[Footnote 302:  Curricle.  A two-wheeled carriage, especially popular in the eighteenth century.]

[Footnote 303:  This law of one to one.  Emerson felt that this same law applied to nature.  He wrote in his journal:  “Nature says to man, ’one to one, my dear.’”]

[Footnote 304:  Crimen quos, etc.  The Latin saying is translated in the preceding sentence.]

[Footnote 305:  Nonage.  We use more commonly the word, “minority.”]

[Footnote 306:  Janus-faced.  The word here means simply two-faced, without the idea of deceit usually attached to it.  In Roman mythology, Janus, the doorkeeper of heaven was the protector of doors and gateways and the patron of the beginning and end of undertakings.  He was the god of the rising and setting of the sun, and was represented with two faces, one looking to the east and the other to the west.  His temple at Rome was kept open in time of war and closed in time of peace.]

[Footnote 307:  Harbinger.  A forerunner; originally an officer who rode in advance of a royal person to secure proper lodgings and accommodations.]

[Footnote 308:  Empyrean.  Highest and purest heaven; according to the ancients, the region of pure light and fire.]

HEROISM

[Footnote 309:  Title.  Probably this essay is, essentially at least, the lecture on Heroism delivered in Boston in the winter of 1837, in the course of lectures on Human Culture.]

[Footnote 310:  Motto.  This saying of Mahomet’s was the only motto prefixed to the essay in the first edition.  In later editions, Emerson prefixed, according to his custom, some original lines;

   “Ruby wine is drunk by knaves,
    Sugar spends to fatten slaves,
    Rose and vine-leaf deck buffoons,
    Thunder clouds are Jove’s festoons,
    Drooping oft in wreaths of dread
    Lightning-knotted round his head: 
    The hero is not fed on sweets,
    Daily his own heart he eats;
    Chambers of the great are jails,
    And head-winds right for royal sails.”

]

[Footnote 311:  Elder English dramatists.  The dramatists who preceded Shakespeare.  In his essay on Shakespeare; or, the Poet, Emerson enumerates the foremost of these,—­“Kyd, Marlowe, Greene, Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Heywood, Middleton, Peele, Ford, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher.”]

[Footnote 312:  Beaumont and Fletcher.  Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher were two dramatists of the Elizabethan age.  They wrote together and their styles were so similar that critics are unable to identify the share of each in their numerous plays.]

[Footnote 313:  Rodrigo, Pedro, or Valerio.  Favorite names for heroes among the dramatists.  Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, known usually by the title of the Cid, was the national hero of Spain, famous for his exploits against the Moors.  Don Pedro was the Prince of Arragon in Shakespeare’s play, Much Ado About Nothing.]