spoke fearlessly on the subject in his lectures, but his method was the reverse of theirs, affirmative not negative; he knew his office and followed his genius. He said, "I have quite other slaves to free than those negroes, to wit, imprisoned spirits, imprisoned thoughts."

But after the defection of Daniel Webster from the cause of Freedom, when the strife became more earnest, and Slavery more aggressive, he did important service as a free-lance against it. When the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, he spoke of it in public to his hearers as a law which every one of you will break on the earliest occasion; a law which no man can abet or obey without forfeiting the name of a gentleman."

Page 77, note 1. He was impatient when men false to the cause of Liberty in their own day praised, in Fourth of July orations, the Fathers of the Republic for their sacrifices on her behalf. He wrote in his journal: "The Americans by means of this lust of extending their territory, and through this nefarious means of compromising with Slavery, enlarge the land but dwarf the men.”

But when the evil was brought to his own door and by the law of the land any householder who gave help or furtherance to the poor fugitive was a felon, Mr. Emerson felt that men of honor could not leave remedy for this wrong and disgrace to geologic time, but that active help was due from them.

ASTREA. Page 80. Mr. Emerson's verse-books show that at first he thought of giving this poem for a title TNQOI ΣEAYTON, the Greek maxim signifying Know thyself; but considering that this would be intelligible only to the few, he gave it the name Astræa.

Page 80, note 1. "With this prayer on their neck."— First Edition.

Page 81, note 1. "And its lakes reflect all forms."- First Edition.

ÉTIENNE DE LA BOECE. Page 82. The friendship of Montaigne, as related by himself, with Étienne de la Boéce (or Boetie) has, like that of David and Jonathan, become proverbial. Both were educated for the law at Bordeaux, and they later found themselves in the same parliament or court. When they first met, they ran into each other's arms, as if long acquainted. Étienne was a man who seemed made for whatever he undertook. The happy strength of his genius rejoiced in difficulties." In troublous times he wrote a purely philosophic work, Discours de la servitude volontaire, a brave protest against the tyranny of kings. It was widely read, but brought him disfavor at court. He also wrote graceful, imaginative poems. He died in 1563, at the age of thirtythree.

Mr. Emerson used this name to stand for the perfect friend, utterly loyal, yet austere. In this poem is the spirit of the fourth verse of "Give All to Love." Its thought may be found in "Friendship" (Essays, First Series, p. 208) and in New England Reformers" (Nature, Addresses and Lectures, p. 273).

It seems probable that the poem was written in 1833. In the journal of that year, opposite the account of his coming on Montaigne's Essays when a boy, Mr. Emerson writes of friends," Echo them, and you will see fast enough that you have nothing for them. They came to you for somewhat new. A man loves a man."

COMPENSATION. Page 83. This poetical word on a favorite theme bears the date New York, 1834."

FORBEARANCE. Page 83. In writing this poem it is possible that Mr. Emerson had in mind his friend later his helper and biographer - James Elliot Cabot. It would even better have fitted his friend Henry Thoreau. The date of its printing in the Dial (January, 1842) makes this more likely.

THE PARK. Page 84. "The Park" appeared in the same number of the Dial with the preceding poem.

The poem describes the bewilderment which the youth with traditions and manners inbred from generations of Puritan ancestors feels when he first meets charming and gracious friends of a wider experience and culture. Yet the beauty of their behavior seems to warrant the quality of its hidden foundations.

Emerson wrote to such a friend in March, 1841:—

"I find myself, maugre all my philosophy, a devout student and admirer of persons. I cannot get used to them: they daunt and dazzle me still. I have just now been at the old wonder again. I see persons whom I think the world would be richer for losing; and I see persons whose existence makes the world rich. But blessed be the Eternal Power for those whom fancy even cannot strip of beauty, and who never for a moment seem to me profane.”

FORERUNNERS. Page 85. As in the case of "The Problem," almost no trace of work on this poem in honor of the fair Ideals remains. In the book which contains most of the poems included in Mr. Emerson's first collection it appears in but one form, under the name " Guides," with only one word altered and one erased. There is no date, but Mr. Emerson said that it came to him as he walked home from Wachusett.

There is a passage about the promises, never quite fulfilled, by which Nature leads us, in the Essay of that name in the Second Series (p. 192).

SURSUM CORDA. Page 86. Mr. Emerson had reference in this title to the chanting by the priest, in the introduction to the celebration of the Mass, of the words Sursum Corda! (Up, hearts!) to the worshippers.

The thought of this piece — the exaltation that comes with utter humility did not find quite satisfactory utterance in the poem as printed in early editions, but in its present form he included it in Selected Poems.

ODE TO BEAUTY. Page 87. The Ode was printed in the Dial in October, 1843. In the first stanza, as there printed, the third and fourth line read:

To thee who betrayed me

To be ruined or blest?

and the thirteenth and fourteenth,

Love drinks at thy banquet

Remediless thirst.

Page 87, note 1. The last four lines of this stanza were a later addition. Mr. Emerson sent the Dial to his young friend Henry Thoreau (then teaching Mr. William Emerson's boys in Staten Island), who had contributed " A Winter Walk" to that number. Mr. Thoreau in a letter of just comment on the magazine wrote, "I have a good deal of fault to find with your Ode to Beauty.' The tune is altogether unworthy of the thoughts. You slope too quickly to the rhyme, as if that trick should be performed as soon as possible, or as if you

stood over the line with a hatchet and chopped off the verses as they came out, some short and some long. But give us a long reel and we'll chop it off to suit ourselves. It sounds ike parody. Thee knew I of old,' Remediless thirst' are some of those stereotyped lines. . . . Yet I love your poetry as I do little else that is near and recent, especially when you get fairly round the end of the line, and are not thrown back upon the rocks."

Page 89, note 1. Mr. Emerson wrote in October, 1839, to a friend who had lent him a portfolio of engravings, then rare in this country, of the works of the Italian masters:

"I have your portfolio in my study, and am learning to read in that book too. But there are fewer painters than poets. Ten men can awaken me by words to new hope and fruitful musing, for one that can achieve the miracle by forms. Besides, I think the pleasure of the poem lasts me longer. . . . But the eye is a speedier student than the ear; by a grand or a lovely form it is astonished or delighted once for all, whilst the sense of a verse steals slowly on the mind and suggests a hundred fine fancies before its precise import is finally settled."

Margaret Fuller seems also to have sent him a portfolio of reproductions of the drawings of Guercino and Salvator Rosa.

Page 89, note 2. These four lines were used by Mr. Emerson as the motto for "The Poet," in Essays, Second Series.

Page 89, note 3. "Nature is a sea of forms.

What is common to them all, that perfectness and harmony, —is Beauty." Nature, Addresses and Lectures, p. 23.

1 Letters from Ralph Waldo Emerson to a Friend. Edited by Charles Eliot Norton. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1899.