[651] Egyptian verdict. Emerson used Egyptian probably in the sense of "gipsy." He compares such opinions to the fortunes told by the gipsies. [652] Tasso. An Italian poet of the sixteenth century. [653] Cervantes. A Spanish poet and romancer of the sixteenth century, the author of Don Quixote. [654] Israelite. Such Hebrew prophets as Isaiah and Jeremiah. [655] German. Such as Luther. [656] Swede. Such as Swedenborg, the mystic philosopher of the eighteenth century of whom Emerson had already written in Representative Men. [657] A pilgrim's progress. As described by John Bunyan, the English writer, in his famous Pilgrim's Progress. [658] Doleful histories of Adam's fall, etc. The subject of Paradise Lost, the great poem by John Milton. [659] With doomsdays and purgatorial, etc. As described by Dante in his Divine Commedia, an epic about hell, purgatory, and paradise. PRUDENCE [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. [661] Lubricity. The word means literally the state or quality of being slippery; Emerson uses it several times, in its derived sense of "instability." [662] Love and Friendship. The subjects of the two essays preceding Prudence, in the volume of 1841. [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." [664] A good wheel or pin. That is, a part of a machine. [665] The law of polarity. Having two opposite poles, the properties of the one of which are the opposite of the other. [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. [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. [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?