April 22, 1841.

Margaret said it surprised her that young men did not seek to be Mercuries. She said that one of the ugliest young men that she knew had become so enraptured with one of Raphael’s Mercuries, that he confessed to her that he was never alone without trying to assume its attitude before the glass. She said she could not help laughing at the image he suggested, an ugly figure in high-heeled boots and a strait-coat in the act of flying, commissioned with every grace from Heaven to men! but she respected the feeling, and thought every sensitive soul must share it.

Emerson had sent Sophia Peabody several fine engravings. One of these, a Correggio, represented a woman of Parma as a Madonna. It might give any woman a similar desire.

William Story, Frank Shaw, Mr. Mack and his friends, Mrs. Ripley, Ida Russell, and Mrs. S. G. Ward were all missing to-night.

Margaret said that she was sorry she had allowed our subject to embrace so much. The Grecian Mercury seemed to mean so little that she had not thought of the depth and difficulty connected with the Egyptian Hermes. Among the Greeks, Ceres, Persephone, and Juno represent the productive faculties, Jupiter and Apollo the divine, and Mercury simply the human understanding, the God of eloquence and of thieves.

Marianne Jackson thought it strange that he should be at once the God of persuasion and the Deity of theft!

Margaret said eloquence was a kind of thieving!

Did the Greeks so consider it? asked Marianne.

Margaret said, Yes, more than any nation in the world, and taught their children so to do; and in fact such mental recognitions were what distinguished the nation from all other peoples.

The Egyptian Hermes represented the whole intellectual progress of man. If one made a discovery it was signed Hermes, and under that name transmitted to posterity. Hence the forty volumes of Hermetic theology, philosophy, and so on. Individuals were merged in the God. Hermes was always the mediator, the peacemaker, and it was in this relation that the beautiful story was told of the caduceus. Mercury has originally only the divining-rod which Apollo had given him, but, finding two serpents fighting one day, he pacified them, and had ever after the right to bear them embracing on his rod. There was another story, Margaret said, which she could not understand,—the story of his obtaining the head of the Ibis from Osiris. Hermes kept the first or outside gates of Heaven, a significant fact typically considered.

I am sure there is something in Heeren’s researches about the Ibis story, but Caroline Sturgis said, No.

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.

Margaret thought that he posed there as a messenger, an opener of the gates merely, and then spoke of several Mercuries by Raphael. One she knew, so full of beauty and grace that it seemed a single trumpet-tone. Another all loveliness was handing the cup of life to Psyche. She wondered that such symbols as Apollo and Mercury did not inspire all young men with ardor, and make them something better than young men usually are.

William White said Apollo was too far beyond the average man to do this; but that Mercury, graceful and vivacious, would naturally attract the attention.

Margaret asked if he would be an easier model to imitate, and then repeated her anecdote about the ugly youth who longed to be a Mercury.

William said that if his faith had been strong enough, the transformation might have taken place.

Query—what is meant by strong enough?

Margaret spoke of the Egyptian Osiris in his relation to Hermes, and said that she did not like him to be confounded with the Apollo. He was in reality the Egyptian Jove.

This led me to speak of the Orphic Hymn in which Apollo is addressed as “immortal Jove.”

Margaret said she had discovered very little about Orpheus. In relation to the five points of Orphic theology, she had lately read a posthumous leaf from Goethe’s Journal. The existence of a DÆmon seemed to be a favorite idea of his. He did not believe with Emerson that all things were in our own souls, but that they existed in the original souls, (does anybody know what that means?) and we must go out to seek them. This notion Goethe thought verified by his own experience. Goethe’s works, Margaret thought, had more variety than anybody’s except Shakespeare’s. His powers of observation seemed to condense his genius.

William White wondered why Goethe showed such tenderness for Byron.

Margaret said that in every important sense Byron was his very opposite; but Goethe hardly looked upon him as a responsible being. He was rather the instrument of a higher power. He was the exponent of his period.

Sophia Peabody had been making a drawing of Crawford’s Orpheus at the AthenÆum. It was here brought down for me to see.

At Sophia’s request, Margaret repeated a sonnet she had written on it. She recited it wretchedly, but the sonnet was pleasant.

I spoke of Bode’s Essay on the Orphic Poetry, and sympathized in his view of the spuriousness of the Hymns. They might have been signed Orpheus, however, as other things were signed Hermes, simply because they were exponents of Orphic thought.

Margaret dilated on this Orphic thought.

I quoted Proclus in his Commentary on Plato’s “Republic” as follows:—

“Mars perpetually discerns and nourishes, and constantly excites the contrarieties of the Universe, that the world may exist perfect and entire in all its parts; but requires the assistance of Venus, that he may bring order and harmony into things contrary and discordant.

“Vulcan adorns by his art the sensible universe, which he fills with certain natural impulses, powers, and proportions; but he requires the assistance of Venus, that he may invest material effects with beauty, and by this means secure the comeliness of the world. Venus is the source of all the harmony and analogy in the Universe, and of the union of form with matter, connecting and comprehending the powers of the elements. Although this Goddess ranks among the supermundane divinities, yet her principal employment consists in beautifully illuminating the order, harmony, and communion of all mundane concerns.”