I must say, that the delight in the superior powers of others is one of the best gifts of God."
Page 295, note 1. "The perfection of writing is when mind and body are both in key, when the mind finds perfect obedience in the body. And wine, no doubt, and all fine food, as of delicate fruits, furnish some elemental wisdom: and the fire, too, as it burns in the chimney; for I fancy that my logs, which have grown so long in sun and wind by Walden, are a kind of Muses. A Greek epigram out of the Anthology," etc.—Sheet from the lecture.
Page 295, note 2. In the address at Dartmouth College, in 1838, Mr. Emerson, expressing his gratitude for "these glorious manifestations of the mind," said, "I will thank my great brothers so truly for the admonition of their being as to endeavor also to be just and brave, to aspire and to speak. Plotinus too and Spinoza and the immortal bards of philosophy,—that which they have written out with patient courage makes me bold. No more will I dismiss with haste the visions which flash and sparkle across my sky, but observe them, approach them, domesticate them, brood on them, and draw out of the past genuine life for the present hour."
Page 296, note 1. Wordsworth, "Excursion," book IV.
GREATNESS
This essay is drawn largely from the concluding lecture of a course given at the Meionaon in Boston in the autumn of 1868. "Greatness" is a heading which occurs through the journals from 1840 onward, but of course the thoughts on this subject were drawn upon for many lectures that had not the name.
