the poet of friendship, love, self-devotion and serenity. There is a uniform force in his page, and conspicuously a tone of cheerfulness which has almost made his name a synonyme for grace. … He inspires in the reader a good hope. What a contrast between the cynical tone of Byron and the benevolent wisdom of Saadi!"
Page 212, note 1. See the essay on Poetry and Imagination in Letters and Social Aims.
Page 213, note 1. For Mr. Emerson novels had little attraction. Mythology and epics, and heroic tradition and biography, took their place for him. He found no pleasure in Dickens or Thackeray. The Waverley Novels delighted him as a youth, and of "Scott, the delight of generous boys," he had grateful remembrance. He read Disraeli's novels with some interest, but little real liking. George Sand's Consuelo gave him much pleasure, and he alludes to it several times in his writings, especially in the chapter on Goethe in Representative Men. He read little of Balzac or Dumas. Charles Reade's Christie Johnstone and Peg Woffington he read and praised. The Jane Eyre of Miss Brontë, mentioned farther on, he read with some interest.
Page 216, note 1. The poem "The Park" seems to be the expression of this mood.
Page 217, note 1. Firdusi, "The Gardener" (940-1020), under the encouragement and patronage of the Sultan Mahmoud, composed an epic poem of great length, but renowned for its beauty, the Shah Nameh, the mythology and history of Persia from the earliest times.
Page 218, note 1. The Dial magazine did much to introduce American readers to the ethical and religious writings of China, India, Persia and Arabia, in its selections called "Ethnical Scriptures"; also to the writings of the Neo-Platonists.
