Essays

[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.)]