P. 4. Southey.—
Better than men and women, friend,
That are dust, though dear in our joy and pain,
Are the books their cunning hands have penned,
For they depart, but the books remain....
When others fail him, the wise man looks
To the sure companionship of books.—R. H. Stoddard.
P. 5. Southey ('A heavenly delight').—See p. 320.
P. 5. Southey ('The best of all possible company').—Castanheda died in 1559, Barros in 1570, Osorio (da Fonseca) in 1580. They were Portuguese historians.
P. 6. Emerson.
There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,
Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on.—J. R. Lowell.
P. 7. Whittier.—The poet explains that the 'lettered magnate' was his friend Fields (James Thomas, 1817-81), who edited the Atlantic Monthly. Among Fields's friends were Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, Miss Mitford, and Dickens. Longfellow's 'Auf Wiedersehen' was written 'in memory of J. T. F.', and Whittier himself wrote some elegiac verse after his death.
It may be noted that Elzevir was the name of a famous family of Dutch printers, whose books were chiefly issued between 1592 and 1681. Louis Elzevir (? 1540-1617) was the first to make the name famous.
P. 9. Roscoe.—The sale of Roscoe's library, necessary on account of financial failure, took place in August and September 1816. This Roscoe is the historian of the Medici.