[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.]

[Footnote 582:  Liturgy.  An appointed form of worship used in a Christian church,—­here, specifically, the service of the Episcopal church.  Emerson’s mother had been brought up in that church, and though she attended her husband’s church, she always loved and read her Episcopal prayer book.]

[Footnote 583:  Grotius.  Hugo Grotius was a Dutch jurist, statesman, theologian, and poet of the seventeenth century.]

[Footnote 584:  Rabbinical forms.  The forms used by the rabbis, Jewish doctors or expounders of the law.]

[Footnote 585:  Common law.  In a general sense, the system of law derived from England, in general use among English-speaking people.]