b. 38. Flamsteed, 1646-1719, famous English astronomer, author of the British Catalogue' of stars. THE PROBLEM This poem contains several of Emerson's most quoted lines. 293, 65. Chrysostom, a patriarch of the Greek church, born 347, died 407. Noted for his eloquence. Called by the French 'the golden mouthed.' 68. Taylor, 1613-1667, an English bishop, author of Holy Living and Holy Dying. SELF-RELIANCE A small portion of the essay came from the lec ture "Individualism," the last in the course of "The Philosophy of History," in 1836-37, and the other passages from the lectures, "School," "Genius," and "Duty," in the course on "Human Life," 1838-39.' Emerson's style is often fragmentary, and his es says seem sometimes at first reading to be collections of brilliant sentences with little logical connection. It will help one's thinking to reduce one of the essays to its outline. The outline of SelfReliance would be something like this: 294. a. 47. Be original, not conventional. thyself. Obstacles in the way of self-reliance: 295. b. 31. Conformity. 297. b. 4. Consistency. 298. b. 44. Ignorance of Self. 299. a. 16. False estimates of Men. The reasons for self-trust: Trust a. 50. The trustee is worthy, for the self is an emanation from the divine spirit. 300. b. 25. The self or soul is an active, original agent, self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying. 301. b. 33. Self-trust is attained by following the Truth, though it requires almost godlike strength to do it. 302. a. 58. The great need of self-reliance at the present time. 303. a. 6. In religion. b. 57. In motives for travel. 304. a. 43. In intellectual honesty. b. 48. In the spirit of society. 294. a. 46. An eminent painter, perhaps Washington Allston. 296. a. to. Barbadoes, in the West Indies, evidently taken as an illustration because its large negro population made it interesting to Abolitionists. 297. b. 30. With consistency, etc.; note the positiveness which is one of Emerson's characteristics. had a fear always of using a qualifying word. never weakened his effects by such words as 'perhaps,' undoubtedly,' and the like. He He 298. b. 36. Shadow of one man, the essence of Carlyle's Heroes and Hero Worship. According to Carlyle, history is the biographies of a few great men. 299. a. 4. Popular fable, see the Induction to The Taming of the Shrew. 24. Scanderbeg, Iskander Bey, 1403-1468, the Albanian patriot. 49. The magnetism, etc. This paragraph contains the essence of the Transcendental Philosophy. 303. a. 33. His hidden meaning, etc., the quotation is from Scene I, Act 3. The play, which is attributed to Beaumont and Fletcher, was performed sometime previous to the year 1619. b. 16. Locke, etc. John Locke, 1632-1704, the English philosopher, who wrote the Essay Concerning the Human Understanding, opposition to which finally brought out the transcendental revolt; Antoine Lavoisier, French chemist, Founder of modern chemistry,' guillotined 1794; Charles Hutton, English mathematician, and James Hutton, Scottish geologist; Jeremy Bentham, 1745-1832, English sociological philosopher; François Marie Charles Fourier, 1772-1837, French socialist, whose communistic system was the philosophical basis of the Brook Farm experiment. 28. Swedenborgianism. Emerson was greatly in terested in Swedenborg, the mystic, and his work He devoted to him a lecture that is now a part of his Representative Men. BRAHMA The poem was included in May-Day and Other Pieces, 1867. By its first readers it was considered to be obscure, but its obscurity vanishes when one considers the oriental conception of pantheism which it voices, the doctrine that God is the only substance in the universe; that everything that can be conceived of by man is but a manifestation of God. ABRAHAM LINCOLN Remarks at the Memorial Services in Concord, April 19, 1865. Lincoln was shot on the 14th of April and died the following day. TERMINUS Edward Waldo Emerson in his biography re counts how in December, 1866, he met his father in New York and spent the night with him. He read me some poems that he was soon to publish in his new volume, May-Day, and among them Terminus. I was startled; for, he, looking so healthy, so full of life and young in spirit, was reading his deliberate acknowledgment of failing forces and his trusting serene acquiescence. I think he smiled as he read.' He was then sixtythree. The poet had a premonition of the mental disease that soon was to begin to cloud his faculties. SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE This is an example of Hawthorne's Sketches,the observations of a solitary man who views humanity, himself unseen. Others are Night Sketches from Under an Umbrella, Footprints on the Seashore, etc. 311. b. 10. Limping devil of Le Sage. Le Sage's novel, Le Diable Boiteur, was published in 1707. 15. Paul Pry, synonym for a meddlesome, inquisitive nuisance. Made use of by John Poole, the English playwright, whose Paul Pry was produced at the Haymarket theater in 1825. Few volumes I know to read under a tree The book was reissued in London in 1840, with the title Letters from Under a Bridge, and to it was affixed the following preface: The Letters which form the first part of the present volume were written in the Valley of the Susquehannah, from a beautiful glen, some eighty miles above Wyoming. The author, after many years' travel in Europe and the East, has there "pitched his tent." The letters were addressed to Dr. T. Olcutt Porter, one of the writer's most accomplished and valued friends, resident in New York. But as they embody a newly-drawn picture of the scenery and mode of life on the banks of the beautiful river made classic by the muse of Campbell, it has been thought worth while to pub lish them in England.'. 339. b. 24. Harping on my daughter, Hamlet ii. 2, 189. This novel was published in New York in 1835, the same year as The Yemassee. Chapters XLIII and XLIV tell of the Battle of Camden, or, as some historians term it, the Battle of Sanders' Creek, August 16, 1780, and the results which fol lowed. 343. a. 11. Gates, Horatio Gates, who had led the northern army at the time of the surrender of Burgoyne. In June, 1780, he had been placed in command of the army of the South. Simms represents him as being weak and conceited. a. 12. Cornwallis, in April, 1778, appointed second in command to Sir Henry Clinton, Com mander in Chief in America. Cornwallis had been put in charge of the forces that were to subjugate the southern states. 344. a. 6. Seen foreign service together. Previous to 1776 when he first came to America, Cornwallis had been for 20 years in the army and had served 1 T THE PSALM OF LIFE 356. Longfellow first made this poem public in F 1838 during a lecture on Goethe, doubtless to illusIt was a chaltrate the spirit of Wilhelm Meister. lenge to his own dreaming, brooding, night-loving soul, a call to the world of reality and action. thus: Life's no time for One may paraphrase dreams; the soul that simply slumbers and dreams The world, it is true, seems to is not living at all. me to be a mere shadow or dream, even as it did to Goethe's Werther, but it is not not what they seem') life is real. life is short-act; look the moment in the face. It is not for me to muse idly on the future, building castles, nor to be the slave of the past. It is for me to be up and doing to-day. FOOTSTEPS OF ANGELS ('things are Art is long; 356. 13. He, the young and strong, his brother-inlaw and dearest friend, George W. Pierce, the news of whose unexpected death came to Longfellow during his winter at Heidelberg. 21. The Being Beauteous, his young wife who had died at Rotterdam. on THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS 857. Under date of December 17, 1839, Longfellow wrote in his journal, News of shipwrecks horrible the coast. Twenty bodies washed ashore near Gloucester, one lashed to a piece of the wreck. There is a reef called Norman's Woe where many of these took place; among others the schooner Hesperus. Also the Sea-Flower on Black Rock. I Again on the 30th: must write a ballad upon this.' I wrote last evening a notice of Allston's poems. After which I sat till twelve o'clock by my fire, smoking, when suddenly it came into my mind to write the Ballad of the Schooner Hesperus; which Then I went to bed, but could I accordingly did. not sleep. New thoughts were running in my mind, and I got up to add them to the ballad. three by the clock. I then went to bed and fell asleep. I feel pleased with the ballad. cost me an effort. It did not come into my mind by lines but by stanzas.' SERENADE It was It hardly 359. From Act I, Scene 3 of The Spanish Student. THE BELFRY OF BRUGES xiii 360. Carillon, a set of stationary bells tuned to play melodies. The carillon of bells at Bruges contained forty-eight bells. The poem served as introduction to Longfellow's volume of poems published in 1845 with the title The Belfry of Bruges and Other He Poems. Longfellow was in Bruges in 1842. mentions the carillon of bells in his Journal May 30 and 31. RESIGNATION 361. 7. Rachel, Jeremiah xxxiii, 15. 21. The child of our affection. The poem was occasioned by the death of Longfellow's little daughter Fanny, September 11, 1848. AN AMERICAN LITERATURE A part of Chapter XX of Kavanagh, a Tale. 362. b. 24. Baniard. John Banvard, born in New York, 1820, began in 1840 to paint a series of pictures to illustrate the entire length of the Mississippi River. He rowed thousands of miles in an open skiff, supporting himself as he could until he had traveled the length of the river. His resulting panorama of the Mississippi' was nearly half a mile in length. It was widely exhibited both in America and abroad. On the following day he recorded: Wrote the poem; and am rather pleased with it, and with the bringing in of the two lines of the old Lapland song, A boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' 364. 37. The sea-fight, the fight between the American brig Enterprise and the British brig Boxer The American ship was during the war of 1812. successful, though she lost her captain, and brought her prize into Portland. The English captain also fell. 364. In his introduction to the poem Longfellow wrote: This Indian Edda - if I may so call it is founded a on tradition prevalent among the North American Indians, of a personage of miraculous birth, who was sent among them to clear their rivers, forests, and fishing-grounds, and to known He was teach them the arts of peace. among different tribes by the several names of Michabou, Chiabo, Manabozo, Tarenyawagon, and account of Hiawatha. Mr. Schoolcraft gives an him in his Algic Researches, Vol. I, p. 134; and in his History, Condition, and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States, Part III, p. 314, may be found the Iroquois form of the tradition, derived from the verbal narrations of an Onondaga chief. Into this old tradition I have woven other curious Indian legends, drawn chiefly from the various and valuable writings of Mr. Schoolcraft, to whom the literary world is greatly indebted for his indefatigable zeal in rescuing from oblivion so much of the legendary lore of the Indians. The scene of the poem is among the Ojibways on the southern shore of Lake Superior, in the region between the Pictured Rocks and the Grand Sable.' 365. 41. The Vale of Tawasentha, This valley, now called Norman's Kill, is in Albanay County, New York.'- Author's note. COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH 375. December 2, 1857, Longfellow wrote in his Journal: Soft as spring. I begin a new poem, Priscilla; to be a kind of Puritan pastoral; the subject, the courtship of Miles Standish.' Again on the 3d: My poem is in hexameters, an idyl of the Old Colony times. What it will turn out I do not know; but it gives me pleasure to write it.' On the following 22d of March he records that the poem is finished. In a remote way the poem was to Longfellow a record of family history. His mother's family traced their descent through the Wadsworths and the Bartletts to no less than four of the Mayflower pilgrims, including Elder Brewster and Captain John Alden. PAUL REVERE'S RIDE 378. This was the opening poem of the volume Tales of a Wayside Inn, 1863. It is represented as having been told by the landlord of the Inn,― the old Red Horse Tavern in Sudbury, Mass. 2. Paul Revere, born at Boston, 1735, died 1818. He was a silversmith and engraver and was active on the side of the patriots. 9. The old North Church. There was no doubt in Longfellow's mind, whatever may be the doubts in the minds of later antiquaries, as to the church from which the signal was hung. In his journal for April 3, 1860, he records, Go with Sumner to Mr. H, of the North End, who acts as guide to the "Little Britain" of Boston. We go to the Copp's Hill burial ground and see the tomb of Cotton Mather, his father and his son; then to the old North Church, which looks like a parish church in London. We climb the tower to the chime of bells, now the home of innumerable pigeons. From this tower were hung the lanterns as a signal that the British troops had left Boston for Concord.' DIVINA COMMEDIA 379. Mrs. Longfellow died July 10, 1861, accidentally burned to death. The poet, as his biographer records, felt the need of some continuous and tranquil occupation for his thoughts,' and accordingly turned again to the translations. For a time he translated a canto each day.' The translation in its final form was not ready for publication 1866. One sonnet of the series of six was used preface to each of the larger divisions of the poem THE MORAL WELFARE 381. This poem marks the opening of the secon period in Whittier's poetic life, the period which purely poetic themes gave place to fiery ant slavery propaganda. To him the abolitionist mov ment was America's second war for independent 1. On her natal day, an allusion, of course, July 4, 1776. PROEM 382. This poem was the Proem, or poetical intro duction, to Voices of Freedom, 1848. 34. Marvell, a contemporary of Milton, prized in early New England because of his satires upon the Cavaliers. He was Milton's assistant in the Latin Secretaryship. ICHABOD 66 384. To quote Whittier's own words: 'This poem was the outcome of the surprise and grief and forecast of evil consequences which I felt on reading the seventh of March speech of Daniel Webster in support of the compromise" and the Fugitive Slave Law. No partisan or personal enmity dictated it. On the contrary, my admiration of the splendid personality and intellectual power of the great Senator was never stronger than when I laid down his speech, and, in one of the saddest moments of my life, penned my protest. I saw as I wrote, with painful clearness, its sure results. . . .' It should be remembered that Webster and Whittier were relatives by blood. In later years Whittier wrote The Last Occasion, a poem it is well to read in connection with Ichabod. THE KANSAS EMIGRANTS This is an echo of the great Kansas-Nebraska fight of the mid-fifties. After the repeal of the Missouri Compromise the North determined to colonize Kansas with men who would vote for it as a free state. The poem is said to have been written by Whittier for the first company of emigrants to Kansas, to be sung by them as they journeyed to their new home. MAUD MULLER 385. 95. Chimney lug. Whittier himself has explained that The term "chimney lug," which oc curs in this poem refers to the old custom in New England of hanging a pole with hooks attached to it down the chimney, to hang pots and kettles on. It is called a "lug-pole."' SKIPPER IRESON'S RIDE 387. The story had been told to Whittier when he was at Haverhill Academy by a schoolmate who came from Marblehead. In a letter to Lowell accompanying the poem Whittier wrote, The refrain 389. The Franconia range is a part of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. It is in the Franconia Notch, in Profile Lake just below The Great Stone Face, that the Pemigewasset River, one of the two branches of the Merrimac, has its source. Monadnock is an isolated peak in the south western part of New Hampshire. Wauchusett is farther south in Massachusetts. Whittier wrote some of his most peaceful studies of Nature and of home life in the midst of the storm of the Civil War. In his poem, The Countess, 1863, he gave the reason: To-day when truth and falsehood speak their words I wait and watch, and let my fancy stray LAUS DEO 391. Whittier wrote this poem in the Friends' Meeting-house, in Amesbury, as the bells and cannon were proclaiming the passage of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. He wrote to Lucy Larcom that it wrote itself, or rather sang itself, while the bells rang.' The resolution abolishing slavery was passed by Congress, January 31, 1865. Its ratification by the requisite number of states was announced December 18, 1865. SNOW-BOUND 392. This first appeared as a volume in 1866. The recent death of the poet's mother and sister had thrown over his recollections of the old home at Haverhill a golden light which the poem reflects. The owners of the copyright permit only a part of the poem to be published here. 183. Brother, Matthew Franklin Whittier, five years younger than the poet. OLD IRONSIDES 396. The frigate Constitution, historic indeed, but old and unseaworthy, then lying in the navy yard at Charlestown, was condemned by the Navy Department to be destroyed. Holmes read this in a newspaper paragraph, and it stirred him. On a scrap of paper, with a lead pencil, he rapidly shaped the impetuous stanzas of Old Ironsides, and sent them to the Daily Advertiser, of Boston. Fast and far they traveled through the newspaper press of the country; they were even printed in hand-bills and circulated about the streets of Washington. An occurrence, which otherwise would probably have passed unnoticed, now stirred a general indignation. The astonished Secretary made haste to retrace a step which he had taken quite innocently in the way of business. The Constitution's tattered ensign was not torn down.'- Morse's Life of Holmes, i:79. THE LAST LEAF 397. Holmes had in mind Major Thomas Melville, the last of the cocked hats,' who often was to be seen on the streets of Boston early in the thirties. THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE 398. a. 17. When I was interrupted. The interruption referred to in the first sentence of the first of these papers was just a quarter of a century in duration. Two articles entitled "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" will be found in The New England Magazine, formerly published in Boston by J. T. and E. Buckingham. The date of the first of these articles in November, 1831, and that of the second, February, 1832. When The Atlantic Monthly was begun, twenty-five years afterwards, and the author was asked to write for it, the recollection of these crude products of his uncombed literary boyhood suggested the thought that it |