Essays

[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 Augustus, who died in 1828. He was the friend and patron of the great German authors, Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and Wieland.] [Footnote 672: The Raphael in the Dresden gallery. The Sistine Madonna, the most famous picture of the great Italian artist, Raphael.] [Footnote 673: Call a spade a spade. Plutarch, the Greek historian, said, "These Macedonians ... call a spade a spade."] [Footnote 674: Parts. A favorite eighteenth century term for abilities, talents.] [Footnote 675: We have found out, etc. Emerson always insisted that morals and intellect should be united. He urged that power and insight are lessened by shortcomings in morals.] [Footnote 676: Goethe's Tasso. A play by the German poet Goethe, founded on the belief that the imprisonment of Tasso was due to his aspiration to the hand of Leonora d'Este, sister of the duke of Ferrara. Tasso was a famous Italian poet of the seventeenth century.] [Footnote 677: Richard III. An English king, the last of the Plantagenet line, the hero--or villain--of Shakespeare's historical play, Richard III.] [Footnote 678: Bifold. Give a simpler word that means the same.] [Footnote 679: Cæsar. Why is Cæsar the great Roman ruler, given as a type of greatness?] [Footnote 680: Job. Why is Job, the hero of the Old Testament book of the same name, given as a type of misery?] [Footnote 681: Poor Richard. _Poor Richard's Almanac_, published (1732-1757) by Benjamin Franklin was a collection of maxims inculcating prudence and thrift. These were given as the sayings of "Poor Richard."] [Footnote 682: State Street. A street in Boston, Massachusetts, noted as a financial center.] [Footnote 683: Stick in a tree between whiles, etc. "Jock, when ye hae naething else to do, ye may be aye sticking in a tree; it will be growing, Jock, when ye're sleeping."--Scott's _Heart of Midlothian_. It is said that these were the words of a dying Scotchman to his son.] [Footnote 684: Minor virtues. Emerson suggests that punctuality and regard for a promise are two of these. Can you name others?] [Footnote 685: The Latin proverb says, etc. This is quoted from Tacitus, the famous Roman historian.] [Footnote 686: If he set out to contend, etc. In contention, Emerson holds, the best men would lose their characteristic virtues, --the fearless apostle Paul, his devotion to truth; the gentle disciple John, his loving charity.] [Footnote 687: Though your views are in straight antagonism, &c. This was Emerson's own method, and by it he won a courteous hearing from those to whom his views were most objectionable.] [Footnote 688: Consuetudes. Give a simpler word that has the same meaning.] [Footnote 689: Begin where we will, etc. Explain what Emerson means by this expression.] CIRCLES [Footnote 690: This essay first appeared in the first series of _Essays_, published in 1841. Unlike most of the other essays in the volume, no earlier form of it exists, and it was probably not delivered first as a lecture. Dr. Richard Garnett says in his _Life of Emerson_: "The object of this fine essay quaintly entitled _Circles_ is to reconcile this rigidity of unalterable law with the fact of human progress. Compensation illustrates one property of a circle, which always returns to the point where it began, but it is no less true that around every circle another can be drawn.... Emerson followed his own counsel; he always keeps a reserve of power. His theory of _Circles_ reappears without the least verbal indebtedness to himself in the splendid essay on _Love_."] [Footnote 691: St. Augustine. A celebrated father of the Latin church, who flourished in the fourth century. His most famous work is his _Confessions_, an autobiographical volume of religious meditations.] [Footnote 692: Another dawn risen on mid-noon. "Another morn has risen on mid-noon." Milton, _Paradise Lost_, Book V.] [Footnote 693: Greek sculpture. The greatest development of the art of sculpture that the world has ever known was that which took place in Greece, with Athens as the center, in the fifth century before Christ. The masterpieces which remain are the models on which modern art formed itself.] [Footnote 694: Greek letters. In literature--in drama, philosophy and history--Greece attained an excellence as signal as in art. Emerson as a scholar, felt that the literature of Greece was more permanent than its art. Would an artist be apt to take this view?] [Footnote 695: New arts destroy the old, etc. Tell the ways in which the improvements and inventions mentioned by Emerson have been superseded by others; give the reasons. Mention other similar cases of more recent date.]