[Footnote 656: Swede. Such as Swedenborg, the mystic philosopher of
the eighteenth century of whom Emerson had already written in
_Representative Men_.]
[Footnote 657: A pilgrim's progress. As described by John Bunyan, the
English writer, in his famous _Pilgrim's Progress_.]
[Footnote 658: Doleful histories of Adam's fall, etc. The subject of
_Paradise Lost,_ the great poem by John Milton.]
[Footnote 659: With doomsdays and purgatorial, etc. As described by
Dante in his _Divine Commedia_, an epic about hell, purgatory, and
paradise.]
PRUDENCE
[Footnote 660: The essay on _Prudence_ was given as a lecture in
the course on _Human Culture_, in the winter of 1837-8. It was
published in the first series of _Essays_, which appeared in 1841.]
[Footnote 661: Lubricity. The word means literally the state or
quality of being slippery; Emerson uses it several times, in its
derived sense of "instability."]
[Footnote 662: Love and Friendship. The subjects of the two essays
preceding _Prudence_, in the volume of 1841.]
[Footnote 663: The world is filled with the proverbs, etc. Compare
with this passage Emerson's words in _Compensation_ on "the flights of
proverbs, whose teaching is as true and as omnipresent as that of
birds and flies."]
[Footnote 664: A good wheel or pin. That is, a part of a machine.]
[Footnote 665: The law of polarity. Having two opposite poles, the
properties of the one of which are the opposite of the other.]
[Footnote 666: Summer will have its flies. Emerson discoursed
with philosophic calm about the impediments and disagreeableness which
beset every path; he also accepted them with serenity when he
encountered them in his daily life.]
[Footnote 667: The inhabitants of the climates, etc. As a
northerner, Emerson naturally felt that the advantage and superiority
were with his own section. He expressed in his poems _Voluntaries_ and
_Mayday_ views similar to those declared here.]
[Footnote 668: Peninsular campaign. Emerson here refers to
the military operations carried on from 1808 to 1814 in Portugal,
Spain, and southern France against the French, by the British,
Spanish, and Portuguese forces commanded by Wellington. What was the
"Peninsular campaign" in American history?]
[Footnote 669: Dr. Johnson is reported to have said, etc. Dr.
Samuel Johnson was an eminent English scholar of the eighteenth
century. In this, as in many other instances, Emerson quotes from his
memory instead of from the book. The words of Dr. Johnson, as reported
by his biographer Boswell, are: "Accustom your children constantly to
this; if a thing happened at one window, and they, when relating it,
say it happened at another, do not let it pass, but instantly check
them; you do not know where deviation from truth will end."]
[Footnote 670: Rifle. A local name in England and New England
for an instrument, on the order of a whetstone, used for sharpening
scythes; it is made of wood, covered with fine sand or emery.]
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