names the prince of Persian poets," yet Saadi was his first love; indeed, he adopted his name, in its various modifications, for the ideal poet, and under it describes his own longings and his most intimate experiences.

Saadi, guarding himself from entangling alliances, living apart and simply and in the great sunny Present, recognizing living and pervading Deity, affirming only, and giving freedom and joy to human souls, might be Emerson in Oriental mask.

In whatever form he first came on Saadi's verse, Mr. Emerson's letters show that he did not know the Gulistan until 1848, and in that year he wrote in his journal: "In Saadi's Gulistan I find many traits which comport with the portrait I drew," evidently referring to this poem, which was first printed in the Dial for October, 1842. It pleased him to find that the real Saadi approached his type of what the poet should be. In 1865 Mr. Emerson wrote the preface to the American edition of Gladwin's translation of the Gulistan, published by Messrs. Ticknor & Fields, in Boston. This explains the omission of an account of Saadi and his poems in the lecture written soon after on "Persian Poetry," now included in Letters and Social Aims.

This paragraph concerning him is from Mr. Emerson's journal of 1843:

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"Saadi was long a Sacayi, or water-drawer, in the Holy Land, till found worthy of an introduction to the prophet Khizr (Elias, or the Syrian and Greek Hermes), who moistened his mouth with the water of immortality.' Somebody doubted this, and saw in a dream a host of angels descending with salvers of glory in their hands. On asking one of them for whom those were intended, he answered, for Shaikh Saadi of Shiraz, who has written a stanza of poetry that has

met the approbation of God Almighty.' Khosraw of Delhi asked Khizr for a mouthful of this inspiring beverage; but he told him that Saadi had got the last of it.

"It was on the coming of Friday in the month Showal, of the Arabian year 690, that the eagle of the immaterial soul of Shaikh Saadi shook from his plumage the dust of his body.""

Page 131, note 1. This reference to the sweet wine of Malaga is a youthful reminiscence. In Mr. Emerson's obituary notice of his townsman and classmate, John Cheney, he says, "I remember the Malaga from Warland's (the Cambridge grocer), which was the Falernian of the Pythologian club, of which he was the Horace, "as more delicious than any wine I have tasted since."

Page 133, note I.

"Life is a bubble and a skepticism.

Grant it, and as much more as they will, but thou, God's darling, heed thy private dream; thou wilt not be missed in the scorning and skepticism.” —Essays, Second Series, p. 65.

Mr. George W. Cooke, in his biography, says that Emerson's Divinity School Address became the subject of frequent sermons, and the air was full of pamphlets and newspaper articles. The Unitarian ministers debated whether Emerson was a Christian; some said he was not; some that he was an atheist; while others earnestly defended him. By some of the Friends of Progress ' ... he was pronounced a pantheist." Page 135, note 1. Compare the passage in "The OverSoul," Essays, First Series, p. 293.

Page 135, note 2. The image is much like that in the poem “Days.”

HOLIDAYS. Page 136. This little poem was printed in the Dial for July, 1842.

XENOPHANES. Page 137. This poem bears the date ❝ Concord, 1834." It is a less agreeable presentation of the ancient doctrine which is happily presented in "Each and All." It represents the sadder mood of Xenophanes of Elea, the rhapsodist and philosopher (570-480 B.C.), who taught the Unity of God and Nature. His doctrine, "Ev κai Tâv, the One and the All, constantly recurs in Mr. Emerson's writings, and the poem in his verse-book bears the Greek title.

Xenophanes said, "There is one God, the greatest among gods and men, comparable to mortals neither in form nor thought." Mr. Arthur K. Rogers, in his Student's History of Philosophy, says that what Xenophanes taught was "that what we name God is the One immutable and comprehensive material universe, which holds within it and determines all those minor phenomena to which an enlightened philosophy will reduce the many deities of the popular faith. The conception is not unlike that of Spinoza in later times.'

It is a remarkable fact that after Mr. Emerson's return from Europe, in 1834, his first lectures were upon Natural History. In a lecture called "The Naturalist,' given in May, 1834, is a passage similar to the first four lines of this poem.

Page 137, note I. "So poor is Nature that from the beginning to the end of the universe she has but one stuff, - but one stuff with its two ends, to serve up all her dream-like variety." Nature," Essays, Second Series.

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THE DAY'S RATION. Page 138. Among the few entries in Mr. Emerson's autobiographical note-book several relate to his limited strength and, especially, animal spirits, yet the poem expresses but a mood; his days were full and happy. He had only the right proportion of divine discontent. The thought of this poem is also expressed in Representative Men, p. 184.

BLIGHT. Page 139. This poem was written in midsummer of 1843. Under the name of "The Times" it was printed in the Dial for January of the next year. The latter portion of the poem suggests Alphonso of Castile."

Page 140, note I. "The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation and animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but employs them as signs." "The Poet,"

Essays, Second Series.

Page 140, note 2. The teaching of Xenophanes and the Eleatic School.

Page 140, note 3. A similar passage is found in the "Lecture on the Times," Nature, Addresses and Lectures, pp. 287, 288.

MUSKETAQUID. Page 141. Though born in Boston, Mr. Emerson loved the ancestral village on the Musketaquid. The dear associations of childhood and youth with it are shown in a poem which I have called "At the Old Manse," written when he was twenty-four years old, now for the first time printed, in the Appendix. There also are found the homesick verses written at Naples in 1834. In a letter to his Aunt Mary soon after he settled in Concord, he wrote, “ As men say that the apple never falls far from the stem, I shall hope that another year will draw your eyes and steps to this old, dear odious haunt of the race."

Page 142, note 1. A passage in the essay on Experience (Essays, Second Series, pp. 82, 83), and also the poem of that name, printed in this volume, which served as its motto, name "The Lords of Life."

Page 143, note I. Two passages from the journal of 1840 are suggested by these three lines:

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Cyrus Stow wanted his bog-meadow brought into

grass.

He offered Antony Colombe, Sol Wetherbee, and whomsoever else seed and manure and team and the whole crop, which they accepted and went to work, and reduced the tough roots, the tussocks of grass, the uneven surface, and gave the whole field a good rotting and breaking and sunning, and now he finds no longer any difficulty in getting good English grass from the smooth and friable land. What Stow does with his field, what the Creator does with his planet, the Yankees are now doing with America. It will be friable, arable, habitable to men and angels yet!"

"Over every chimney is a star; in every field is an oaken garland or a wreath of parsley, laurel or wheat-ears. Nature waits to decorate every child.'

Page 144, note 1. Were it not for the passage in his chapter on Swedenborg (Representative Men, pp. 113, 114), it would seem unlikely that in this line Mr. Emerson played on the word "concords; " but because of his interest at that time in Swedenborg's Animal World, with its doctrine of Microcosm and Macrocosm, the possibility may be recognized.

DIRGE. Page 145. The explanation of the first two introductory lines, which have a suggestion of Dante about them, is that they were written about the time of Mr. Emerson's thirty-fifth birthday anniversary when he had completed half of the journey of life allotted to man in Scripture.

Madam Emerson, as she was called in her later years, had six sons: John Clark, William, Ralph Waldo, Edward Bliss, Robert Bulkeley, and Charles Chauncy; and also, two daughters, who died in infancy. But John died too early for his brother Waldo to have any clear remembrance of him. William thus became, on graduating from Harvard at the age of seventeen, his mother's main dependence for aid in supporting