[Footnote 567: Troilus and Creseide, etc. Chaucer ascribes the Italian
poem which he followed in his _Troilus and Creseide_ to an unknown
"Lollius of Urbino"; the source of the poem, however, is _Il
Filostrato_, by Boccaccio, the Italian poet already mentioned.
Chaucer's poem is far more than a translation; more than half is
entirely original, and it is a powerful poem, showing profound
knowledge of the Italian poets, whose influence with him superseded
the French poets.]
[Footnote 568: The Cock and the Fox. _The Nun's Priest's Tale_ in the
_Canterbury Tales_ was an original treatment of the _Roman de Renart_,
of Marie of France, a French poet of the twelfth century.]
[Footnote 569: House of Fame, etc. The plan of the _House of Fame_,
written during the period of Chaucer's Italian influence, shows the
influence of Dante; the general idea of the poem is from Ovid, the
Roman poet.]
[Footnote 570: Gower. John Gower was an English poet, Chaucer's
contemporary and friend; the two poets went to the same sources for
poetic materials, but Chaucer made no such use of Gower's works as we
would infer from this passage. Emerson relied on his memory for facts,
and hence made mistakes, as here in the instances of Lydgate, Caxton,
and Gower.]
[Footnote 571: Westminster, Washington. What legislative body
assembles at Westminster Palace, London? What at Washington?]
[Footnote 572: Sir Robert Peel. An English statesman who died in 1850,
not long after _Representative Men_ was published.]
[Footnote 573: Webster. Daniel Webster, an American statesman and
orator who was living when this essay was written.]
[Footnote 574: Locke. John Locke. (See note 18.)]
[Footnote 575: Rousseau. Jean Jacques Rousseau, a French philosopher
of the eighteenth century.]
[Footnote 576: Homer. (See note 550.)]
[Footnote 577: Menn. Menn, or Mann, was in Sanscrit one of fourteen
legendary beings; the one referred to by Emerson, Mann Vaivasvata was
supposed to be the author of the laws of Mann, a collection made about
the second century.]
[Footnote 578: Saadi or Sadi. (See note 552.)]
[Footnote 579: Milton. Of this great English poet and prose writer of
the seventeenth century, Emerson says: "No man can be named whose mind
still acts on the cultivated intellect of England and America with an
energy comparable to that of Milton. As a poet Shakespeare undoubtedly
transcends and far surpasses him in his popularity with foreign
nations: but Shakespeare is a voice merely: who and what he was that
sang, that sings, we know not."]
[Footnote 580: Delphi. Here, source of prophecy. Delphi was a city in
Greece, where was the oracle of Apollo, the most famous of the oracles
of antiquity.]
[Footnote 581: Our English Bible. The version made in the reign of
King James I. by forty-seven learned divines is a monument of noble
English.]
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