William White asked if the God gave the name to the planet?
Margaret said, Yes; and it was given because it stood nearest the sun.
E. P. P. said Plutarch had written something about Hermes in his “Morals.”
Margaret said, Perhaps so, but she didn’t know, as she never could read them. Plutarch went round and round a story; presented all the corners of it, told all the pretty bits of gossip he could find, instead of penetrating to its secret. So she preferred his anecdotes of Heroes to his Parallels or Essays.
I said, in surprise, how much I liked the “Morals.”
“Yes,” Margaret said, “even Emerson paid the book the high compliment of calling it his tuning-key, when he was about to write.”
E. P. P. said Coleridge was her own tuning-key, and asked Margaret if she had no such friendly instigator.
Margaret said she could keep up no intimacy with books. She loved a book dearly for a while; but as soon as she began to look out a nice Morocco cover for her favorite, she was sure to take a disgust to it, to outgrow it. She did not mean that she outgrew the author, but that, having received all from him that he could give her, he tired her. That had even been the case with Shakespeare! For several years he was her very life; then she gave him up. About two years ago she had occasion to look into “Hamlet,” and then wished to refresh her love, but found it impossible. It was the same with Ovid, whose luxuriant fancy had delighted her girlhood. She took him up, and read a little with all her youthful glow; but it would not last. Friends must part, but why need we part from our books? She regretted her oddity, for she lost a great solace by it.
She proceeded to contrast the Apollo with Mercury. In Egypt, Hermes was the experimental Deity, the Brahma.
Caroline Sturgis asked what the Hermes on the door-posts of the Athenian houses meant.