[609] The following persons, etc. The persons enumerated were all people of note of the seventeenth century. Sir Philip Sidney, Earl of Essex, Lord Bacon, Sir Walter Raleigh, John Milton, Sir Henry Vane, Isaac Walton, Dr. John Donne, Abraham Cowley, Charles Cotton, John Pym, and John Hales were Englishmen, scholars, statesmen, and authors. Theodore Beza was a French theologian; Isaac Casaubon was a French-Swiss scholar; Roberto Berlarmine was an Italian cardinal; Johann Kepler was a German astronomer; Francis Vieta was a French mathematician; Albericus Gentilis was an Italian jurist; Paul Sarpi was an Italian historian; Arminius was a Dutch theologian.
[610] Many others whom doubtless, etc. Emerson here enumerates some famous English authors of the same period, not mentioned in the preceeding list.
[611] Pericles. See note on Heroism, [352].
[612] Lessing. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, a German critic and poet of the eighteenth century.
[613] Wieland. Christopher Martin Wieland was a German contemporary of Lessing's, who made a prose translation into German of Shakespeare's plays.
[614] Schlegel. August Wilhelm von Schlegel, a German critic and poet, who about the first of the nineteenth century translated some of Shakespeare's plays into classical German.
[615] Hamlet. The hero of Shakespeare's play of the same name.
[616] Coleridge. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, an English poet, author of critical lectures and notes on Shakespeare.
[617] Goethe. (See note [85].)
[618] Blackfriar's Theater. A famous London theater in which nearly all the great dramas of the Elizabethan age were performed.