Chapter 22

[Footnote 469: Nature. Emerson's first published volume was a little book of essays, entitled _Nature_, which appeared in 1836. In the years which followed, he thought more deeply on the subject and, according to his custom, made notes about it and entries in his journals. In the winter of 1843 he delivered a lecture on _Relation to Nature_, and it is probable that this essay is built up from that. The plan of it, however, had been long in his mind: In 1840 he wrote in his journal: "I think I must do these eyes of mine the justice to write a new chapter on Nature. This delight we all take in every show of night or day or field or forest or sea or city, down to the lowest particulars, is not without sequel, though we be as yet only wishers and gazers, not at all knowing what we want. We are predominated here as elsewhere by an upper wisdom, and resemble those great discoverers who are haunted for years, sometimes from infancy, with a passion for the fact, or class of facts in which the secret lies which they are destined to unlock, and they let it not go until the blessing is won. So these sunsets and starlights, these swamps and rocks, these bird notes and animal forms off which we cannot get our eyes and ears, but hover still, as moths round a lamp, are no doubt a Sanscrit cipher covering the whole religious history of the universe, and presently we shall read it off into action and character. The pastures are full of ghosts for me, the morning woods full of angels."]

[Footnote 470: There are days, etc. The passage in Emerson's journal is hardly less beautiful. Under date of October 30, 1841, he wrote: "On this wonderful day when heaven and earth seem to glow with magnificence, and all the wealth of all the elements is put under contribution to make the world fine, as if Nature would indulge her offspring, it seemed ungrateful to hide in the house. Are there not dull days enough in the year for you to write and read in, that you should waste this glittering season when Florida and Cuba seem to have left their glittering seats and come to visit us with all their shining hours, and almost we expect to see the jasmine and cactus burst from the ground instead of these last gentians and asters which have loitered to attend this latter glory of the year? All insects are out, all birds come forth, the very cattle that lie on the ground seem to have great thoughts, and Egypt and India look from their eyes."]

[Footnote 471: Halcyons. Halcyon days, ones of peace and tranquillity; anciently, days of calm weather in mid-winter, when the halcyon, or kingfisher, was supposed to brood. It was fabled that this bird laid its eggs in a nest that floated on the sea, and that it charmed the winds and waves to make them calm while it brooded.]

[Footnote 472: Indian Summer. Calm, dry, hazy weather which comes in the autumn in America. The Century Dictionary says it was called Indian Summer because the season was most marked in the sections of the upper eastern Mississippi valley inhabited by Indians about the time the term became current.]

[Footnote 473: Gabriel. One of the seven archangels. The Hebrew name means "God is my strong one."]

[Footnote 474: Uriel. Another of the seven archangels; the name means "Light of God."]

[Footnote 475: Converts all trees to wind-harps. Compare with this passage the lines in Emerson's poem, _Woodnotes_:

"And the countless leaves of the pines are strings Tuned to the lay the wood-god sings."

]

[Footnote 476: The village. Concord, Massachusetts. Emerson's home the greater part of the time from 1832 till his death.]

[Footnote 477: I go with my friend, etc. With Henry Thoreau, the lover of Nature.]

[Footnote 478: Our little river. The Concord river.]

[Footnote 479: Novitiate and probation. Explain the meaning of these words, in the Roman Catholic Church. What does Emerson mean by them here?]

[Footnote 480: Villegiatura. The Italian name for a season spent in country pleasures.]

[Footnote 481: Hanging gardens. The hanging gardens of Babylon were one of the seven wonders of the world.]

[Footnote 482: Versailles. A royal residence near Paris, with beautiful formal gardens.]

[Footnote 483: Paphos. A beautiful city on the island of Cyprus, where was situated a temple of Astarte, or Venus.]

[Footnote 484: Ctesiphon. One of the chief cities of ancient Persia, the site of a magnificent royal palace.]

[Footnote 485: Notch Mountains. Probably the White Mountains near Crawford Notch, a deep, narrow valley which is often called "The Notch."]

[Footnote 486: Æolian harp. A stringed instrument from which sound is drawn by the passing of the wind over its strings. It was named for Æolus, the god of the winds, in Greek mythology.]

[Footnote 487: Dorian. Dorus was one of the four divisions of Greece: the word is here used in a general sense for Grecian.]

[Footnote 488: Apollo. In Greek and Roman mythology, the sun god, who presided over music, poetry, and healing.]

[Footnote 489: Diana. In Roman mythology, the goddess of the moon devoted to the chase.]

[Footnote 490: Edens. Beautiful, sinless places,--like the garden of Eden.]

[Footnote 491: Tempes. Places like the lovely valley of Tempe in Thessaly, Greece.]

[Footnote 492: Como Lake. A lake of northern Italy, celebrated for its beauty.]

[Footnote 493: Madeira Islands. Where are these islands, famous for picturesque beauty and balmy atmosphere?]

[Footnote 494: Common. What is a common?]

[Footnote 495: Campagna. The plain near Rome.]

[Footnote 496: Dilettantism. Define this word and explain its use here.]

[Footnote 497: "Wreaths" and "Flora's Chaplets." About the time that Emerson was writing his essays, volumes of formal, artificial verses were very fashionable, more as parlor ornaments than as literature. Two such volumes were _A Wreath of Wild Flowers from New England_ and _The Floral Offering_ by Mrs. Frances Osgood, a New England writer.]

[Footnote 498: Pan. In Greek mythology, the god of woods, fields, flocks, and shepherds.]

[Footnote 499: The multitude of false cherubs, etc. Explain the meaning of this sentence. If true money were valueless, would people make false money?]

[Footnote 500: Proteus. In Greek mythology, a sea god who had the power of assuming different shapes. If caught and held fast, however, he was forced to assume his own shape and answer the questions put to him.]

[Footnote 501: Mosaic ... Schemes. The conception of the world as given in Genesis on which the law of Moses, the great Hebrew lawgiver, was founded.]

[Footnote 502: Ptolemaic schemes. The system of geography and astronomy taught in the second century by Ptolemy of Alexandria; it was accepted till the sixteenth century, when the Copernican system was established. Ptolemy believed that the sun, planets, and stars revolve around the earth; Copernicus taught that the planets revolve around the sun.]

[Footnote 503: Flora. In Roman mythology, the goddess of the spring and of flowers.]

[Footnote 504: Fauna. In Roman mythology, the goddess of fields and shepherds; she represents the fruitfulness of the earth.]

[Footnote 505: Ceres. The Roman goddess of grain and harvest, corresponding to the Greek goddess, Demeter.]

[Footnote 506: Pomona. The Roman goddess of fruit trees and gardens.]

[Footnote 507: All duly arrive. Emerson deducts from nature the doctrine of evolution. What is its teaching?]

[Footnote 508: Plato. (See note 36.)]

[Footnote 509: Himalaya Mountain chains. (See note 193.)]

[Footnote 510: Franklin. Give an account of Benjamin Franklin, the famous American scientist and patriot. What did he prove about lightening?]

[Footnote 511: Dalton. John Dalton was an English chemist who, about the beginning of the nineteenth century, perfected the atomic theory, that is, the theory that all chemical combinations take place in certain ways between the atoms, or ultimate particles, of bodies.]

[Footnote 512: Davy. (See note 69.)]

[Footnote 513: Black. Joseph Black, a Scotch chemist who made valuable discoveries about latent heat and carbon dioxide, or carbonic acid gas.]

[Footnote 514: The astronomers said, etc. Beginning with this passage, several pages of this essay was published in 1844, under the title of _Tantalus_, in the next to the last number of _The Dial_, which Emerson edited.]

[Footnote 515: Centrifugal, centripetal. Define these words.]

[Footnote 516: Stoics. See "Stoicism," 331.]

[Footnote 517: Luther. (See note 188.)]

[Footnote 518: Jacob Behmen. A German mystic of the sixteenth century; his name is usually written Boehme.]

[Footnote 519: George Fox. (See note 202.)]

[Footnote 520: James Naylor. An English religious enthusiast of the seventeenth century; he was first a Puritan and later a Quaker.]

[Footnote 521: Operose. Laborious.]

[Footnote 522: Outskirt and far-off reflection, etc. Compare with this passage Emerson's poem, _The Forerunners_.]

[Footnote 523: Oedipus. In Greek mythology, the King of Thebes who solved the riddle of the Sphinx, a fabled monster.]

[Footnote 524: Prunella. A widely scattered plant, called self-heal, because a decoction of its leaves and stems was, and to some extent is, valued as an application to wounds. An editor comments on the fact that during the last years of Emerson's life "the little blue self-heal crept into the grass before his study window."]

SHAKESPEARE; OR, THE POET

[Footnote 525: Shakespeare; or the Poet is one of seven essays on great men in various walks of life, published in 1850 under the title of _Representative Men_. These essays were first delivered as lectures in Boston in the winter of 1845, and were repeated two years later before English audiences. They must have been especially interesting to those Englishmen who had, seven years before, heard Emerson's friend, Carlyle, deliver his six lectures on great men whom he selected as representative ones. These lectures were published under the title of _Heroes and Hero-Worship_. You should read the latter part of Carlyle's lecture on _The Hero as Poet_ and compare what he says about Shakespeare with Emerson's words. Both Emerson and Carlyle reverenced the great English poet as "the master of mankind." Even in serious New England, the plays of Shakespeare were found upon the bookshelf beside religious tracts and doctrinal treatises. There the boy Emerson found them and learned to love them, and the man Emerson loved them but the more. It was as a record of personal experiences that he wrote in his journal: "Shakespeare fills us with wonder the first time we approach him. We go away, and work and think, for years, and come again,--he astonishes us anew. Then, having drank deeply and saturated us with his genius, we lose sight of him for another period of years. By and by we return, and there he stands immeasurable as at first. We have grown wiser, but only that we should see him wiser than ever. He resembles a high mountain which the traveler sees in the morning and thinks he shall quickly near it and pass it and leave it behind. But he journeys all day till noon, till night. There still is the dim mountain close by him, having scarce altered its bearings since the morning light."]

[Footnote 526: Genius. Here instead of speaking as in _Friendship_, see note 286, of the genius or spirit supposed to preside over each man's life, Emerson mentions the guardian spirit of human kind.]

[Footnote 527: Shakespeare's youth, etc. It is impossible to appreciate or enjoy this essay without having some clear general information about the condition of the English people and English literature in the glorious Elizabethan age in which Shakespeare lived. Consult, for this information, some brief history of England and a comprehensive English literature.]

[Footnote 528: Puritans. Strict Protestants who became so powerful in England that in the time of the Commonwealth they controlled the political and religious affairs of the country.]

[Footnote 529: Anglican Church. The Established Church of England; the Episcopal church.]

[Footnote 530: Punch. The chief character in a puppet show, hence the puppet show itself.]

[Footnote 531: Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, etc. For an account of these dramatists consult a text book on English literature. The English drama seems to have begun in the Middle Ages with what were called Miracle plays, which were scenes from Bible history; about the same time were performed the Mystery plays, which dramatized the lives of saints. These were followed by the Moralities, plays in which were personified abstract virtues and vices. The first step in the creation of the regular drama was taken by Heywood, who composed some farcical plays called Interludes. The people of the sixteenth century were fond of pageants, shows in which classical personages were introduced, and Masques, which gradually developed from pageants into dramas accompanied with music. About the middle of the sixteenth century, rose the English drama,--comedy, tragedy, and historical plays. The chief among the group of dramatists who attained fame before Shakespeare began to write were Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, and Peele. Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher rank next to Shakespeare among his contemporaries, and among the other dramatists of the period were Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Ford, and Massinger.]

[Footnote 532: At the time when, etc. Probably about 1585.]

[Footnote 533: Tale of Troy. Drama founded on the Trojan war. The subject of famous poems by Latin and Greek poets.]

[Footnote 534: Death of Julius Cæsar. An account of the plots which ended in the assassination of the great Roman general.]

[Footnote 535: Plutarch. See note on _Heroism_(264). Shakespeare, like the earlier dramatists, drew freely on Plutarch's _Lives_ for material.]

[Footnote 536: Brut. A poetical version of the legendary history of Britain, by Layamon. Its hero is Brutus, a mythical King of Britain.]

[Footnote 537: Arthur. A British King of the sixth century, around whose life and deeds so many legends have grown up that some historians say he, too, was a myth. He is the center of the great cycle of romances told in prose in Mallory's _Morte d'Arthur_ and in poetry in Tennyson's _Idylls of the King_.]

[Footnote 538: The royal Henries. Among the dramas popular in Shakespeare's day which he retouched or rewrote are the historical plays. Henry IV., First and Second Parts; Henry V; Henry VI., First, Second, and Third Parts; and Henry VIII.]

[Footnote 539: Italian tales. Italian literature was very popular in Shakespeare's day, and authors drew freely from it for material, especially from the _Decameron_, a famous collection of a hundred tales, by Boccaccio, a poet of the fourteenth century.]

[Footnote 540: Spanish voyages. In the sixteenth century, Spain was still a power upon the high seas, and the tales of her conquests and treasures in the New World were like tales of romance.]

[Footnote 541: Prestige. Can you give an English equivalent for this French word?]

[Footnote 542: Which no single genius, etc. In the same way, some critics assure us, the poems credited to the Greek poet, Homer, were built up by a number of poets.]

[Footnote 543: Malone. An Irish critic and scholar of the eighteenth century, best known by his edition of Shakespeare's plays.]

[Footnote 544: Wolsey's Soliloquy. See Shakespeare's _Henry VIII._ III, 2. Cardinal Wolsey was prime minister of England in the reign of Henry VIII.]

[Footnote 545: Scene with Cromwell. See _Henry VIII._ III, 2. Thomas Cromwell was the son of an English blacksmith; he rose to be lord high chamberlain of England in the reign of Henry VIII., but, incurring the King's displeasure, was executed on a charge of treason.]

[Footnote 546: Account of the coronation. See _Henry VIII._ IV, 1.]

[Footnote 547: Compliment to Queen Elizabeth. See _Henry VIII._ V, 5.]

[Footnote 548: Bad rhythm. Too much importance must not be attached to these matters in deciding authorship, as critics disagree about them.]

[Footnote 549: Value his memory, etc. The Greeks, in appreciation of the value of memory to the poet, represented the Muses as the daughters of Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory.]

[Footnote 550: Homer. A Greek poet to whom is assigned the authorship of the two greatest Greek poems, the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_; he is said to have lived about a thousand years before Christ.]

[Footnote 551: Chaucer. (See note 33.)]

[Footnote 552: Saadi. A Persian poet, supposed to have lived in the thirteenth century. His best known poems are his odes.]

[Footnote 553: Presenting Thebes, etc. This quotation is from Milton's poem, _Il Penseroso_. Milton here names the three most popular subjects of Greek tragedy,--the story of Oedipus, the ill-fated King of Thebes who slew his father; the tale of the descendants of Pelops, King of Pisa, who seemed born to woe--Agamemnon was one of his grandsons; the third subject was the tale of Troy and the heroes of the Trojan war,--called "divine" because the Greeks represented even the gods as taking part in the contest.]

[Footnote 554: Pope. (See note 88.)]

[Footnote 555: Dryden. (See note 35.)]

[Footnote 556: Chaucer is a huge borrower. Taine, the French critic, says on this subject: "Chaucer was capable of seeking out in the old common forest of the Middle Ages, stories and legends, to replant them in his own soil and make them send out new shoots.... He has the right and power of copying and translating because by dint of retouching he impresses ... his original work. He recreates what he imitates."]

[Footnote 557: Lydgate. John Lydgate was an English poet who lived a generation later than Chaucer; in his _Troy Book_ and other poems he probably borrowed from the sources used by Chaucer; he called himself "Chaucer's disciple."]

[Footnote 558: Caxton. William Caxton, the English author, more famous as the first English printer, was not born until after Chaucer's death. The work from which Emerson supposes the poet to have borrowed Caxton's translation of _Recueil des Histoires de Troye_, the first printed English book, appeared about 1474.]

[Footnote 559: Guido di Colonna. A Sicilian poet and historian of the thirteenth century. Chaucer in his _House of Fame_ placed in his vision "on a pillar higher than the rest, Homer and Livy, Dares the Phrygian, Guido Colonna, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the other historians of the war of Troy."]

[Footnote 560: Dares Phrygius. A Latin account of the fall of Troy, written about the fifth century, which pretends to be a translation of a lost work on the fall of Troy by Dares, a Trojan priest mentioned in Homer's _Iliad_.]

[Footnote 561: Ovid. A Roman poet who lived about the time of Christ, whose best-known work is the _Metamorphoses_, founded on classical legends.]

[Footnote 562: Statius. A Roman poet of the first century after Christ.]

[Footnote 563: Petrarch. An Italian poet of the fourteenth century.]

[Footnote 564: Boccaccio. An Italian novelist and poet of the fourteenth century. See note on "Italian tales," 539. It is supposed that the plan of the _Decameron_ suggested the similar but far superior plan of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_.]

[Footnote 565: Provençal poets. The poets of Provençe, a province of the southeastern part of France. In the Middle Ages it was celebrated for its lyric poets, called troubadours.]

[Footnote 566: Romaunt of the Rose, etc. Chaucer's _Romaunt of the Rose_, written during the period of French influence, is an incomplete and abbreviated translation of a French poem of the thirteenth century, _Roman de la Rose_, the first part of which was written by William of Loris and the latter by John of Meung, or Jean de Meung.]

[Footnote 567: Troilus and Creseide, etc. Chaucer ascribes the Italian poem which he followed in his _Troilus and Creseide_ to an unknown "Lollius of Urbino"; the source of the poem, however, is _Il Filostrato_, by Boccaccio, the Italian poet already mentioned. Chaucer's poem is far more than a translation; more than half is entirely original, and it is a powerful poem, showing profound knowledge of the Italian poets, whose influence with him superseded the French poets.]

[Footnote 568: The Cock and the Fox. _The Nun's Priest's Tale_ in the _Canterbury Tales_ was an original treatment of the _Roman de Renart_, of Marie of France, a French poet of the twelfth century.]

[Footnote 569: House of Fame, etc. The plan of the _House of Fame_, written during the period of Chaucer's Italian influence, shows the influence of Dante; the general idea of the poem is from Ovid, the Roman poet.]

[Footnote 570: Gower. John Gower was an English poet, Chaucer's contemporary and friend; the two poets went to the same sources for poetic materials, but Chaucer made no such use of Gower's works as we would infer from this passage. Emerson relied on his memory for facts, and hence made mistakes, as here in the instances of Lydgate, Caxton, and Gower.]

[Footnote 571: Westminster, Washington. What legislative body assembles at Westminster Palace, London? What at Washington?]

[Footnote 572: Sir Robert Peel. An English statesman who died in 1850, not long after _Representative Men_ was published.]

[Footnote 573: Webster. Daniel Webster, an American statesman and orator who was living when this essay was written.]

[Footnote 574: Locke. John Locke. (See note 18.)]

[Footnote 575: Rousseau. Jean Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher of the eighteenth century.]

[Footnote 576: Homer. (See note 550.)]

[Footnote 577: Menn. Menn, or Mann, was in Sanscrit one of fourteen legendary beings; the one referred to by Emerson, Mann Vaivasvata was supposed to be the author of the laws of Mann, a collection made about the second century.]

[Footnote 578: Saadi or Sadi. (See note 552.)]

[Footnote 579: Milton. Of this great English poet and prose writer of the seventeenth century, Emerson says: "No man can be named whose mind still acts on the cultivated intellect of England and America with an energy comparable to that of Milton. As a poet Shakespeare undoubtedly transcends and far surpasses him in his popularity with foreign nations: but Shakespeare is a voice merely: who and what he was that sang, that sings, we know not."]

[Footnote 580: Delphi. Here, source of prophecy. Delphi was a city in Greece, where was the oracle of Apollo, the most famous of the oracles of antiquity.]

[Footnote 581: Our English Bible. The version made in the reign of King James I. by forty-seven learned divines is a monument of noble English.]

[Footnote 582: Liturgy. An appointed form of worship used in a Christian church,--here, specifically, the service of the Episcopal church. Emerson's mother had been brought up in that church, and though she attended her husband's church, she always loved and read her Episcopal prayer book.]

[Footnote 583: Grotius. Hugo Grotius was a Dutch jurist, statesman, theologian, and poet of the seventeenth century.]

[Footnote 584: Rabbinical forms. The forms used by the rabbis, Jewish doctors or expounders of the law.]

[Footnote 585: Common law. In a general sense, the system of law derived from England, in general use among English-speaking people.]

[Footnote 586: Vedas. The sacred books of the Brahmins.]

[Footnote 587: Æsop's Fables. Fables ascribed to Æsop, a Greek slave who lived in the sixth century before Christ.]

[Footnote 588: Pilpay, or Bidpai. Indian sage to whom were ascribed some fables. From an Arabic translation, these passed into European languages and were used by La Fontaine, the French fabulist.]

[Footnote 589: Arabian Nights. _The Arabian Nights' Entertainment or A Thousand and One Nights_ is a collection of Oriental tales, the plan and name of which are very ancient.]