Essays By Ralph Waldo Emerson Part 19

[Footnote 300: My author says, etc. The quotation is from _A Consideration upon Cicero_, by the French author, Montaigne. Montaigne was one of Emerson's favorite authors from his boyhood: of the essays he says, "I felt as if I myself, had written this book in some former life, so sincerely it spoke my thoughts."]

[Footnote 301: Cherub. What is the difference between a cherub and a seraph?]

[Footnote 302: Curricle. A two-wheeled carriage, especially popular in the eighteenth century.]

[Footnote 303: This law of one to one. Emerson felt that this same law applied to nature. He wrote in his journal: "Nature says to man, 'one to one, my dear.'"]

[Footnote 304: Crimen quos, etc. The Latin saying is translated in the preceding sentence.]

[Footnote 305: Nonage. We use more commonly the word, "minority."]

[Footnote 306: Ja.n.u.s-faced. The word here means simply two-faced, without the idea of deceit usually attached to it. In Roman mythology, Ja.n.u.s, the doorkeeper of heaven was the protector of doors and gateways and the patron of the beginning and end of undertakings. He was the G.o.d of the rising and setting of the sun, and was represented with two faces, one looking to the east and the other to the west. His temple at Rome was kept open in time of war and closed in time of peace.]

[Footnote 307: Harbinger. A forerunner; originally an officer who rode in advance of a royal person to secure proper lodgings and accommodations.]

[Footnote 308: Empyrean. Highest and purest heaven; according to the ancients, the region of pure light and fire.]

HEROISM

[Footnote 309: t.i.tle. Probably this essay is, essentially at least, the lecture on _Heroism_ delivered in Boston in the winter of 1837, in the course of lectures on _Human Culture_.]

[Footnote 310: Motto. This saying of Mahomet's was the only motto prefixed to the essay in the first edition. In later editions, Emerson prefixed, according to his custom, some original lines;

"Ruby wine is drunk by knaves, Sugar spends to fatten slaves, Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons, Thunder clouds are Jove's festoons, Drooping oft in wreaths of dread Lightning-knotted round his head: The hero is not fed on sweets, Daily his own heart he eats; Chambers of the great are jails, And head-winds right for royal sails."

[Footnote 311: Elder English dramatists. The dramatists who preceded Shakespeare. In his essay on _Shakespeare; or, the Poet_, Emerson enumerates the foremost of these,--"Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Peele, Ford, Ma.s.singer, Beaumont and Fletcher."]

[Footnote 312: Beaumont and Fletcher. Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher were two dramatists of the Elizabethan age. They wrote together and their styles were so similar that critics are unable to identify the share of each in their numerous plays.]

[Footnote 313: Rodrigo, Pedro, or Valerio. Favorite names for heroes among the dramatists. Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, known usually by the t.i.tle of the Cid, was the national hero of Spain, famous for his exploits against the Moors. Don Pedro was the Prince of Arragon in Shakespeare's play, _Much Ado About Nothing_.]

[Footnote 314: Bonduca, Sophocles, the Mad Lover, and Double Marriage.

The first, third and fourth are names of plays by Beaumont and Fletcher. In the case of the second, Emerson, by a lapse of memory, gives the name of one of the chief characters instead of the name of the play--_The Triumph of Honor_ in a piece called _Four Plays in One_. It is from this play by Beaumont and Fletcher that the pa.s.sage in the essay is quoted.]

[Footnote 315: Adriadne's crown. According to Greek mythology, the crown of Adriadne was, for her beauty and her sufferings, put among the stars. She was the daughter of Minos, King of Crete; she gave Theseus the clue by means of which he escaped from the labyrinth and she was afterwards abandoned by him.]

[Footnote 316: Romulus. The reputed founder of the city of Rome.]

[Footnote 317: Laodamia, Dion. Read these two poems by Wordsworth, the great English poet, and tell why you think Emerson mentioned them here.]

[Footnote 318: Scott. Sir Walter Scott, a famous Scotch author.]

[Footnote 319: Lord Evandale, Balfour of Burley. These are characters in Scott's novel, _Old Mortality_. The pa.s.sage referred to by Emerson is in the forty-second chapter.]

[Footnote 320: Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle was a great admirer of heroes, a.s.serting that history is the biography of great men. One of his most popular books is _Heroes and Hero-Wors.h.i.+p_, on a plan similar to that of Emerson's _Representative Men_.]

[Footnote 321: Robert Burns. A Scotch lyric poet. Emerson was probably thinking of the patriotic song, _Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled_.]

[Footnote 322: Harleian Miscellanies. A collection of ma.n.u.scripts published in the eighteenth century, and named for Robert Harley, the English statesman who collected them.]

[Footnote 323: Lutzen. A small town in Prussia. The battle referred to was fought in 1632 and in it the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus gained a great victory over vastly superior numbers. Nearly two hundred years later another battle was fought at Lutzen, in which Napoleon gained a victory over the allied Russians and Prussians.]

[Footnote 324: Simon Ockley. An English scholar of the seventeenth century whose chief work was a _History of the Saracens_.]

[Footnote 325: Oxford. One of the two great English universities.]

[Footnote 326: Plutarch. (See note 264.)]

[Footnote 327: Brasidas. This hero, described by Plutarch, was a Spartan general who lived about four hundred years before Christ.]

[Footnote 328: Dion. A Greek philosopher who ruled the city of Syracuse in the fourth century before Christ.]

[Footnote 329: Epaminondas. A Greek general and statesman of the fourth century before Christ.]

[Footnote 330: Scipio. (See note 205.)]

[Footnote 331: Stoicism. The stern and severe philosophy taught by the Greek philosopher Zeno; he taught that men should always seek virtue and be indifferent to pleasure and happiness. This belief, carried to the extreme of severity, exercised a great influence on many n.o.ble Greeks and Romans.]

[Footnote 332: Heroism is an obedience, etc. In one of his poems Emerson says:

"So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is G.o.d to man, When Duty whispers low, 'Thou must,'

The youth replies, 'I can.'"

[Footnote 333: Plotinus. An Egyptian philosopher who taught in Rome during the third century. It was said that he so exalted the mind that he was ashamed of his body.]

[Footnote 334: Indeed these humble considerations, etc. The pa.s.sage, like many which Emerson quotes, is rendered inexactly. The Prince says to Poins: "Indeed these humble considerations make me out of love with my greatness. What a disgrace it is to me to remember thy name! or to know thy face to-morrow! or to take note how many pairs of silk stockings thou hast, that is, these and those that were thy peach-colored ones! or to bear the inventory of thy s.h.i.+rts, as, one for superfluity and another for use!" Shakespeare's _Henry IV._, Part II. 2, 2.]

[Footnote 335: Ibn Hankal. Ibn Hankul, an Arabian geographer and traveler of the tenth century. He wrote an account of his twenty years' travels in Mohammedan countries; in 1800 this was translated into English by Sir William Jones under the t.i.tle of _The Oriental Geography of Ibn Hankal_. In that volume this anecdote is told in slightly different words.]

[Footnote 336: Bokhara. Where is Bokhara? It corresponds to the ancient Sogdiana.]

[Footnote 337: Bannocks. Thick cakes, made usually of oatmeal. What does Emerson mean by this sentence? Probably no person ever met his visitors, many of whom were "exacting and wearisome," and must have been unwelcome, with more perfect courtesy and graciousness than Emerson.]

[Footnote 338: John Eliot. Give as full an account as you can of the life and works of this n.o.ble Apostle to the Indians of the seventeenth century.]

[Footnote 339: King David, etc. See First Chronicles, 11, 15-19.]

[Footnote 340: Brutus. Marcus Junius Brutus, a Roman patriot of the first century before Christ, who took part in the a.s.sa.s.sination of Julius Caesar.]

[Footnote 341: Philippi. A city of Macedonia near which in the year 42 B.C. were fought two battles in which the republican army under Brutus and Ca.s.sius was defeated by Octavius and Antony, friends of Caesar.]

[Footnote 342: Euripides. A Greek tragic poet of the fifth century before Christ.]