Page 247, note 2. Mr. John T. Morse, Jr., gives an account of the Saturday Club, and quotes Dr. Holmes on this point:—
"Some outsiders furnished still another name for this much-entitled Club. They called it 'The Mutual Admiration Society,' and sometimes laughed a little, as though the designation were a trifle derogatory. Yet the brethren within the pale were nowise disturbed by this witticism. 'If there was not,' says Holmes, 'a certain amount of "mutual admiration" among some of those I have mentioned, it was a great pity, and implied a defect in the nature of men who were otherwise largely endowed.' Possibly one or two of these gentlemen might have been criticised for admiring themselves, but it did seem hard to blame them for being sufficiently intelligent and generous to admire each other. Would the scoffers have been better pleased to see them openly abusing or slyly depreciating each other? There are enough such spectacles elsewhere in literature."1 1.1
Page 248, note 1. Robert Herrick's "Ode to Ben Jonson."
Page 250, note 1. Lecture sheets: "Homer said, 'When two men meet, one apprehends sooner than the other.' But it is because one man thinks well, that the other thinks better, for they mutually excite each other, each attempting to cap the other's thought."
Page 250, note 2. Mr. Emerson said that Nature's rule in conversing with man was "One to one, my dear."
Two sheets, the "salvage" of the lecture "Clubs," may be added in conclusion:—
"When I was in London, I fell in with the literary executor
