in his youth had been much moved by Robertson's account of Charles V. (Nature, Addresses and Lectures, p. 162.)
Page 207, note 1. Note-book. "Spenser seems to delight in his art for his own skill's sake. In the Muiopotmos see the security and ostentation with which he draws out and refines his description of a butterfly's back and wings, of a spider's thread and spinning, of the butterfly's cruise among the flowers,—
"'Bathing his tender feet in the dew which yet on them does lie.'It is all like the working of an exquisite loom which unweariedly yields fine webs for exhibition and defiance of all spinners."
Page 207, note 2. Mr. Emerson quotes from Cowley: "He (Ben Jonson) esteemeth John Donne to be the first poet in the world in some things. His verses of the 'Lost Chaine' he hath by heart; and that passage 'The Calm'
"'That dust and feathers do not stir,All was so quiet.'He affirmeth Donne to have written all his best pieces ere he was twenty-five years old."
Page 207, note 3. Journal. "Lord Bacon's method in his books is of the understanding, but his sentences are lighted by ideas."
In English Traits Mr. Emerson has much to say of Bacon (p. 238 ff.).
Page 208, note 1. Mr. Emerson was asked to write the Preface to the American edition of the Gulistan (Rose-garden) of Saadi, the translation of Francis Gladwin, with a preface by James Ross (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1865). In it he said: "Saadi, though he has not the lyric flights of Hafiz, has wit, practical sense, and just moral sentiment. … He is
