnote 619: Stratford. Stratford-on-Avon, a little town in
Warwickshire, England, where Shakespeare was born and where he spent
his last years.]
[Footnote 620: Macbeth. One of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies,
written about 1606.]
[Footnote 621: Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and Collier. English scholars
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who edited the works of
Shakespeare.]
[Footnote 622: Covent Garden, Drury Lane, the Park, and Tremont: The
leading London theaters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.]
[Footnote 623: Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and Macready, famous
British actors of the Shakespearian parts.]
[Footnote 624: The Hamlet of a famed performer, etc. Macready. Emerson
said to a friend: "I see you are one of the happy mortals who are
capable of being carried away by an actor of Shakespeare. Now,
whenever I visit the theater to witness the performance of one of his
dramas, I am carried away by the poet."]
[Footnote 625: What may this mean, etc. _Hamlet_, I. 4.]
[Footnote 626: Midsummer Night's Dream. One of Shakespeare's plays.]
[Footnote 627: The forest of Arden. In which is laid, the scene of
Shakespeare's play, _As You Like It_.]
[Footnote 628: The nimble air of Scone Castle. It was of the air of
Inverness, not of Scone, that "the air nimbly and sweetly recommends
itself unto our gentle senses."--_Macbeth_, I. 6.]
[Footnote 629: Portia's villa. See the moonlight scene, _Merchant of
Venice_, V. 1.]
[Footnote 630: The antres vost, etc. See _Othello_, I. 3. "Antres" is
an old word, meaning caves, caverns.]
[Footnote 631: Cyclopean architecture. In Greek mythology, the Cyclops
were a race of giants. The term 'Cyclopean' is applied here to the
architecture of Egypt and India, because of the majestic size of the
buildings, and the immense size of the stones used, as if it would
require giants to perform such works.]
[Footnote 632: Phidian sculpture. Phidias was a famous Greek sculptor
who lived in the age of Pericles and beautified Athens with his
works.]
[Footnote 633: Gothic minsters. Churches or cathedrals, built in the
Gothic, or pointed, style of architecture which prevailed during the
Middle Ages; it owed nothing to the Goths, and this term was
originally used in reproach, in the sense of "barbarous."]
[Footnote 634: The Italian painting. In Italy during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries pictorial art was carried to a degree of
perfection unknown in any other time or country.]
[Footnote 635: Ballads of Spain and Scotland. The old ballads of these
countries are noted for beauty and spirit.]
[Footnote 636: Tripod. Define this word, and explain its
appropriateness here.]
[Footnote 637: Aubrey. John Aubrey, an English antiquarian of the
seventeenth century.]
[Footnote 638: Rowe. Nicholas Rowe, an English author of the
seventeenth century, who wrote a biography of Shakespeare.]
[Footnote 639: Timon. See note on _Gifts_, 466.]
[Footnote 640: Warwick. An English politician and commander of the
fifteenth century, called "the King Maker." He appears in
Shakespeare's plays, _Henry IV._, _V._, and _VI._]
[Footnote 641: Antonio. The Venetian Merchant in Shakespeare's play,
_The Merchant of Venice_.]
[Footnote 642: Talma. François Joseph Talma was a French tragic actor,
to whom Napoleon showed favor.]
[Footnote 643: An omnipresent humanity, etc. See what Carlyle has to
say on this subject in his _Hero as Poet_.]
[Footnote 644: Daguerre. Louis Jacques Daguerre, a French painter, one
of the inventors of the daguerreotype process, by means of which an
image is fixed on a metal plate by the chemical action of light.]
[Footnote 645: Euphuism. The word here has rather the force of
euphemism, an entirely different word. Euphuism was an affected ornate
style of expression, so called from _Euphues_, by John Lyly, a
sixteenth century master of that style.]
[Footnote 646: Epicurus. A Greek philosopher of the third century
before Christ. He was the founder of the Epicurean school of
philosophy which taught that pleasure should be man's chief aim and
that the highest pleasure is freedom.]
[Footnote 647: Dante. (See note 258.)]
[Footnote 648: Master of the revels, etc. Emerson always expressed
thankfulness for "the spirit of joy which Shakespeare had shed over
the universe." See what Carlyle says in _The Hero as Poet_, about
Shakespeare's "mirthfulness and love of laughter."]
[Footnote 649: Koran. The Sacred book of the Mohammedans.]
[Footnote 650: Twelfth Night, etc. The names of three bright, merry,
or serene plays by Shakespeare.]
[Footnote 651: Egyptian verdict. Emerson used Egyptian probably in the
sense of "gipsy." He compares such opinions to the fortunes told by
the gipsies.]
[Footnote 652: Tasso. An Italian poet of the sixteenth century.]
[Footnote 653: Cervantes. A Spanish poet and romancer of the sixteenth
century, the author of _Don Quixote_.]
[Footnote 654: Israelite. Such Hebrew prophets as Isaiah and
Jeremiah.]
[Footnote 655: German. Such as Luther.]
[Footnote 656: Swede. Such as Swedenborg, the mystic philosopher of
the eighteenth century of whom Emerson had already written in
_Representative Men_.]
[Footnote 657: A pilgrim's progress. As described by John Bunyan, the
English writer, in his famous _Pilgrim's Progress_.]
[Footnote 658: Doleful histories of Adam's fall, etc. The subject of
_Paradise Lost,_ the great poem by John Milton.]
[Footnote 659: With doomsdays and purgatorial, etc. As described by
Dante in his _Divine Commedia_, an epic about hell, purgatory, and
paradise.]
PRUDENCE
[Footnote 660: The essay on _Prudence_ was given as a lecture in
the course on _Human Culture_, in the winter of 1837-8. It was
published in the first series of _Essays_, which appeared in 1841.]
[Footnote 661: Lubricity. The word means literally the state or
quality of being slippery; Emerson uses it several times, in its
derived sense of "instability."]
[Footnote 662: Love and Friendship. The subjects of the two essays
preceding _Prudence_, in the volume of 1841.]
[Footnote 663: The world is filled with the proverbs, etc. Compare
with this passage Emerson's words in _Compensation_ on "the flights of
proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as omnipresent as that of
birds and flies."]
[Footnote 664: A good wheel or pin. That is, a part of a machine.]
[Footnote 665: The law of polarity. Having two opposite poles, the
properties of the one of which are the opposite of the other.]
[Footnote 666: Summer will have its flies. Emerson discoursed
with philosophic calm about the impediments and disagreeableness which
beset every path; he also accepted them with serenity when he
encountered them in his daily life.]
[Footnote 667: The inhabitants of the climates, etc. As a
northerner, Emerson naturally felt that the advantage and superiority
were with his own section. He expressed in his poems _Voluntaries_ and
_Mayday_ views similar to those declared here.]
[Footnote 668: Peninsular campaign. Emerson here refers to
the military operations carried on from 1808 to 1814 in Portugal,
Spain, and southern France against the French, by the British,
Spanish, and Portuguese forces commanded by Wellington. What was the
"Peninsular campaign" in American history?]
[Footnote 669: Dr. Johnson is reported to have said, etc. Dr.
Samuel Johnson was an eminent English scholar of the eighteenth
century. In this, as in many other instances, Emerson quotes from his
memory instead of from the book. The words of Dr. Johnson, as reported
by his biographer Boswell, are: "Accustom your children constantly to
this; if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it,
say it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check
them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end."]
[Footnote 670: Rifle. A local name in England and New England
for an instrument, on the order of a whetstone, used for sharpening
scythes; it is made of wood, covered with fine sand or emery.]
[Footnote 671: Last grand duke of Weimar. Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach is a
grand duchy of Germany. The grand duke referred to was Charles