The following notes on Shakspeare were written by Mr. Emerson for
the celebration in Boston by the Saturday Club of the Three Hundredth
Anniversary of the poet’s birth.
In Mr. Cabot’s _Memoir of Emerson_, vol. ii., page 621, apropos of Mr.
Emerson’s avoidance of impromptu speech on public occasions, is this
statement:—
“I remember his getting up at a dinner of the Saturday Club on the
Shakspeare anniversary in 1864, to which some guests had been invited,
looking about him tranquilly for a minute or two, and then sitting down;
serene and unabashed, but unable to say a word upon a subject so familiar
to his thoughts from boyhood.”
Yet on the manuscript of this address Mr. Emerson noted that it was read
at the Club’s celebration on that occasion, and at the Revere House.
(“Parker’s” was the usual gathering-place of the Club.) The handwriting
of this note shows that Mr. Emerson wrote it in his later years, so it
is very possible that Mr. Cabot was right. Mr. Emerson perhaps forgot to
bring his notes with him to the dinner, and so did not venture to speak.
And the dinner may have been at “Parker’s.”