.F. 
 
 THE 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 DAVIS 
 
7 
 
"(Sreat Writer*."- ' J 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 PROFESSOR ERIC S. ROBERTSON, M.A. 
 
 LIFE OF EMERSON. 
 
LIFE 
 
 OF 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD GARNETT, LL.D. 
 
 THE WALTER SCOTT PUBLISHING CO., LTD. 
 LONDON AND NEWCASTLE-ON-TYHE 
 
 (All rights reserved.} 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNlVERSiiY OF CALIFORNIA 
 DAVIS 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Birth of Emerson at Boston, Massachusetts, May 25, 1803 ; co 
 incidence with the birth of Bulwer ; his paternal ancestry ; 
 his mother and maternal grandfather ; his father an active 
 and influential clergyman ; death of his father, May 12, 
 1811 ; family cares and difficulties ; Emerson's aunt, Mary 
 Moody Emerson, and her influence upon him j Emerson 
 at the Boston Latin School, 1813 ; enters Harvard College 
 as " President's freshman," 1817 ; not remarkably dis 
 tinguished as a collegian ; graduates, 1821 ; assists his 
 elder brother in school-keeping; his first poetry and his 
 love of nature ; enters Divinity College, Cambridge, to 
 study for the ministry, 1825 ci 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Condition of the times when Emerson entered Cambridge ; his 
 admiration for Channing's discourses ; want of personal 
 sympathy; Emerson's studies interrupted by illness; re 
 turns for a time to school -keeping ; " approbated to 
 preach," October 10, 1826 ; his first sermon ; goes to 
 Florida for the recovery of his health ; returns home, June, 
 1827 ; continues his studies at Divinity Hall ; temporary 
 insanity of his brother Edward, June, 1828 ; elected assis 
 tant minister, and shortly afterwards sole minister of the 
 Second Church, Boston, 1829 ; betrothed to Ellen Tucker 
 
 95113 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 in December, 1828, and married in September, 1829; 
 Ellen Emerson's beauty, accomplishments, and delicacy of 
 constitution ; Emerson as a minister ; death of his wife, 
 February, 1831 ; his differences with his congregation re 
 specting the administration of the Lord's Supper j resigns 
 his pulpit, September, 1832 ; his discouragement ; goes on 
 a voyage to Europe, December 25, 1832 ; arrives at Malta, 
 February 2, 1833 3^ 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Intellectual condition of Europe at the period of Emerson's 
 arrival j Emerson's impressions of Italy ; his visit to Lan- 
 dor ; proceeds to England ; visits Coleridge, Carlyle, and 
 Wordsworth ; Mr. Alexander Ireland's recollections of him 
 in Edinburgh ; he returns to America, September, 1833 ; 
 in request as preacher and lecturer ; declines to connect 
 himself with a congregation ; his scientific lectures ; death 
 of his brother Edward ; takes up his residence at Concord ; 
 description of Concord and its scenery ; Emerson's oration 
 on the bi-centennial anniversary of Concord, and poem on 
 the monument commemorating the Battle of Lexington ; 
 he marries Lidian Jackson, September, 1835 ; death of his 
 brother Charles, May, 1836; lectures on biography; on 
 English literature ; edits Carlyle's " Sartor Resartus " ; his 
 essay on "Nature," September, 1836 . . . 57 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The years between 1830 and 1840 pregnant with intellectual 
 change ; origin of American Transcendentalism, 1836 ; 
 Emerson's lectures on the philosophy of history ; his 
 gradual estrangement from the pulpit ; oration on the 
 American Scholar, August, 1837 ; discourse to the gradua 
 ting Divinity Class of Cambridge, July, 1838 ; opposition 
 excited by this address ; Emerson eschews controversy ; 
 his religious views ; his friends at this time, Margaret 
 Fuller, Alcott, Jones Very, W. H. Channing ; Nathaniel 
 Hawthorne ; establishment of " The Dial," 1840 ; its cha 
 racteristics, and Emerson's connection with it ; its discon- 
 
CONTENTS. 7 
 
 PAGB 
 
 tinuance, 1844; the Brook Farm community, 1840; 
 Emerson's opinion of the project ; his life among his 
 Concord neighbours j interest in local affairs and partiality 
 for plain rustic society ; his methods of study and compo 
 sition ; use of books, and literary predilections . .81 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Emerson's excellence as a father ; sudden death of his eldest 
 boy, January, 1842 ; his grief and consolation ; his efforts 
 and sacrifices in the circulation of Carlyle's writings in 
 America ; publication of the first series of his Essays, 1841 ;' 
 criticism of the book ; Carlyle's opinion of it ; Emerson's 
 pecuniary embarrassments ; his remuneration as a lecturer ; 
 discourse on "The Method of Nature," 1841; second 
 series of his Essays published, 1844 ; criticism of the book ; 
 Emerson's correspondence with Carlyle ; Lowell's charac 
 ter and contrast of the two ; Emerson as a poet ; his 
 " intellectual solstice " ; proceeds to lecture in Great 
 Britain at the suggestion of Mr. Alexander Ireland, 1847 . in 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Emerson arrives in England ; visits Carlyle ; takes up his head 
 quarters at Manchester ; lectures in the provinces and in 
 Scotland ; proceeds to London ; a lion in London society ; 
 his relations with Carlyle ; trip to Paris ; lectures in Lon 
 don; returns to America, July, 1848; his "English Traits"; 
 his " Representative Men" ; the Massachusetts Quarterly 
 Review ; Theodore Parker ; Thoreau ; death of Margaret 
 Fuller Ossoli ; Emerson's share in her biography ; sketches 
 of Emerson by Clough and Frederika Bremer, 1852 ; 
 Carlyle on " Representative Men " 137 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Emerson's views on American politics ; their dangerous tenden 
 cies corrected by the anti-slavery agitation ; he advocates 
 emancipation by purchase of the slaves ; his resentment at 
 the truculence of the South ; his Federal sympathies on the 
 outbreak of the Civil War ; letters to Carlyle ; temporarily 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 impoverished by the war ; his long journeys and general 
 activity as a lecturer ; general characteristics of his elocu 
 tion ; on literary style ; his " Conduct of Life," " Society 
 and Solitude," and "Letters and Social Aims"; his 
 " May Day " ; family incidents and public honours ; lec 
 tures on philosophy before the University of Cambridge, 
 1870-71 ; visit to California ; his house burned down, 1872 ; 
 public subscription to make good his loss ; his third visit 
 to Europe; reception on his return to Concord; respect 
 shown him by his fellow-citizens in general ; nominated for 
 the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University, but defeated 
 by Disraeli ; publishes " Parnassus " and " Letters and 
 Social Aims " ; failure of his memory ; visit to the place of 
 his first marriage ; Walt Whitman's description of; illness 
 and death, April, 1882 .:.,.. . . .162 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Emerson's impersonality as an author ; a characteristically 
 American voice ; a link between Channing and Jonathan 
 Edwards ; his optimism ; his strength and weakness as a 
 political thinker ; a representative of scientific thought in 
 literature ; peculiarities and beauties of his literary style ; 
 his prospect of enduring reputation 187 
 
 INDEX 20 j 
 
NOTE. 
 
 EMERSON has dealt severely with his biographers. 
 With full knowledge that his history must be 
 written, he thought fit to lead a life devoid of incident, 
 of nearly untroubled happiness, and of absolute con 
 formity to the moral law. His correspondence is seldom 
 very interesting, and his diary is out of reach. The 
 injured biographer must rely on whatever charm may 
 attach to the not too frequent figure of one who lived as 
 he wrote. His main dependence for matters of fact must 
 repose on Mr. J. E. Cabot, Emerson's literary executor 
 and authorized historian, whose consummate knowledge 
 unfortunately for the above-mentioned biographer) is only 
 rivalled by his consummate discretion. Cordial acknow 
 ledgments are also due to preceding writers Mr. Ireland, 
 Dr. Holmes, Mr. Cooke, Mr. Conway whose works, if 
 superseded as records of circumstance, are yet fresh with 
 the aroma of the admiring love which led them to pre. 
 occupy the ground. Apart from these common obliga 
 tions, the writer is specially indebted to the friend who 
 prepared his index, and the friends who revised his proofs. 
 April 27, 1888. 
 
LIFE OF EMERSON. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON May 25, 1803, William Emerson, minister of the 
 First Church in Boston, was among the listeners 
 to the Election Sermon preached " to great acceptance," 
 by the Rev. Mr. Puffer. Whether he had left home in 
 spite of inward monitions that he ought to remain, we are 
 not informed ; but, if misgivings he had, they were in 
 sufficient to prevent his presence at the dinner at Governor 
 Strong's, in which the observance of the day culminated. 
 While sitting at the Governor's table, his enjoyment of 
 the repast was enhanced or interrupted by the tidings 
 of an increase to his family : Ralph Waldo Emerson, 
 William's fourth child and third son, having meanwhile 
 been added to the population of Boston, " within a kite- 
 string of the birthplace of Benjamin Franklin." The 
 usual hour of dinner was then one. Ten hours sooner, 
 allowing for the difference of Greenwich and Boston 
 time, Old England had been enriched by the birth of 
 
12 LIFE OF 
 
 another child destined to wide literary renown, but 
 otherwise as dissimilar from the American as one man 
 of genius can be from another. Edward Lytton Bulwer 
 was also born on May 25, 1803. Six years later the 
 coincidence was to be renewed by the birth on the same 
 day, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, of two great men 
 with infinitely more in common Darwin and Abraham 
 Lincoln. 
 
 In one respect, nevertheless, the American and the 
 British infant agreed, they were both examples of the per 
 sistence of family character, exemplifying the saying of 
 the former that " every man is a bundle of his ancestors." 
 Each of them, also, was destined to lose his father at an 
 early age, and each, while preserving the paternal type, 
 was more directly indebted to the care and guidance of a 
 wise and resolute mother. Goethe traces the strict and 
 sober elements of his character to the paternal, the sunny 
 and genial to the maternal parent : 
 
 " Vom Vater hab' ich die Statur, 
 Des Lebens ernstes Fiihren ; 
 Vom Mutterchen die Frohnatur 
 Und Lust zu fabuliren." 
 
 With Emerson it was the reverse. Such animal spirits 
 as he could boast were derived from his father : the 
 higher and rarer elements of character from a mother 
 " whose mind had set its stamp upon manners of peculiar 
 softness and natural grace and quiet dignity." The 
 father was indeed a clergyman, and not too obviously 
 deficient in the staidness becoming the clerical character ; 
 but, genial and social, more of a moralist than a divine, 
 
EMERSON. 18 
 
 rather a man of letters than a man of learning, he re 
 presented a character notably modified since the time 
 that its prototypes had crossed the Atlantic. 
 
 The name of Emerson, originating in the county of 
 Durham or York, and celebrated in England as that of 
 an eminent and eccentric mathematician, is not uncom 
 mon in the Northern States, and has been borne by 
 several persons of note unconnected with the philoso 
 pher of Concord, among them a distinguished physician 
 and a distinguished agriculturist. The first American 
 settler of the name was Thomas Emerson, who arrived 
 in Massachusetts about 1635. This ancestor of a line 
 of dispensers of the bread of life had himself only dis 
 pensed the bread which perisheth to the people of 
 Ipswich, but from the strong clerical bent evinced by his 
 descendants it may be reasonably concluded that he was 
 among those who forsook their native land for conscience' 
 sake. The next lineal ancestor of Ralph Waldo Emerson 
 was Thomas's son Joseph, " the pioneer minister of Men- 
 don, who barely escaped with his life when the village 
 was destroyed by the Indians." His wife, Elizabeth 
 Bulkeley, was the most distinguished by descent of any 
 among Emerson's ancestors, and may well have infused 
 a new spirit into the family. She was great-grand 
 daughter and granddaughter of successive rectors of 
 Odell, in Bedfordshire Edward and Peter Bulkeley, 
 scions of the family of Bulkeley, or Buckley, in Cheshire. 
 Edward was a staunch Puritan, author of a little black- 
 letter volume dedicated to Walsingham, upbraiding the 
 Jesuits for forsaking " the originall fountaine of the Greek 
 wherein the Spirit of God did indite the Gospell," for 
 
14 LIFE OF 
 
 a Latin version. The inheritor of his living and his 
 opinions fell upon evil days, if those days are evil which 
 test a man's steadfastness to his principles. Edward 
 Bulkeley's Puritanism had earned the patronage of 
 Walsingham; Peter's elicited the wrath of Archbishop 
 Laud. Compelled to acknowledge to Laud's Vicar- 
 general, Sir Nathaniel Brent, that he never used the 
 surplice in the pulpit or made the sign of the cross in 
 baptism, he was incontinently suspended, and cited to 
 the High Commission Court "if he reform not before." 
 Whether he made appearance is not recorded ; but next 
 year (1635), having secretly realised his estate, consider 
 able for those days, he crossed the Atlantic with all his 
 family, and settled at Cambridge, the future seat of New 
 England learning. Moving onward, after no long time he 
 became by honest purchase from the Indians owner of 
 considerable possessions by the lilied Musketaquit, or 
 Meadow River, in New Hampshire, and founded and 
 named the town destined to be famous to all ages as 
 Concord. " There is no people," he said to his flock, 
 " but will strive to excel in something. What can we 
 excel in, if not in holiness?" Supreme over his 
 people's bodies and souls, he spent the remainder of 
 his days a Protestant Pope, a republican monarch, 
 bequeathing, on his death in 1659, his dignities tem 
 poral and spiritual to his son Edward, a sickly and gentle 
 scholar, father of the lady who in 1665 espoused Joseph 
 Emerson. " In a certain sense," writes the Rev. John 
 Brown, the biographer of Bunyan, "Bulkeley is the 
 patron saint as well as the founder of Concord, and 
 traces of him are to be met with on every side. Of 
 
EMERSON. 15 
 
 a dozen ministers who since 1637 have preached in 
 the parish church of the place, five were either Bulke- 
 leys or Emersons." 
 
 Joseph Emerson's son Edward married Rebecca, 
 daughter of Cornelius Waldo, from whom this "be 
 loved " and certainly most picturesque name came into 
 the family. One likes to think of it as derived from 
 the patriarch of the Vaudois, as may well be the case, 
 for it first appears in England in the reign of Eliza 
 beth, doubtless brought by foreign refugees. Two 
 Waldos were among the original founders of the East 
 India Company. Edward's son Joseph, minister at 
 Maiden, who graduated at Harvard College in 1717, 
 left a name as " a heroic scholar," " the greatest student 
 in the country," says his granddaughter. His opinion 
 that his son ought never to leave his lessons came 
 near occasioning little William's death, but the mother's 
 intercession and the necessity of attending to farm work 
 rescued the lad. He prayed every night that none of 
 his descendants might ever be rich, and the effectual 
 fervent prayer of the righteous man has hitherto been 
 found to avail. His wife, Mary Moody, was the 
 daughter of Samuel Moody, celebrated for his elo 
 quence, his self-forgetting charity so forgetful indeed 
 that he gave away his wife's shoes instead of his own, 
 and his relentless pursuit after " graceless sinners who 
 ventured into the alehouse on Saturday night." William 
 Emerson, son of the scholarly minister of Maiden, 
 seems to have imbibed more of his maternal grand 
 father's spirit than of his father's. Not only was he 
 an impassioned and enthusiastic preacher, but when 
 
 
16 LIFE OF 
 
 the War of Independence broke out in his own parish, 
 his patriotic ardour hurried him as army chaplain into 
 the ranks, where he was shortly carried off by a fever. 
 The Old Manse at Concord, celebrated by Hawthorne, 
 was built for him. 
 
 William Emerson, the offspring of his marriage with 
 Phoebe Bliss, evinced, on the other hand, more affinity to 
 his grandfather " the heroic scholar," than to his father 
 the fervent preacher, though by no means deficient in 
 oratorical gifts. Left an orphan at an early age, he soon 
 gained a protector in a step-father, the Rev. Ezra Ripley, 
 whose character, curiously compounded of credulity and 
 sagacity, was afterwards to be graphically painted by his 
 step-grandson. Ere long William Emerson had to dispute 
 his mother's affection with a rapidly increasing brood of 
 young half-brothers and sisters. His own inclinations are 
 said not to have tended towards the ministry, but his 
 mother's wishes, reinforced by broad hints in his step 
 father's devotional exercises, prevailed with him, and after 
 an alternate course of college study and school-keeping, 
 he was (1792) ordained at the age of twenty-three, and 
 settled at Harvard, a town twelve miles from Concord. 
 The congregation was small and the income correspon 
 dent three hundred and thirty-three dollars annually 
 to which in process of time it became necessary to add two 
 hundred and fifty more as compensation for the deprecia 
 tion of the currency. Being too poor to keep a horse, he 
 was almost debarred from other society than that afforded 
 by the village itself, a restricted circle of plain but friendly 
 and hospitable people, more sympathetic with the young 
 minister's musical tastes than with his literary aspirations. 
 
EMERSON. 17 
 
 In the case of a clergyman who sings and plays on the 
 bass viol, it excites no surprise, slenderness of means not 
 withstanding, to hear of " conversations on the subject of 
 matrimony." These occurred in June, 1796, and on 
 October 2th of that year William Emerson was united to 
 Ruth Haskins, of Boston, and brought her from the New 
 England metropolis to dwell in the little sequestered 
 hamlet among the woods and rocks. " We are poor 
 and cold," he wrote in his journal, " and have little meal, 
 and little wood, and little meat ; but, thank God, courage 
 enough." 
 
 The family of Ruth Haskins was by no means so distin 
 guished as that of her bridegroom ; its origin, indeed, was 
 uncertain. It had boasted, however, a member of sterling 
 worth in her father, John Haskins : and her mother, 
 Hannah Upham, sprang from one of the good old New 
 England families, prolific of " selectmen, moderators of 
 town-meetings, members of the General Court, officers in 
 the militia, and deacons of the church." John Haskins, 
 differing from his wife in religious sentiment, was an 
 Episcopalian of an unusually staunch type. He had pro 
 tested stoutly against the changes in the Liturgy of 
 King's Chapel, by which, as Clough subsequently ex 
 pressed it, " the tails of the prayers had been cut off," 
 and the congregation had become Unitarian. This had 
 happened in 1785, after tjie flight of the old royalist 
 rector and the larger portion of his flock, who disappeared 
 along with British supremacy in the year of Independence, 
 no more than British supremacy to return. Mr. Haskins 
 emigrated too, but only to Trinity Church, whither he was 
 accustomed to repair at the head of half his numerous 
 
 ' 
 
18 LIFE OF 
 
 family, his wife leading a procession of the other half 
 towards the Congregational Church in Park Street All 
 this notwithstanding, the veteran Churchman would have 
 the heretical pastors in of a Sunday evening, and treat 
 them with sangaree out of a silver tankard. All was good 
 humour and mutual toleration, and an atmosphere was 
 preparing singularly suitable for the special message of 
 John Haskins's grandson, who celebrated his death (1814) 
 in some boyish lines. He was indeed a man of great firm 
 ness of character and sound practical wisdom, whose pithy 
 sayings were current among his neighbours, and to whom 
 men going down to the sea in ships entrusted their money 
 in preference to the bank. His daughter Ruth would 
 seem rather to have resembled her mother, and to have 
 even surpassed her graciousness of temper and wifely 
 and motherly diligence. " I do not remember," says Mrs. 
 Bradford, William Emerson's ward, "ever to have seen 
 her impatient, or to have heard her express dissatisfaction 
 at any time." The serious, almost anxious, but finely 
 spiritual countenance prefixed to Mr. D. G. Haskins's 
 account of the family is, but for the dark liquid eyes and 
 the expression as of one troubled about many things, 
 wonderfully like Emerson's in its highest mood. " The 
 original of Ralph Waldo," says Clpugh, describing her 
 at the age of eighty-four; from her, too, he inherited 
 the musical resonance of his voice. Mrs. Bradford con 
 tributes some traits prettily characteristic of the pastor's 
 wife : how, whereas she was satisfied that the silver com 
 munion plate, though her special charge, should be 
 cleaned under her inspection by the sexton, the minister's 
 lawn bands must be ironed by no one but herself. " It 
 
EMERSON. 19 
 
 was the custom at that time for settled ministers to wear 
 bands and black silk gowns, and a plaited broad band 
 of black silk round the waist. Mr. Emerson looked very 
 handsome thus attired.'' Of Ralph Waldo's infancy 
 Mrs. Bradford only recollects that he had a surprising 
 memory ; that his dress was at first yellow flannel, suc 
 ceeded by dark blue nankeen ; and that at an early age 
 he contracted an evil habit of sucking his thumb, which 
 Mrs. Emerson eradicated by making him wear a mitten. 
 
 If the pecuniary advantages of William Emerson's 
 marriage were not conspicuous, he had nevertheless en 
 larged the circle of his acquaintance, and gained friends 
 in the native city of his bride. It may have been through 
 her connections that in 1799 he was invited to preach 
 before the First Church in Boston " on the solemn occa 
 sion of choosing officers for the Ancient and Honourable 
 Artillery Company." The discourse, set off by the 
 preacher's handsome person, melodious voice, and agree 
 able manner, gave such satisfaction that within a week he 
 was offered the pastorate of this important church. His 
 own inclination could not be doubtful, but it was necessary 
 to obtain a dismissal from his rural congregation. To 
 this end the people of Harvard were apprised by the 
 people of Boston that " the alarming attacks upon our 
 holy religion by the Learned, the Witty, and the Wicked, 
 especially in populous and seaport towns," rendered it 
 indispensable that the light of men like Mr. Emerson 
 should no longer be concealed under bushels, but that 
 individuals thus luminous should be " invited and sup 
 ported to convince and confound the wicked " (nothing 
 is said of the learned and the witty) " by their arguments, 
 
20 LIFE OF 
 
 and allure them by their amiable behaviour." The people 
 of Harvard seem to have had no objection to detach 
 their pastor as a reinforcement to the metropolis, but were 
 exercised by the apprehension of having to pay his suc 
 cessor a better salary. As insurance against this con 
 tingency, they claimed thirteen hundred dollars. The 
 Bostonians showed their real desire to secure Emerson by 
 meeting this demand considerably more than half way. 
 After a tedious negotiation a thousand dollars were paid, 
 and the young minister entered upon his new sphere on 
 September 22, 1799. He had, he afterwards told his 
 half-brother, made up his mind to leave Harvard in any 
 event, and had contemplated removal to Washington, 
 where he would have endeavoured " to plant a church 
 strictly on congregational principles ; in which there was 
 to be no written confession of faith, no covenant, and no 
 subscription whatever to articles as a term of communion." 
 This bold liberalism foreshadows the subsequent conduct 
 of his son, and is, moreover, conclusive as to the writer's 
 own attitude towards the great intellectual change which 
 was silently revolutionizing the theology of New England. 
 " We progress in such and such ways," said a member 
 of an orthodox church to a Unitarian : " but how do you 
 Unitarians progress ? " " By other churches adopting 
 our principles while keeping their own names," was the 
 answer. Unitarianism must certainly be allowed to re 
 semble the Kingdom of Heaven in one respect : it cometh 
 not with observation. It has always been the result of 
 a slow and silent process, begun long ere suspected, 
 and progressing unchallenged long after its tendency has 
 become plain. Protest is idle, for the phenomenon has 
 
EMERSON. 21 
 
 its roots deep in human nature, being in fact bottomed 
 on the elementary fact that every generation must and 
 \*Iil look at things human and divine in its own way, and 
 that the only method of insuring the permanency of any 
 particular mode of thought is to renounce the exercise of 
 thought entirely. William Emerson, whose ancestors' 
 Calvinism had not been extreme, had fallen in easily 
 with the current of the time : but, though there was the 
 stuff of a vigorous controversialist in him, circumstances 
 did not require him to come prominently forward. There 
 seems, indeed, to have been an indisposition on all hands 
 to stir up religious strife ; until at length an apple of dis 
 cord was thrown, or rather fell in obedience to the laws 
 of nature, in the shape of a vacant Professorship of 
 Divinity. The question whether a Unitarian could be 
 appointed on a Calvinist foundation could not but lead 
 to contention. It was decided in conformity with the 
 precedent settled at the English Reformation, and the 
 irritation of the orthodox party found vent in the 
 establishment (1805) of the Panoplist^ a journal in which 
 the new views were violently combated, and their sup 
 porters assailed with personal animosity. This tone, 
 however, was not adopted until the publication of 
 Buckminster's collection of hymns in 1808, the year in 
 which William Emerson was brought nigh unto death ; 
 nor did he ever recover so far as to take an active part 
 in ecclesiastical politics. The influences, therefore, that 
 surrounded Ralph Emerson's cradle were far less con 
 troversial than might have been expected, and in the very 
 year (1821) in which he quitted college, the conflict wore 
 itself out, leaving as its principal literary monument the 
 
22 LIFE OF 
 
 classic works of the meekest of controversialists, William 
 Ellery Charming. Most fortunate was its breaking out 
 for the young thinker, for whom orthodox and heterodox 
 conspired to clear the way : most fortunate also its subsi 
 dence, or he would have run great risk of giving up to 
 sect what was meant for mankind. 
 
 The less William Emerson felt disposed to take a 
 prominent part in controversy, the more likely was his 
 mental activity to find vent in literature. The Christian 
 Minister Society, established for the publication of tracts, 
 was founded and long actively promoted by him. He 
 was a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
 and also of the Philosophical Society, of which he seems 
 to have regarded himself as the founder, since he calls it 
 " the child of my brain." But his chief enterprise was 
 the editorship of The Monthly Anthology, the journal of 
 the Anthology Club, of which he was vice-president, 
 Busy judges, rising barristers, influential clergymen, even 
 a future President, found time to contribute to this 
 magazine, which represented the best intellectual culture 
 of Boston, in that day conservative in literature as in 
 politics, and unforeboding of the mystic baptism which it 
 was to receive from the editor's little boy. The deep 
 influence which Godwin had so recently exerted on the 
 one contemporary American of literary genius Charles 
 Brockden Brown found no echo among the Bostonian 
 literati: who had imagination enough to appreciate Scott's 
 romantic picturesqueness, but recoiled with instinctive 
 antipathy from a seer like Coleridge. Literary orthodoxy 
 of this type leaves no permanent intellectual trace, and 
 only retains an historical interest as indicating the mental 
 
EMERSON. 23 
 
 drift of a community at a particular period. Permanent 
 results, however, were produced by William Emerson's 
 motion for the formation of a club library, which eventually 
 developed into the library of the Boston Athenaeum, one 
 of the best upon the continent. 
 
 Thus happily and usefully occupied, respected and 
 caressed by society notwithstanding the slenderness of 
 his means, discharging several important public trusts, 
 recognized by the civic authorities as a man of mark, 
 happy in a promising and increasing family, though twice 
 smitten by the loss of young children, William Emerson 
 could write with all sincerity of the sphere in which he 
 found himself, as " an ample and beautiful world in which 
 there has been afforded to me a pleasant lot and much 
 happiness, worthy friends and delightful contemplations." 
 Nor was his a merely fair-weather optimism. When shortly 
 afterwards attacked by an insidious malady, he could 
 write, " To my wife and children, indeed, my continuance 
 upon earth is a matter of moment ; as, in the event of 
 my decease, God only knows how they would subsist. 
 And then the education of the latter ! But I am not 
 oppressed with this solicitude. Our family, you know, 
 have so long been in the habit of trusting Providence, 
 that none of them ever seriously thought of providing a 
 terrestrial maintenance for themselves and households." 
 Very shortly afterwards (May 12, 1811), he passed away. 
 " Three years before, he had been," says his funeral 
 encomiast, Buckminster, " brought down in an instant, 
 and without any previous warning, to the gates of death, 
 when busily preparing for a public service." This is ex 
 plained to have been the effect of a profuse haemorrhage 
 
to LIFE OF 
 
 from the lungs, from the effects of which he never com 
 pletely recovered. But the disease of which he died had 
 no connection with this bleeding, being occasioned by a 
 tumour which entirely closed the lower orifice of the 
 stomach. " The town," said Buckminster, a man whose 
 commendation counts for very much, " has lost a diligent 
 observer of its youth and their education ; the Academy 
 and Historical Society an associate greatly interested in 
 their flourishing state ; the University an attentive over 
 seer. The clergy throughout the country have lost a 
 hospitable and liberal brother ; his family a most careful 
 and excellent father, husband, and master ; and his friends 
 an honourable and faithful friend." 
 
 This warm eulogium was delivered as a part of Wil 
 liam Emerson's funeral oration, and subsequently added 
 to his posthumous and most considerable work, the history 
 of his own church from 1630 to his own time a respect 
 able if not brilliant performance, full of curious illustra 
 tions of the metamorphosis of Puritan theology, and itself 
 a conclusive proof of the change which had come over 
 men's minds. Speaking of the persecutions in which the 
 old Puritans indulged themselves, he says : " The Bap 
 tists still groaned in prisons. The most unrighteous 
 laws stared them in the face ; and the most villainous 
 conduct was secretly practised to their mischief." Yet 
 Buckminster attests that Emerson " looked back with 
 veneration almost unbounded at some of his predeces 
 sors." The book was published by his widow in the 
 December following his death, and probably contributed 
 something to the relief of her narrow circumstances. 
 William Emerson must indeed have possessed a large 
 
EMERSON. 25 
 
 measure of the faith that walketh not by sight, if he died 
 with a mind at ease respecting the prospects of his family. 
 If he depended on his congregation, his confidence was 
 not vain. The church continued his salary to the widow for 
 six months, voted her five hundred dollars yearly for seven 
 years, and allowed her the occupancy of the parsonage 
 for a year and a half, a term subsequently extended to 
 three years. Boarders were taken in, most of the house 
 hold drudgery was performed by Mrs. Emerson herself, 
 personal friends helped occasionally; the maiden aunt, 
 Mary Moody Emerson, did her part to the extent of her 
 scanty means ; and so the four boys William (born 1801), 
 Ralph Waldo ( 1 803), Edward Bliss (1805), Charles Chauncy 
 (1808), were not only fed and clothed, but liberally edu 
 cated. Another son, Robert Bulkeley, though an amiable 
 lad, proved permanently childish and incapable of instruc 
 tion ; a little girl, born about the time of her father's 
 death, soon disappeared from the scene. The great 
 result was not attained without stern self-denial of more 
 kinds than one, frequent abstinence and occasional priva 
 tion. In after-life Miss Emerson concluded a cordial eulo- 
 gium on her sister with a special reference to her patience 
 under " the trials of boarders," which she evidently 
 felt to be no anticlimax : " The most I could say would 
 not be too much." A friend coming in one day, found the 
 family without food, and this good aunt, who, let us 
 trust, had dined, " consoling them with stories of heroic 
 endurance." Ralph and Edward had but one great-coat 
 between them, no small matter in the winter climate of 
 New England. The discomforts of this condition were 
 sufficiently perceptible at the time ; its blessings were 
 
26 LIFE OF 
 
 recognized afterwards, when, after a beautiful descrip 
 tion of eager, blushing boys comparing the intellectual 
 treasures amassed in hours snatched from a life of stern 
 duty and unflinching task-work, Emerson adds : 
 
 " What is the hoop that holds them staunch ? It is 
 the iron band of poverty, of necessity, of austerity, which, 
 excluding them from the sensual enjoyments which make 
 other boys too early old, has directed their activity into 
 safe and right channels, and made them, despite them 
 selves, reverers of the grand, the beautiful, and the good. 
 Ah, short-sighted students of books, of nature, and of 
 man ! too happy could they know their advantages, they 
 pine for freedom from that mild parental yoke; they 
 sigh for fine clothes, for riches, for the theatre, and 
 premature freedom and dissipation which others possess. 
 Woe to them if their wishes were crowned ! The angels 
 that dwell with them, and are weaving laurels of life for 
 their youthful brows, are Toil and Want, and Truth and 
 Mutual Faith." 
 
 It may occur to the reader that if the young Emersons 
 were staunch, the good aunt who fed the hungry with 
 tales of the hungrier may have had something to do with 
 imparting this invaluable quality. So it was ; she was to 
 Emerson all her life what he, in describing Carlyle's 
 letters, calls bark and steel and mellow wine. Like most 
 tonics, she was somewhat tart and astringent ; she idol 
 ized her nephews in her own way, but by no means 
 approved of all their doings or thinkings. She was full 
 of angularities : a perpetual offender against minor social 
 proprieties ; orthodox by intellectual conviction, hetero- 
 
EMERSON. 27 
 
 dox by native temperament ; " no whistle," said her 
 nephew, " that every mouth could play on, but a pibroch 
 from which only a native Highlander could draw music." 
 Her habitual mode of expressing herself was abrupt and 
 sibylline ; nor is it clear that she always knew what she 
 would have. But at rare intervals came some thrilling 
 oracle; some deliverance only needing epigrammatic point 
 to have been Emerson's own. "Scorn trifles, lift your 
 aims," was the burden of all her discourse. "A few 
 pulsations of created beings," she wrote in 1822, "a few 
 successions of acts, a few lamps held out in the firmament, 
 enable us to talk of Time, make epochs with histories, 
 date the revelations of God to man. It is a goodly name 
 for our notions of breathing, suffering, enjoying, acting. 
 We personify it. We call it by every name of dreaming, 
 fleeting, vapouring imagery. Yet it is nothing. We 
 exist in eternity. Dissolve the body and the night is 
 gone, the stars are extinguished, and we measure duration 
 by the number of our thoughts, by the activity of reason, 
 the discovery of truths, the acquirement of virtue, the 
 approach to God. And the grey-haired god throws his 
 shadows all around, and his slaves catch, now at this, 
 now at that one ; at the halo he throws around poetry, or 
 pebbles, or bugs, or bubbles. Sometimes they climb, 
 sometimes creep into the meanest holes but they are 
 all alike in vanishing, like the shadow of a cloud." 
 Emerson, mutatis mutandis, might assuredly have said 
 with the third Napoleon, Je suis le neveu de ma tante. 
 " She has deserted," he wrote long afterwards, " her 
 remote village to refresh herself awhile with young faces, 
 and defend them from parental routine. Perhaps they 
 
28 LIFE OF 
 
 will not find in all the colleges so real a benefactor." 
 The chronicle of his schooldays, complete as regards his 
 instruction and the routine of study, affords but little 
 material for constructing a living image of the scholar 
 himself. Some who have recorded their reminiscences 
 in late life, evidently speak less of what they saw than of 
 what they wish they had seen; others candidly admit that 
 they saw nothing. One fact, however, is both clear in 
 itself, and a clear proof how entirely in Emerson's as in 
 most other cases, the child fathered the man. Always 
 among his school-mates, he was never of them. There 
 was a certain aloofness which never allowed them to 
 consider him quite one of themselves ; he was not a 
 schoolboy, but a boy at school. This peculiar distinc 
 tion he preserved through his life; without stiffness or 
 churlishness, affectation or assumption, he always put 
 and kept a distance between himself and others, which 
 rendered his personal influence, apart from his writing 
 and his oratory, smaller than that of almost any other 
 great teacher. It is noteworthy that his intimates always 
 call him Mr. Emerson. Enthusiasm never got beyond 
 the hem of his garment; and this though the man 
 was as simple, transparent, and unaffected as if he 
 had been a great naturalist, instead of a cultivator of 
 moral science. His isolation was simply the effect of an 
 unlikeness to others not necessarily indicative of mental 
 superiority, and so far disadvantageous that in later life 
 it prevented his exercising that moral control over his 
 congregation which might have been easily exerted by an 
 inferior man. The few definite notices that we possess 
 of him at this early period are mostly indicative of this 
 
EMERSON. 29 
 
 involuntary spiritual exclusiveness. " He had then," said 
 an old schoolfellow to Dr. Holmes, "the same manner and 
 courtly hesitation in addressing you that you have known 
 in him since." " He seemed," says the youth he taught 
 at college, " to dwell apart, as if in a tower, from which 
 he looked upon everything from a loophole of his own." 
 Taxed on one occasion with assuming an air of superiority, 
 he replied with veracious simplicity, " I did not know it, 
 sir." Such a pretension, had it indeed been advanced, 
 would have seemed the less justifiable, as he was by no 
 means a brilliant scholar, or remarkably prominent in his 
 class. He was indeed, on one occasion, selected to 
 deliver a poem of his own composition, but only after the 
 task had been declined by seven of his reputed betters. 
 " Attended a dissertation of Emerson's in the morning, on 
 the subject of Ethical Philosophy," writes JosiahQuincy : 
 " I found it long and dry." And again, " Emerson's vale 
 dictory exercise rather poor, and did but little honour to 
 the class." It was not known that his boyhood had been 
 fascinated by one of the writers least likely to interest an 
 average youth, Montaigne ; and that he habitually carried 
 a translation of Pascal's Pensees to church with him. 
 It is a curious instance of the meeting of extremes that 
 the most believing of men should have been thus early 
 attracted to these two great and in different ways typical 
 sceptics. 
 
 Emerson's schooling had commenced before he was 
 three, and a week ere he attained that ripe age his father 
 seems half disappointed that " Ralph does not read very 
 well yet." After another spell of learning under Lawson 
 Lyon, " a severe teacher," at the age of ten he entered 
 
30 LIFE OF 
 
 the Boston Latin School, then or shortly afterwards 
 under an excellent master, Mr. Apthorp Gould. Here 
 he showed a talent for speech-making and rhyming which 
 gained his master's good will, but the only incident of 
 any interest recorded is the whole school turning out to 
 aid in throwing up defences on Noddle Island against an 
 expected visit from the British then, to the shame of 
 both nations, a hostile fleet. Emerson distinctly remem 
 bered the holiday, but could never recollect that the 
 young engineers had done any work. In 1817 he 
 entered Harvard College, under favour of an arrange 
 ment resembling a Cambridge sizarship. He was made 
 "President's freshman," or messenger to summon de 
 linquents and announce orders and regulations, which 
 insured him free lodging ; and waiter at Commons, which 
 saved him three-fourths of his board. He also partici 
 pated in several minor benefactions for poor scholars, 
 and after a while eked out his means still further by 
 giving supplementary lessons to a youth less educated 
 than himself, whose character of him has already been 
 cited, and who, when a distinguished clergyman in after 
 years, gratefully acknowledged his obligation to him 
 rather as Mentor, however, than as instructor. Emer 
 son's backwardness in mathematics almost brought him 
 into disgrace, and he seems to have evinced no special 
 proficiency except in Greek. The Greek professor, the 
 eloquent Edward Everett, inspired him with enthusiastic 
 admiration ; and the Hellenic bent of his mind was 
 further disclosed by a successful prize essay on Socrates. 
 " Why not Locke, Paley, or Stewart?" asked the President, 
 to whom Caesar and Pompey were evidently much alike. 
 
EMERSON. 81 
 
 Emerson himself could not have told, but he held 
 serenely on his own course, resolute alike in his accept 
 ance of the mental food he found wholesome and 
 his avoidance of that which did not commend itself 
 to his instinct. Like many another active-minded youth 
 in similar circumstances, he indemnified himself for the 
 distastefulness of a large portion of the college course by 
 a wide ranging over general literature. There seems no 
 trace of his study of any modern continental language ; 
 but he was deeply versed in Shakespeare and the early 
 English dramatists ; and Swift, Addison, and Sterne are 
 named among the authors he introduced to the more 
 intellectual among his classmates. Next to his reserve 
 and the faultless propriety of his conduct, his contem 
 poraries at Harvard seem chiefly impressed with his 
 unusual maturity and such an equipoise of intelligence 
 as might have become a youthful Spinoza, but rarely 
 accompanies the gift of poetry in verse or prose. No 
 thing about him seemed to indicate the future poet or 
 mystic. There is no trace of the revolt of a Shelley, the 
 suicidal tendencies of a Goethe, or Carlyle's warfare with 
 the Everlasting No : nor did genius ever make its debut 
 in the world with less passion and crudity, or, it must 
 be added, with less apparent promise. By so much as 
 Emerson was before most men in the balance and disci 
 pline of the ordinary faculties of his mind, by so much 
 was he behind most inspired men in the development 
 of the exceptional. 
 
 The first indication of deep thought in Emerson's 
 mind is found in a reminiscence of his own, perhaps 
 not wholly accurate in point of date. It professedly 
 
82 LIFE OF 
 
 relates to the period immediately succeeding his gra 
 duation at Harvard in 1821, when he was assisting his 
 brother William in a school for ladies which the latter 
 had established in Boston. In a speech delivered many 
 years afterwards, he laments his inability to impart to his 
 pupils what was chiefly precious to himself. " My teach 
 ing," he says, " was partial and external. I was at the 
 very time already writing every night, in my chamber, 
 my first thoughts on morals and the beautiful laws of 
 compensation and of individual genius, which to observe 
 and illustrate have given sweetness to many hours of my 
 life. I am afraid no hint of this ever came into the 
 school, where we clung to the safe and cold details of 
 languages, geography, arithmetic, and chemistry." Words 
 worth in one of his meditative poems hints his appre 
 hension lest he should unawares " confound the present 
 feelings with the past," and it must be owned that there 
 is little in Emerson's correspondence of this period to 
 intimate the existence of the Essay on Compensation, 
 even in embryo. His letters, however, though extant, 
 have not been fully published ; and a remarkable passage 
 in one of them (June 19, 1823) shows that he even 
 then regarded himself as a poet and a worshipper of 
 Nature. 
 
 "I am seeking to put myself on a footing of old 
 acquaintance with nature, as a poet should ; but the fair 
 divinity is somewhat shy of my advances, and I confess 
 I cannot find myself quite as perfectly at home on the 
 rock and in the wood as my ancient, and I might say 
 infant, aspirations led me to expect. My aunt (of whom 
 
EMERSON. 83 
 
 I think you have heard before, and who is alone among 
 women) has spent a great part of her life in the country, 
 is an idolater of nature, and counts but a small number 
 who merit the privilege of dwelling among the mountains 
 the coarse thrifty cit profanes the grove by his presence 
 and she was anxious that her nephew might hold high 
 and reverential notions regarding it, as the temple where 
 God and the mind are to be studied and adored, and 
 where the fiery soul can begin a premature communica 
 tion with the other world. When I took my book, 
 therefore, to the woods, I found nature not half poetical, 
 not half visionary enough. There was nothing which 
 the most froward imagination could construe for a moment 
 into a satyr or dryad. No Greek or Roman or even 
 English fantasy could deceive me one instant into the 
 belief of more than met the eye. In short, I found that 
 I had only transplanted into the new place my entire 
 personal identity, and was grievously disappointed. Since 
 I was cured of my air-castles I have fared somewhat 
 better ; and a pair of moonlight evenings have screwed 
 up my esteem several pegs higher, by supplying my brain 
 with several bright fragments of thought, and making me 
 dream that mind as well as body respired more freely 
 here." 
 
 It is to be observed that the country retreat to which 
 Emerson had repaired when he penned the above lines 
 was by no means a lodge in a vast wilderness, but a 
 wooded corner of the suburban district of Roxbury, 
 picturesque enough, but so near Boston as to have been 
 in our time absorbed by the enlargement of the city. 
 
 3 
 
34 LIPE OF 
 
 Mrs. Emerson had there taken up her abode in Canter 
 bury Lane, known also as Light Lane, from the gloom 
 of the overshadowing trees, and Featherbed Lane, in 
 compliment to the ruggedness of the roadway. " Poets 
 succeed better in fiction than in truth." While Emerson 
 disparaged his sylvan retirement in prose, he was by no 
 means backward in his claims for it in the following lines, 
 the first of any importance that he seems to have com 
 posed : 
 
 "I am going to my own hearth-stone, 
 Burrowed in yon green hills alone, 
 A secret nook in a pleasant land, 
 Whose groves the frolic fairies planned ; 
 Where arches green the live-long day 
 Echo the blackbird's roundelay, 
 And vulgar feet have never trod 
 A spot that is sacred to thought and God. 
 
 Oh when I am safe in my sylvan home, 
 I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome ; 
 And when I am stretched beneath the pines 
 Where the evening star so holy shines, 
 I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, 
 At the sophist schools and the learned clan ; 
 For what are they all in their high conceit, 
 When man in the bush with God may meet ? " 
 
 These lines, alike in sentiment and cadence, strongly 
 resemble Pringle's famous " Afar in the Desert," which, 
 however, was not published until 1828; nor can Pringle 
 have seen them. 
 
 The means for Mrs. Emerson's removal to Canterbury 
 Lane appear to have been supplied by the success of 
 William's school, which allowed him to proceed to finish 
 
EMERSON. 85 
 
 his education in Germany. Waldo, as he was now called 
 by his family and intimates, conducted the school for a 
 year during his brother's absence, and Edward, now a 
 youth of nineteen, established another seminary in Rox- 
 bury. By 1825 Waldo's three years of school-keeping 
 had put from two to three thousand dollars into his 
 pocket, and he felt enabled to terminate the parenthesis 
 in his own education by entering the Divinity School at 
 Cambridge, to prepare himself to follow the profession of 
 all those among his ancestors who had been born upon 
 American soil. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE time when the young schoolmaster thus for a 
 season retrograded into the pupilar condition was 
 one of repose and yet of expectation, pregnant with the 
 germs of great things to come. It was for long after 
 wards looked back upon with regret as " the era of good 
 feeling." The last prominent statesman of America's 
 heroic age was President ; two, more illustrious still, were 
 descending towards the grave in the sight of all ; the 
 atmosphere seemed suffused with their departing bright 
 ness, and faction stood for the moment abashed by the 
 solemn euthanasia of an age of giants. Meanwhile new 
 issues were silently maturing, new strifes preparing. The 
 carrion instinct of Aaron Burr had truly scented the taint 
 of the coming time when he indicated its coming man in 
 Andrew Jackson, personally honest, but author of that 
 watchword of corruption, " The spoils to the victors." 
 An age was impending of selfish scrambling and shame 
 less manoeuvring at home, of offensive hectoring and 
 audacious rapacity abroad ; an age which might have 
 seemed permitted to show to what a depth a free and 
 enlightened people can descend, if it had not even more 
 impressively demonstrated from what a depth such a 
 people can recover itself. That America did recover was 
 
LIFE OF EMERSON. 87 
 
 due in no small manner to her good fortune in preserving 
 a moral and intellectual aristocracy, whose hereditary 
 descent from the very flower of seventeenth-century 
 England had not been lost in the turbid torrent of mis 
 cellaneous immigration. No less happy was it that, 
 thanks to federal sovereignty and local institutions, this 
 aristocratic element was not, like so many aristocracies, 
 imbecile or effete, but retained a healthy interest in 
 public life, and was neither too timid nor too superfine to 
 face a political issue and fight a stiff election. No man 
 was to contribute more to keep New England in essen 
 tials what the Pilgrim Fathers had made it, than the 
 unnoticed student of a system of theology which was 
 ruthlessly dissolving the mere externalities of the Pilgrim 
 Fathers' creed. To lift Unitarianism out of sectarianism, 
 to transform an originally rationalistic mode of thought 
 into a mystic and transcendental one, to kill it as theology 
 and bid it live as literature, were tasks reserved for the 
 young student which would have dismayed him could he 
 have caught one dimmest glimpse of them as he entered 
 the Cambridge Divinity School. 
 
 In choosing the Church as his profession, Emerson 
 followed the path which seemed marked for one in whose 
 veins ran so much clerical blood, but at the same time he 
 obeyed his own conviction of what was best. He had 
 formed a sound estimate of his powers, and believed that 
 in the course he was following he should do them justice. 
 He fancied, indeed, that " his abilities were below his 
 ambition ; " but this might well be, since his aspiration, 
 though unambitious of worldly distinction, contemplated 
 great results in the intellectual world ; inmensum infinitum- 
 
as LIFE of 
 
 que ahquid. He fully recognized that his logical faculty 
 compared unfavourably with his imagination, but he 
 remarked with justice that this was no reason why he 
 should abstain from theology, " for the highest species of 
 reasoning upon divine subjects is rather the fruit of a sort 
 of moral imagination than of the reasoning machines, such 
 as Locke and Clarke and David Hume." He proceeds 
 to instance Channing's Dudleian lecture as his model, 
 and his admiration did not misguide him. There is not, 
 perhaps, in the whole arena of theological literature such 
 another instance of clear calm sense exalted to the highest 
 eloquence by devoutness of spirit and moral enthusiasm 
 as is afforded by the discourses of Channing. Whatever 
 is best in the seventeenth and the eighteenth century 
 pulpit seems united in this ornament of the nineteenth : 
 but out of the pulpit the charm of Channing's elo 
 quence, if not dispelled, lost much of its fascination. The 
 fervent, faultless man of God whose heroic attitude 
 and serene eloquence could fire multitudes and quell 
 mobs seemed to have little faculty for dealing with his 
 fellow men face to face. An atmosphere of reserve 
 environed him; he gave forth more light than heat. 
 Emerson's personal resort to him ended in disappoint 
 ment ; he was hardly capable, the younger man thought, 
 of taking another person's point of view, or of com 
 municating himself freely in private conversation. " He 
 does not converse," said George Combe, " but delivers 
 an essay, and waits patiently to hear an essay in return." 
 His peculiar secret of exalting morality into religion by 
 enthusiasm for the right and good was Emerson's already 
 by natural endowrr ent ; so that the latter could not feel 
 
EMERSON. 39 
 
 that he had much to learn from him, nor did he find 
 another guide. He wrote indeed freely of his per 
 plexities to his aunt Mary, but his interrogations seem 
 rather soliloquies than dialogues. After all, his diffi 
 culties were no more than must naturally occur to 
 every thoughtful person. He was not blind to the 
 strong points of the old Puritan theology. "Presbyte- 
 rianism and Calvinism make Christianity a more real 
 and tangible system, and give it some novelties which 
 were worth unfolding to the ignorance of men." But he 
 felt no disposition to accept the assumptions on which it 
 was based. "That the administration of eternity is fickle, 
 that the God of revelation hath seen cause to repent and 
 botch up the ordinances of the God of Nature, I hold 
 it not irreverent but impious in us to assume." He was 
 not too well satisfied with the average standard of devo 
 tional fervour in the Unitarian Church ; but many had 
 transcended it, and why not he ? "I know that there are 
 in my vicinity clergymen who are not merely literary or 
 philosophical." He was not, therefore, like John Ster 
 ling, erring from precipitancy, when he deliberately 
 adopted the clerical profession : indeed, like almost all 
 the acts of his singularly symmetrical and harmonious 
 life, the step was decidedly the wisest that he could have 
 taken at the time. 
 
 Seldom, however, has neophyte been more buffeted 
 by accident and fatality than Emerson. He had scarcely 
 been a month at the Cambridge Divinity School ere his 
 overtasked eyes failed him, and general debility drove him 
 to the country, " to try the experiment of hard work for 
 the benefit of health." It profited him, but more than a 
 
40 LIFE OF 
 
 year elapsed ere he returned to Cambridge. In the 
 interim he had for a short time taken charge of a school 
 at Chelmsford, and afterwards of that established at Rox- 
 bury by his brother Edward, the genius, it was then 
 deemed, of the family, who had overtasked his strength, 
 and been driven to try a voyage to the Mediterranean. 
 A pupil of Emerson's at the Chelmsford School remembers 
 his grave and quiet, yet engaging demeanour, the sub 
 jection in which he could keep the boys by a look or a 
 tone, a peculiar expression in his eyes, as if he saw things 
 invisible to others. Mr. John Holmes, the brother of 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes, records his undoubting calmness 
 of manner, the sternness of his very infrequent rebukes, his 
 kindliness in explaining or advising. " Every inch a king 
 in his dominion. Looking back, he seems to me rather 
 like a captive philosopher set to tending flocks." " He 
 was not," says another witness, " especially successful as a 
 teacher. He was studying for the ministry, and his heart 
 was centred in his studies. Still, everything went along 
 with the utmost smoothness." While he was at Chelms 
 ford an incident occurred which must have strengthened 
 his resolution to be a minister, had it needed strengthen 
 ing. This was the aberration of his brother William, 
 who had gone to study theology in Germany, and there 
 imbibed doubts which withheld him from the Church. 
 Foreseeing the pain which this would occasion his mother, 
 he had sought counsel from Goethe, who received him 
 sympathetically, and, true to his own preference for the con 
 crete over the abstract, recommended him rather to conceal 
 his scruples than grieve his kindred. Conscience, how 
 ever, had the mastery in William's mind, and he forsook 
 
EMERSON. 41 
 
 theology for law, rising ultimately to the judicial bench. 
 Some congregation lost something, for, according to his 
 cousin George, William Emerson had the sweetest voice 
 ever heard. Upon his return he visited Waldo at 
 Chelmsford to discuss the matter with him. " I was very 
 sad," says Emerson, " for I knew how it would grieve my 
 mother, and it did." The more reason, then, that he 
 himself should adhere to the path she had wished, and 
 he had chosen. 
 
 Though unable to join the regular class at Cambridge, 
 Emerson had occasionally attended lectures, and the 
 authorities, convinced of his worth and seriousness, and 
 perhaps recognizing his hereditary claim to ordination, 
 were content to dispense with any considerable acquaint 
 ance with technical divinity. If they had examined him, 
 he said afterwards, his licence would assuredly have been 
 refused. "Approbated to preach" by the Middlesex 
 Association of Ministers on October 10, 1826, he de 
 livered his first discourse at Waltham five days afterwards. 
 The subject was suggested by the remark of a labourer 
 with whom he had worked when striving to fortify his 
 constitution by rustic toil in the preceding year "a 
 Methodist, who, though ignorant and rude, had some deep 
 thoughts. He said to me that men were always praying, 
 and that all prayers were granted. I meditated much on 
 this saying, and wrote my first sermon therefrom; of 
 which the divisions were (i) Men are always praying; 
 (2) All their prayers are granted ; (3) We must beware, 
 then, what we ask." Emerson could hardly have begun 
 his career as a public teacher more characteristically than 
 by the unfolding of so deep a truth so sheathed in apparent 
 
42 LIFE OF 
 
 paradox : nor was it less like himself to waive at the very 
 outset his own academical claims in favour of the simple 
 wisdom of one " taught of the Spirit." 
 
 A month later, shortly after his brother Edward's 
 return from Europe, in improved health, but with a 
 burden of debt contracted to defray the expenses of his 
 tour, which preyed upon his sensitive conscience, and 
 eventually broke him down, Emerson was driven south 
 J}y a recurrence of his chest complaint. After a short 
 stay at Charleston, he journeyed on to St. Augustine, in 
 Florida, but recently acquired by the United States, and 
 still far more Spanish than Anglo-American. "An 
 ancient, fortified, dilapidated sand-bank of a town," 
 whose population of twelve hundred was unequally 
 divided between Americans fulfilling their manifest 
 destiny as office-holders, and Spanish families with 
 retinues of blacks. "The Americans live on their 
 offices ; the Spaniards keep billiard tables ; or, if not, 
 they send their negroes to the mud to bring oysters, or 
 to the shore to bring fish, and the rest of the time fiddle, 
 mask, and dance. It was reported in the morning that 
 a man was at work in the public square, and all our 
 family turned out to see him. I stroll on the sea-beach, 
 and drive a green orange over the sand with a stick." He 
 could not have been better employed. Health came 
 back gradually in the mild air, and his mental develop 
 ment was assisted by some practical insight into the 
 system of slavery, and by acquaintance with the first 
 foreigner he had known intimately, a man of a different 
 type to any he had yet encountered. This was no other 
 than Achille Murat, son of King Joachim and nephew 
 
EMZRSON. 48 
 
 of Napoleon, at that time a planter at Tallahassee. " A 
 philosopher, a scholar, a man of the world; very scep 
 tical, but very candid, and an ardent lover of truth." 
 Emerson accompanied him to his plantation, and they 
 were fellow passengers on ship-board back to Charleston. 
 He reached home in June, stopping and preaching on 
 the way at Charleston, Washington, Philadelphia, and 
 New York. The abstraction from purely professional 
 duties and interests had certainly benefited him. His 
 aspirations had become more varied, his tastes more ver 
 satile j he felt at times, he tells his aunt, as though he 
 might become a novelist or a poet ; he even experienced 
 spasmodic yearnings to be a painter. These growth-pains 
 of genius did not perturb his demeanour ; he was still 
 regarded as a staid young man, rather pedantically 
 exact in keeping his diary, and far less promising 
 than his brilliant brother Edward. His originality was 
 mainly manifested in the decision of his ethics. He 
 preached independence. "Owe no conformity to cus 
 tom," he said, " against your private judgment." " Have 
 no regard to the influence of your example, but act 
 always from the simplest motive." But while thus 
 asserting his right to disregard social conventions if he 
 saw fit, he apparently felt no call to quarrel with them. 
 He comported himself like other young ministers; he 
 was neither a Spiritualist nor a Free Lover, nor even 
 a vegetarian. His one eccentricity could be indulged 
 without attracting attention. " It is a peculiarity of 
 humour in me, my strong propensity for strolling. I 
 deliberately shut up my books in a cloudy July noon, put 
 on my old clothes and old hat, and slink away to the 
 
44 LIFE OF 
 
 whortleberry bushes, and slip with the greatest satisfac 
 tion into a little cow-path, where I am sure I can defy 
 observation. This point gained, I solace myself for 
 hours with picking blueberries and other trash of the 
 woods, far from fame behind the birch trees. I seldom 
 enjoy hours as I do these. I remember them in winter ; 
 I expect them in spring. I do not know a creature that 
 I think has the same humour, or would think it re 
 spectable." The impressions thus imbibed were to 
 be given back in due season. Emerson's best writ 
 ings are the breathings of a soul saturated with sylvan 
 influences. 
 
 For nearly a year Emerson continued a student at 
 Divinity Hall, " his health the same stupid riddle that it 
 always had been," " treading on eggs to strengthen his 
 constitution," "lingering on system, writing something less 
 than a sermon a month." The happy consequence was 
 that in April, 1828, he reports himself as "looking less 
 like a monument and more like a man." In what may be 
 termed his moral regimen, he seems, as in most things, 
 to have been a model. He had nothing of the peevish 
 ness of the invalid. " I court laughing persons, and 
 after a merry or only a gossiping hour, when the talk has 
 been mere soap-bubbles, I have lost all sense of the 
 mouse in my chest, am at ease, and can take my pen or 
 book." He adds that he has just refused the third 
 " Church Applicant " wanting him to preach as a candi 
 date. 
 
 The easy stream of his life was soon to be ruffled by a 
 painful, almost a tragic event. Waldo, the dutiful youth 
 who followed the career desired by his mother, who had 
 
EMERSON. 46 
 
 never been overtaken in a fault or had given a moment's 
 uneasiness to those who loved him, save from the weak 
 ness of his health, was in that day regarded rather as the 
 example than the hope of his family. He had not, like 
 William, strayed even beyond the ample limits of Uni 
 tarian orthodoxy ; nor had he exhibited the versatility, 
 nigh akin to instability, of his brilliant brother Edward. 
 But the family pride and hope were concentrated on the 
 latter. " Born for success," writes Waldo, 
 
 " He seemed, 
 
 With grace to win, with heart to hold, 
 With shining gifts that took all eyes, 
 With budding power in college halls, 
 As pledged in coming days to forge 
 Weapons to guard the State, or scourge 
 Tyrants despite their guards or walls. " 
 
 This glowing estimate was confirmed by the judgment of 
 impartial observers. "There was no presage," writes Dr. 
 Hedge, "of Emerson's future greatness. His promise 
 seemed faint in comparison with the wondrous brilliancy 
 of his younger brother, Edward Bliss Emerson, whose 
 immense expectation was doomed never to be fulfilled." 
 " Refinement of thought and selectness in the use of 
 language," were indeed notable in Waldo, but only so far 
 as " to give promise of an interesting preacher to culti 
 vated hearers." But Edward Emerson's college career 
 had been as brilliant as Waldo's had been the reverse. 
 He appeared marked for a leader of men, and exerted a 
 magnetic spell, still potent after sixty years with the few 
 who remember him. " Oh what a teacher Edward Bliss 
 
46 LIFE OF 
 
 Emerson was ! " exclaims Mr. Harrington. " A gift of 
 God to those he taught. A model of manly beauty of the 
 highest type in form and feature. Immaculate purity of 
 soul, intellectual greatness, exquisite refinement of feeling 
 and tenderest sensibility, were all engaged in limning its 
 wonderful attractions. Had the lives of Edward and 
 Charles been spared beyond early manhood, the Emer 
 son name would have been still more often spoken." 
 This treasure had been confided to an earthen vessel. 
 Edward's constitution was as delicate as Waldo's, but 
 while the latter was screened by a pensive tempera 
 ment, inasmuch that, as he said himself, "he could 
 mend his shell with pearl," Edward's genius summoned 
 him to external activity. The strain was too great for 
 him. His health, as has been seen, had already broken 
 down in school-keeping. Returning from Europe, as he 
 fondly deemed with renovated strength, he had conse 
 crated himself with the devotion of a Walter Scott to the 
 task of freeing himself from his pecuniary obligations. 
 In pursuance of this end he had tried one employ 
 ment after another without success, and the fret of failure 
 at length wore out not only the body, but the mind. 
 In June, 1828, Emerson was hastily summoned to his 
 brother, who "had fainting fits and delirium, and had 
 been strangely affected in his mind for a fortnight." A 
 delusive improvement was succeeded by a state of violent 
 derangement. "There he lay Edward, the admired, 
 learned, eloquent, strong boy a maniac." The paroxysm 
 was temporary. Edward recovered and retained his 
 reason, but his health never returned. His wing was 
 broken ; he sought the West Indies, and there, during 
 
EMERSON. 47 
 
 the brief respite thus snatched from the grave, the youth 
 who might have been the foremost citizen of his state, 
 lived obscurely as a commercial clerk. Pondering over 
 this tragedy, Emerson became almost thankful for his 
 own defects, which he came to regard as ballast. " My 
 mariner," he says, with the exaggeration of self-reproach, 
 " is sluggish, my speech sometimes flippant, sometimes 
 embarrassed and ragged ; my actions (if I may say so) 
 are of a passive kind. My brother lived and acted with 
 preternatural energy." Hence Emerson arrived at the 
 comfortable conclusion that, having so little mind to 
 lose, he need not be afraid of losing any. His insig 
 nificance was to protect him. " Do you think," said the 
 old Irish retainer to the new-comers, " that the Banshee 
 would wail for the likes of ye ? " 
 
 Prosperity and love joined hands to lift him from this 
 depression. If he thought meanly of himself, others, it 
 was clear, did not. In the autumn of 1828, the pulpit of 
 the Second Church, one of the most important in Boston, 
 seemed likely to be vacant by the illness of Henry Ware. 
 Emerson was invited to fill it during the pastor's illness : 
 but a report got abroad that Mr. Ware, upon his re 
 covery, would accept a professorship at Cambridge, 
 and Emerson, with refined sensitiveness, scrupled at the 
 advantage which occupation of the pulpit would have 
 given him over other candidates. He thought all should 
 start fair. "If I am settled," he said, "I choose it 
 should not be because I have kept a better man from 
 being heard." Mr. Ware did not resign, but accepted 
 a colleague, and early in 1829 Emerson was elected 
 by seventy-four out of seventy-nine votes. Within a 
 
48 LIFE OF 
 
 few weeks Ware found it necessary to seek health in 
 Europe, and Emerson became sole incumbent. It was 
 no doubt exceedingly welcome to him to have been spared 
 the usual ordeal of competitive oratory : and another 
 circumstance had probably weight in determining him 
 to accept a position for which he had previously mani 
 fested but little eagerness. On December 24, 1828, he 
 informed his brother William that he had been for a week 
 engaged to Ellen Tucker, a young lady of seventeen, 
 daughter of a deceased Boston merchant, living at 
 Concord with her mother and stepfather. He had been 
 smitten with her a year before, but " thought I had got 
 over my blushes and my wishes." " I saw Ellen at once," 
 he wrote afterwards, " in all her beauty, and she never 
 disappointed me except in her death." Ellen Emerson, 
 as she became in September, 1829, faded so quickly out 
 of life and all memories but her husband's, that little 
 seems to be known of her beyond her remarkable beauty, 
 her fatal delicacy of constitution, and her buoyant spirit. 
 Within a month of her engagement she made Emerson 
 miserable by spitting blood. The deceptive malady, as 
 usual, left much apparent ground for hope. We have 
 seen that it did not prevent their union eight months 
 afterwards. In February he wrote : " Ellen is mending 
 day by day. 'T would take more time than I can spare 
 to tell how excellent a piece of work she is. She trifles so 
 much with all her ails, and loses no jot of spirits, that we 
 talk gravely only when asunder." She wrote verse ; one 
 of her little poems, preserved in " The Dial," seems to 
 imply acquaintance with Goethe : and to her, about this 
 time, were addressed these charming verses : 
 
EMERSON. 49 
 
 "Thine eyes still shined for me, though far 
 
 I lonely roved the land or sea : 
 As I behold yon evening star, 
 Which yet beholds not me. 
 
 This morn I climbed the misty hill, 
 And roamed the pastures through : 
 
 How danced thy form before my path, 
 Amid the deep-eyed dew ! 
 
 When the redbird spread his sable wing, 
 
 And showed his side of flame ; 
 When the rosebud ripened to the rose, 
 
 In both I read thy name." 
 
 It seems almost needful to the full exhibition of the 
 contrast between Emerson and his great compeer and 
 complement beyond the Atlantic, that he should have 
 deliberately chosen the calling which Carlyle as delibe 
 rately rejected. Emerson was fit and knew himself fit for 
 the office of teacher by public speech : Carlyle must have 
 recognized his incapacity for it even independently of the 
 restraints of creed and confession which formed his os 
 tensible reason for declining it. He denounced his own 
 lecturing as " a mixture of prophecy and play acting ; " 
 and had the Kirk of Scotland been as liberal as the Uni 
 tarian Church of New England he would soon have 
 chafed at the indispensable accompaniments of the 
 pastoral office. To Emerson's apprehension, on the other 
 hand, ministerial duty presented nothing distasteful : he 
 would willingly have spent his life in the service of a con 
 gregation, however humble, could he but have had liberty 
 always to tell them the highest thing he knew, and to con 
 form his practice in all respects with his ideal. The 
 right and duty of free inquiry, sometimes as passionately 
 
 4 
 
50 LIFE OF 
 
 asserted as though they needed demonstration, appeared 
 to him self-evident : but at the outset of his ministerial 
 career he could not know that he would be carried beyond 
 the latitude accorded by the most tolerant of churches ; 
 nor, even in this case, could be foresee that his flock 
 would refuse to follow him " to fresh woods and pastures 
 new." He began, therefore, with perfect sincerity, in a 
 thoroughly hopeful spirit, holding out, in the manifesto 
 which in compliance with usage he addressed to his con 
 gregation in his first sermons, no promise of any novelty 
 except the freer use of familiar language and homely illus 
 tration. " I said to myself," he tells his aunt, " that if 
 men would avoid that general language and general 
 manner in which they strive to hide all that is pecu 
 liar, every man would be interesting." The written 
 record of his ministry lies before his literary executor, 
 Mr. Cabot, in one hundred and seventy-one manuscript 
 sermons. In deference to his own wish they are with 
 held from the press, but Mr. Cabot gives a general 
 account of their characteristics. According to this they 
 are mainly remarkable for the absence of any special 
 originality of thought or phrase. There is no endeavour 
 after the rhetorical effectiveness then in vogue ; and all 
 is clear, earnest, and direct. Whether the logical se 
 quence of thought is better observed than in the Essays, 
 Mr. Cabot does not tell us. As the preacher's mind 
 ripened his individuality became more distinct, but so 
 long as he occupied the pulpit his ideas were presented 
 in Scriptural language, as if they belonged to the body of 
 accepted doctrine. A specimen of this method of reading 
 new truth out of, and into, an old text, is afforded by the 
 
EMERSON. 51 
 
 reminiscence of a hearer who heard Emerson preach on 
 " What is a man profited if he gain the whole world and 
 lose his own soul ? " The main emphasis was on the 
 word " own," and the general theme was that to every 
 man the great end of existence was the preservation and 
 culture of his individual mind and character. One can 
 understand from this the remark of another hearer : " In 
 looking back on his preaching I find he has impressed 
 truths to which I always assented, in such a manner as to 
 make them appear new, like a clearer revelation." His 
 popularity, if not showy, was substantial ; he belonged to 
 public bodies and took part in public affairs; though 
 no politician, he opened his church to the first movers in 
 the anti-slavery agitation ; and seemed in a fair way to 
 prove what to many so-called liberals seems doubtful, 
 that there is no incompatibility between independent 
 thought and the public ministrations of religion. If his 
 discourse could not impress the world like Carlyle's, as a 
 sudden vent for impassioned feelings, the silent accumu 
 lation of many years of fierce inward conflict, he could 
 hold religion up to men as a serene lamp lit at the tran 
 quil but intense flame which burned in his own bosom. 
 He could and did avoid the great stumbling-block of the 
 teacher by the touch of genius which redeems familiar 
 truth from platitude and commonplace, and, according 
 to a happy definition, presents religion not merely as 
 morality, but as morality touched with emotion. In the 
 duties of pastoral visitation he seems to have been less 
 efficient ; and here indeed it is easy to conceive that nice 
 refinement and respect for the sacredness of other men's 
 convictions may sometimes prove a disqualification, and 
 
52 LIFE OF 
 
 that obtrusiveness may be a condition of success. 
 " Young man," said a spiritual patient, scandalized at not 
 being treated secundum artem, " if you don't know your 
 business, you had better go home." It is characteristic 
 of his deep humanity, and his aversion to fuss and com 
 monplace, that he appeared to least advantage at a funeral. 
 A professional observer, a sexton, remarked that on such 
 occasions " he did not seem to be at ease at all. To 
 tell the truth, in my opinion, that young man was not 
 born to be a minister." Emerson was soon to feel the 
 need of such qualifications as ministers of less refined but 
 stronger mould bring to bear upon their congregations : 
 but, though defeat for lack of them was bitter, such 
 victory as they could have given would not have been 
 valued by him. 
 
 Ere the coming of that day, however, Emerson had to 
 bear a far heavier calamity. His marriage, obedient to the 
 dictates of affection, had set at nought those of physical 
 prudence. Even in the first flush of triumphant love 
 he had been conscious of the coming shadow. " Will 
 God," he had written, "make me an exception to the 
 common order of his dealings, which equalises destinies ? 
 I cannot find in the world any antidote, any bulwark 
 against this fear like this, the frank acknowledgment of 
 unbounded dependence. If I am called, after the way of 
 my race, to pay a fatal tax for my good, I may appeal to the 
 sentiment of collected anticipation with which I saw the 
 tide turn and the winds blow softly from the favouring 
 west." His forebodings were speedily fulfilled. In the first 
 winter of their marriage it was necessary to take Ellen to 
 the south, and as he was meditating a second journey the 
 
EMERSON. 63 
 
 plan was frustrated by her rapid decline, terminating in 
 death in February, 1831. She had been to him "a 
 bright revelation of the best nature of woman." Reserved 
 as he was in the expression of personal emotion, his 
 diary is long afterwards chequered with cries of sorrow in 
 prose and verse ; and until his departure for Europe he 
 daily sought her grave. 
 
 The year following his bereavement (1832) was to see 
 Emerson widowed also of his spiritual bride, his church. 
 It was not a divorce on account of incompatibility. 
 There is nothing to show that he felt the least uneasiness 
 in the clerical habit, of which indeed he did not divest 
 himself for some time afterwards. But it was a necessary 
 condition of his ministry that he should be at liberty to 
 follow his own highest conceptions ; if these clashed with 
 the requirements of his congregation, their connection 
 could no longer endure. The cause of difference was 
 characteristic of his independence : it related to a rite 
 which nine-tenths of those who felt with him would 
 have tolerated as harmless. Religious persons may 
 from one point of view be distinguished according as 
 they do or do not feel the need of external ceremonies 
 in worship. To some, painting, music, gorgeous 
 vestments, seem the appropriate apparel of religion; 
 to others, they are an impertinence, almost an offence. 
 Which temper represents the higher conception need not 
 be discussed here ; but as a matter of fact it is certain 
 that while the ancient religions blazed with ritual splen 
 dour, the founders of more spiritual creeds have always 
 striven to reduce this to a minimum, and none more so 
 than the Founder of Christianity. The only two rites to 
 
64 LIFE OF 
 
 which he gave his sanction might be deemed to represent 
 the ne plus ultra of ceremonial simplicity ; but a germ 
 remained, prolific in strange growths. No church, pro 
 bably, was less obnoxious to sacramentalism than 
 Emerson's ; but he could not be content so long as the 
 pure simplicity of worship was, in his view, desecrated by 
 any material contact. He easily persuaded himself that 
 the Lord's Supper had not been designed as a permanent 
 institution ; but let the contrary be conceded, and he was 
 still ready to add, " If I believed that it was I should not 
 adopt it. I should choose other ways which, as more 
 effectual upon me, he would approve more. For I choose 
 that my remembrances of him should be pleasing, affect 
 ing, religious. I will love him as a glorified friend, after 
 the free way of friendship, and not pay him a stiff sign 
 of respect, as men do to them whom they fear." He 
 went on to protest that he was not " so foolish as to de 
 claim against forms. Forms are as essential as bodies ; 
 but to exalt particular forms, to adhere to one form a 
 moment after it is outgrown, is unreasonable, and it is 
 alien to the spirit of Christ." Here was the question in 
 a nut-shell, as respected Emerson's connection with his 
 congregation. He had outgrown the form, or thought he 
 had, but had they ? It quickly appeared that his scruples 
 were unintelligible to them. It was equally apparent 
 that they no more wished him to go than he wished to be 
 gone. Compromises were suggested, but proved imprac 
 ticable. He would have remained if the material ele 
 ments could have been dispensed with, and the service 
 made purely commemorative. They would have let him 
 deal with the symbols as he pleased, provided that they 
 
EMERSON. 55 
 
 were retained. He retreated into the country to ponder 
 over the matter, while rumours of his mental derange 
 ment went abroad. These he did not condescend to 
 refute : but to his friends, urging him not to stickle over 
 much for points of form, he replied that his punctilious 
 ness was rather for his people than himself. " I cannot 
 go habitually to an institution which they esteem holiest 
 with indifference or dislike." " It is my desire," he said, 
 in the address in which he announced his resignation 
 (Sept. Qth) " to do nothing which I cannot do with my 
 whole heart. Having said this, I have said all. I 
 have no hostility to this institution ; I am only stating 
 my want of sympathy with it. I am content that it 
 stand to the end of the world, if it please men and please 
 Heaven, and I shall rejoice in all the good it produces." 
 The dignity of this farewell is not exempt from a certain 
 soreness. Emerson was, indeed, pained and mortified ; 
 he had hoped to have carried his people with him, and 
 though still considering himself as a clergyman, felt 
 thenceforward something of " a grudge against preach 
 ing." He could not conceal from himself that the pas 
 toral career to which everything had seemed to invite him 
 had been a failure : nor could it then be seen what a 
 necessary and invaluable stage it had been in his own 
 development. " I look back," he said in his farewell 
 letter of Dec. 22nd, " with a painful sense of weakness to 
 the little service I have been able to render after so much 
 expectation on my part." But the springs of hope and 
 energy were not destroyed. " Shall I pester you," he 
 wrote to his brother William, "with half the projects 
 that sprout and bloom in my head, of action, literature, 
 
56 LIFE OF EMERSON. 
 
 philosophy ? " Action, however, imperatively requires 
 health, which cannot well be spared even by literature 
 and philosophy. Emerson's vitality was at the time low ; 
 he had never got over his domestic sorrow ; he could not 
 himself quite resist a feeling of discouragement, and 
 seemed to those about him to have mistaken his voca 
 tion. " When a man would be a reformer he needs to 
 be strong," wrote his more pugnacious brother Charles. 
 " The disappointment grows upon me as I go Sunday 
 after Sunday and hear ordinary preachers, and remember 
 what a torch of kindling eloquence has been snuffed out 
 in such an insignificant fashion." Emerson determined 
 on a vigorous step. He had thought of seeking repose 
 and change with his brother Edward in the West Indies, 
 " but in a few hours the dream changed into a purpu- 
 real vision of Naples and Italy." He wrote a final 
 letter of affectionate farewell to his people, and in a 
 fortunate hour, December 25, 1832, embarked in the 
 brig Jasper, bound with a cargo of West Indian pro 
 duce for Malta, where she arrived on the 2nd of 
 February. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 EMERSON'S Lehrjahre were now over, and his 
 brief Wanderjahr was about to begin. He had 
 passed through the only episode in his life which in the 
 least savoured of spiritual crisis. Even this character, in 
 so far as it belonged at all to his resignation of his charge, 
 was purely accidental and external. It need not have 
 happened but for others ; his own development had never 
 been arrested or diverted; he had travelled quietly on 
 his original line. He had ever followed wisdom as one 
 follows an art or science : it was no more a requisite for 
 him " to adore what he had burned, and to burn what 
 he had adored," than for the young artist at a given 
 period of his career to burn his pencils, or for the young 
 astronomer to shatter his telescope. If he had been 
 taxed with the lack of such experience as befell Paul on 
 the road to Damascus, he might have replied with Paul 
 on another occasion, " I was born free." He had not, 
 like Shelley, prematurely taken up ground which he 
 found himself unable to maintain ; nor had he, like New 
 man, surrendered himself to a current whose inevitable 
 direction he long mistook. He needed no conversion, 
 only a new atmosphere to foster such tendencies of his 
 mind as had failed to receive due nutriment at home. 
 
58 LIFE OF 
 
 Yet, as every nature craves its opposite and complement, 
 one object of the serene optimist's travel was to seek the 
 modern representative of Paul, Luther, and Wesley, the 
 victorious but sorely scarred antagonist of the " Ever 
 lasting No " Thomas Carlyle, whose early writings, the 
 writer's name as yet unknown, Emerson had been the 
 first American to receive as a revelation. 
 
 The hero, unless also a martyr, generally appears upon 
 the scene at the right time. Europe was just in the state 
 in which an intellectually inquisitive visitor would have 
 desired to find her. Experiments were being tried every 
 where, including the experiment of standing still. Peace 
 reigned in every European land, save for one local civil 
 war, but the existing political order was undermined 
 everywhere except in England and Russia, and hostile 
 tendencies had never clashed more fiercely in the world 
 of thought Liberalism was the ruling creed in theory, 
 even among the statesmen who resisted it in practice ; 
 but a formidable re-action was already visible in the intel 
 lectual sphere. Newman was striving to reconcile the 
 old Church with Anglicanism, Lamennais with socialism. 
 Mediaeval architecture was coming into fashion; the 
 artistic and literary ideals of the preceding century were 
 falling into disrepute. The Goths of the Romantic 
 school had for the time overwhelmed the traditional 
 classicalism of the Latin nations. Scott reigned in all 
 European literatures ; Byron was still a great power ; the 
 seed sown by Shelley and Keats was beginning to come 
 up, though their names, like those of Wordsworth and 
 Coleridge, were as yet only heard in England and 
 America. Hegel had just repeated the feat and the 
 
EMERSON. 69 
 
 failure of Jonathan Edwards in constructing a system which 
 none could refute and few could receive. Goethe had done 
 more for European thought by impregnating it with those 
 germs of an evolutionary doctrine which afforded a battle 
 ground to the savants of Paris, while Lyell gave the idea 
 of geological uniformity scientific shape in England, and 
 Darwin yet geologized in South America. Steam was 
 just above the horizon, and electricity just below it. 
 On the whole, till the leadings of Providence became 
 more evident, the intellectual condition of society must 
 have appeared splendidly anarchical ; an impression 
 which could but be confirmed by the extraordinary 
 mortality which had recently taken place among the 
 sovereigns of thought. " Les dieux s'en vont" said Heine. 
 Within a year death had removed Goethe, Scott, Hegel, 
 Bentham, and Cuvier. Chateaubriand had retired from 
 active life, and Coleridge was shortly to retire from the 
 world. A great void was thus made for the Titanic 
 Hugos and Carlyles of the age, and its as yet obscure 
 Comtes and Emersons. 
 
 In the first letter he wrote home from Europe, Emer 
 son described the purpose of his journey as being "to 
 find new affinities between me and my fellow men." Art 
 and scenery were subordinate objects. " I collected," he 
 said afterwards, "neither cameo, nor painting, nor 
 medallion; but I valued much, as I went on, the growing 
 pictures which the ages had painted and I reverently 
 surveyed." When, having crossed from Malta into Sicily, 
 he finds himself at Syracuse, he is disappointed that 
 "there was scarce anything that speaks of Hiero, or 
 Timoleon, or Dion. Yet I am glad to be where they 
 
60 LIFE OF 
 
 have been, and to hear the bees, and pick beautiful wild 
 flowers only three or four miles from the fountain Cyane." 
 " How evanescent and superficial," he exclaims when in 
 Rome, "is most of that emotion which names and 
 places, which art or magnificence, can awaken ! It 
 yields in me to the interest which the most ordinary 
 companion inspires." Yet he admired works of art, 
 though reversing the traveller's ordinary practice by 
 displaying more discrimination than enthusiasm. The 
 churches struck him particularly, and he was impressed 
 with the value of the aesthetic element in religion, 
 of which he had had no previous experience. He 
 was equally surprised that the Americans who had 
 entered European churches should submit to such mean 
 edifices at home ; and that Italians on their side should 
 be unable to " devise ceremonies in as good and manly 
 taste as their churches and pictures and music." The 
 sum total of his impressions, however, came to much the 
 same as he afterwards delivered in his suggestive but 
 defective Essay on Art: "Painting seems to be to 
 the eye what dancing is to the limbs. When that has 
 educated the frame to self-possession, to nimbleness, to 
 grace, the steps of the dancing-master are better for 
 gotten." The one thing he really valued abroad was to 
 be able " to recognize the same man under a thousand 
 masks, and to hear the same commandment spoken to 
 me in Italian I was wont to hear in English. My greatest 
 want is that I never meet with men who are great or 
 interesting." The first exception he mentions is Landor, 
 whom he sought out with an instinct not granted to 
 many Englishmen of that day. Emerson found him 
 
EMERSON. 61 
 
 " living in a cloud of pictures at his Villa Gherardesca," 
 and though he could not deem Lander's real conversation 
 equal to his imaginary ones, he was able to say " He has 
 a wonderful brain, despotic, violent, inexhaustible, meant 
 for a soldier, by chance converted to letters." He after 
 wards, before reaching England, pronounces Landor one 
 of the two men in Europe to whom he had been able to 
 say something in earnest. This was written in Paris, 
 where he had arrived on June 2oth, after a flying visit to 
 Venice, " a city for beavers," and Geneva, where he only 
 visited Voltaire's chateau under protest. New England 
 thought had travelled a long way since Franklin brought 
 his grandson to be blessed by the Patriarch of Ferney. 
 Paris was pronounced by Emerson "a loud modern New 
 York of a place," but, at the same time, " the most hos 
 pitable of cities." He was in London by July 2ist, 
 meeting Mill, whom he does not seem to have appreciated, 
 and Bowring, who showed him over the house of Jeremy 
 Bentham. A more memorable interview, " though rather 
 a spectacle than a conversation " (" I was glad," says Sir 
 Henry Taylor, " to show him to Stephen "), was that with 
 Coleridge, "a short, thick old man, with bright blue eyes 
 and fine clear complexion, leaning upon his cane." Cole 
 ridge's conversation was so far that of a poet that its course 
 obeyed the impulse of any casual incident or allusion. 
 The sight of a militiaman is recorded to have brought 
 him to the fall of Napoleon by way of the Peninsular 
 War, and now the aspect of a Unitarian minister led him 
 to declaim against Unitarianism, of whose later develop 
 ment he cannot have known much if he really took 
 Channing for a follower of Priestley. One of his remarks, 
 
62 LIFE OF 
 
 however, was worthy to have found its way into " Table- 
 Talk." " I have known ten persons who loved the good 
 for one person who loved the true ; but it is a far greater 
 virtue to love the true for itself alone, than to love the 
 good for itself alone." 
 
 Immediately after his interview with Coleridge Emer 
 son repaired to Scotland, passing, as an allusion in 
 " Nature " shows, by way of York. He was now to meet 
 one who fully complied with Coleridge's standard, if in 
 deed Emerson was right, as assuredly he was, in finding the 
 secret of Carlyle's superiority " in his commanding sense of 
 justice, and incessant demand for sincerity." When 
 (Aug. 26th) he alighted at Craigenputtock and met 
 Carlyle, whose address he had the greatest difficulty in 
 discovering, he " found him one of the most simple and 
 frank of men, and became acquainted with him at once. 
 We walked over several miles of hills, and talked upon 
 all the great questions that interest us most." "That 
 man," Carlyle said to Lord Houghton, " came to see me; 
 I don't know what brought him, and we kept him one 
 night, and then he left us. I saw him go up the hill. I 
 didn't go with him to see him descend. I preferred to 
 watch him mount and vanish like an angel." Most fortu 
 nate it was for them both that their meeting lasted so 
 long and no longer, that there was time to disclose the 
 general unity of spirit and identity of aspiration, and not 
 time enough for the discovery of the utter antithesis of 
 temperament, and the innumerable discrepancies in 
 points of detail. They parted, each believing the 
 other intellectually much nearer than he really was : and 
 this belief fostered a sympathy which, by the time that 
 
EMERSON. 63 
 
 their differences became undeniably manifest, had grown 
 too strong and habitual to be seriously disturbed by 
 them. Carlyle's genius, in fact, had not then fully re 
 ceived its epic and dramatic bent; and he was still 
 much under the influence of metaphysical ideas bor 
 rowed from Germany. The full report of their con 
 versation is not preserved, but if in comparing notes 
 they began with their fundamental beliefs, they would 
 travel far before they arrived at their points of disagree 
 ment. Each was a Pantheist, seeing in the universe a 
 living organism, not something made by an external 
 craftsman. Each was a Transcendentalist, believing in 
 necessary ideas independent of experience. Each 
 passionately asserted a Law of Right, independent of 
 utility or expediency. By the time that these points of 
 contact had been thoroughly established, it may have 
 been in every sense time for Emerson to go. Some 
 genuine Carlyleana came out notwithstanding. Mirabeau 
 should be a hero. Gibbon was the splendid bridge frork 
 the old world to the new. The great booksellers had 
 paid such incredible sums for puffery that they were all 
 on the verge of bankruptcy. Carlyle had matched his 
 wits against his pig's, with humiliating results. An un 
 finished bit of road was "the grave of the last sixpence." 
 Not the least remarkable feature in the interview was the 
 perfectly equal footing of him whose genius was acknow 
 ledged at least by his visitor, and the thinker as yet 
 entirely unknown to fame. Emerson had made a long 
 pilgrimage to see Carlyle. Carlyle could not have been 
 expected to go a step out of his way to see Emerson. 
 It might have seemed inevitable that they should meet 
 
64 LIFE OF 
 
 as disciple and master, but it was not so. They asso 
 ciated without embarrassment on the one side, or as 
 sumption on the other, each feeling the essential point 
 to be not what a man achieved, but what he was. 
 
 Emerson's impressions of Carlyle were first communi 
 cated to a young Scotchman, destined to eminence as a 
 journalist and a man of letters, but who will perhaps be 
 even longer remembered as the first European who recog 
 nized a light of the age in the American stranger. 
 Emerson had come to Edinburgh with an introduction 
 from Bowring to Dr. John Gairdner, a friend of Mr. 
 Alexander Ireland, " who, luckily for me," says Mr. 
 Ireland, "was so much engaged in professional duties 
 that he was unable to spare a few hours to do the 
 honours of the Scottish metropolis," so his bishopric was 
 taken by another, " and thus I became," says Mr. Ire 
 land, " an entertainer of angels unawares." Never before 
 had Mr. Ireland " met with any one of so fine and varied 
 a culture, and with such frank sincerity of speech. A 
 refined and delicate courtesy, a kind of mental hospitality, 
 so to speak the like of which, or anything approaching 
 to which, I have never encountered seemed to be a 
 part of his very nature, and inseparable from his daily 
 walk and conversation." The impression was deepened 
 when, on August i8th, Mr. Ireland heard him preach in 
 the Unitarian church, and remarked the effect produced 
 notwithstanding the absence of all oratorical effort. " Not 
 long before this I had listened to a wonderful sermon by 
 Dr. Chalmers, ariose force and energy and vehement 
 eloquence carried for the moment all before them. But 
 I must confess that the pregnant thoughts and serene 
 
EMERSON. 65 
 
 self-possession of the young Boston minister had a greater 
 charm for me than all the rhetorical splendours of Chal 
 mers." In the intervals of sight-seeing Emerson dis 
 coursed of life and literature, of Coleridge and Goethe, 
 Landor and Channing and Montaigne ; and Mr. Ire 
 land's enthusiasm found vent in memoranda, less of what 
 he had heard than of the anticipations for Emerson's 
 future with which Emerson's discourse had inspired him. 
 " They might at that time have sounded unduly inflated, 
 but his subsequent career may be said to have rendered 
 them almost tame and inadequate." Emerson on his 
 part was so interested in his new friend as to send him 
 accounts most interesting from their freshness and un- 
 premeditation of his visits to Carlyle and Wordsworth, 
 both of whom he sought on his way to Liverpool. Of 
 Wordsworth, whom he saw on August 25th, he says with 
 gentle sarcasm : " He was so benevolently anxious to 
 impress upon me my social duties as an American citizen, 
 that he accompanied me near a mile from his house, 
 talking vehemently, and ever and anon stopping short to 
 imprint his words." It appears, however, from the fuller 
 report in " English Traits," that Wordsworth said many 
 wise things about America, one among others which 
 long seemed a paradox, that Americans needed a civil 
 war to teach the necessity of knitting the social ties 
 stronger. He solemnized Goethe's birthday by vitupe 
 rating " Wilhelm Meister" : his criticism is one of the most 
 curious examples extant of the inability of the merely 
 ethical temper to enter into the artist's sympathetic 
 observation of life. He had relieved his mind by th-row- 
 ing the book across the room, and, notwithstanding his 
 
 5 
 
66 LIFE OF 
 
 promise to Emerson, it may be doubted whether he 
 ever picked it up again. The moment was certainly unpro- 
 pitious for a return to the charge. Wordsworth's eyes were 
 grievously inflamed, and his physiognomy was disfigured 
 by green goggles. Carlyle he thought sometimes insane, 
 but this was probably merely a second-hand opinion. 
 He preferred Lucretius to Virgil ; and yet Virgil was 
 almost the only poet to whom he paid the compliment 
 of translation. That Wordsworth should recite his own 
 poetry was inevitable, and at first Emerson was " near to 
 laugh. But recollecting that I had come thus far to see 
 a poet, and that he was chanting poems to me, I saw 
 that he was right and I was wrong, and gladly gave my 
 self up to hear." On the whole Wordsworth " made the 
 impression of a narrow and very English mind ; of one 
 who paid for his rare elevation by general tameness and 
 conformity. Off his own beat, his opinions were of no 
 value." But on his beat he was profound and inspiring, 
 as when he told his visitor that " whatever was didactic 
 might perish quickly, but whatever combined a truth with 
 an affection was KTtifia ic da, good to-day and good for 
 ever." 
 
 At Liverpool, Emerson spent nine days weather bound, 
 but solaced by the company of Jacob Perkins, the in^ 
 ventor of the steam gun, who prophesied that the ocean 
 would be navigated by merchant steamers, " but there is 
 a great deal to be done first." Within five years, how 
 ever, the first steam-ship crossed the Atlantic. Emerson's 
 voyage in a sailing packet occupied one month and five 
 days. He had time to sum up the results of his visit to 
 Europe, and question himself what manner of man he 
 
EMERSON. 67 
 
 was taking back to America. His travel had been of the 
 highest value to him, more than he quite knew. Not 
 only had his views expanded and his mind imbibed new 
 ideas, but he had profited by detachment from the con 
 cerns of a limited community and an isolated church. 
 Though crude in form, his thoughts committed to paper 
 on shipboard have a largeness and liberty not attained by 
 him before. He also began to feel dimly that he might 
 have a message to deliver to Europe as well as to America. 
 The wise man, coming to teach, often remains to learn ; 
 but sometimes the case is reversed, and so in a certain 
 degree it was with Emerson. "The great men of England," 
 he wrote, " are singularly ignorant of religion." This 
 dictum would have astonished Wordsworth and Cole 
 ridge. Swedenborg met in the other world with certain 
 individuals who seemed to themselves comely men, " but 
 to the angels they appeared like dead horses." 
 
 Upon arriving in America, Emerson went to live with 
 his mother at Newton, near Boston, and immediately 
 found himself largely in request both as preacher and 
 lecturer. Disencumbered of every special tie, the inde 
 pendence of his position corresponded to the enlargement 
 of his views ; he could speak to his former flock like one 
 emancipated. 
 
 " Man begins to hear a voice that fills the heavens and 
 the earth, saying that God is within him ; that there is 
 the celestial host. I find this amazing revelation of my 
 immediate relation to God, a solution of all the doubts 
 that oppressed me. I recognize the distinction of the 
 outer and the inner self ; the double consciousness that 
 
68 LIFE OF 
 
 within this erring, passionate, mortal self sits a supreme, 
 calm, immortal mind, whose powers I do not know ; but 
 it is stronger than I ; it is wiser than I ; it never approved 
 me in any wrong ; I seek counsel of it in my doubts ; 
 I repair to it in my dangers ; I pray to it in my under 
 takings. It seems to me the face which the Creator 
 uncovers to his child." 
 
 He concluded that this " increased clearness of the 
 spiritual sight " must put an end to all that was " tech 
 nical, allegorical, parabolical " in religious teaching, thus 
 raising up fresh obstacles to his return to the regular 
 groove of his profession. These were increased when 
 the Quakers of New Bedford, with whose spirituality he 
 felt the deepest sympathy, imbued him with a dislike, not 
 merely to set forms of prayer, but to public prayer of any 
 kind without prompting from on high. His views have 
 been much misrepresented, but he himself said, " As 
 well might a child live without its mother's milk as a soul 
 without prayer." His position, however, was evidently 
 inconsistent with a stated ministerial charge, and, after 
 the offer of a pastorate at New Bedford had struck upon 
 this rock, Emerson, though still not refusing to preach, 
 and, in fact, preaching regularly for some years to a small 
 congregation, seems to have esteemed himself a layman. 
 He was now beginning to find his proper field in the 
 lyceum and lecture-hall. His first lectures were scientific. 
 Without any profound acquaintance with science, he 
 knew enough to impart elementary information to an 
 average audience. In dealing with higher matters he 
 showed how immensely the man of science gains by being 
 
EMERSON. 69 
 
 also a man of thought. " The deeper a man's insight into 
 the spiritual laws, the more intense will be his love of the 
 works of nature. It is the wonderful charm of external 
 nature that man stands in a central connection with it 
 all." This fitted well with the doctrine of evolution, 
 which, without endeavouring to explain the process, he 
 assumed to be sufficiently established by the anatomical 
 evidence of gradual development. " Man is no upstart 
 in the creation. His limbs are only a more exquisite 
 organization say rather the finish of the rudimental 
 forms that have been already sweeping the sea and 
 creeping in the mud. The brother of his hand is even 
 now cleaving the Arctic Sea in the fin of the whale, and 
 innumerable ages since was pawing the marsh in the 
 flipper of the saurian." A view afterwards condensed 
 into his memorable couplet 
 
 " Striving to be man, the worm 
 Mounts through all the spires of form." 
 
 But he was far from regarding the progress of develop 
 ment as the result of a cfiance collision of atoms, or a 
 blind struggle for existence. With clear good sense he 
 pointed out the indications of self-conscious forethought 
 in the universe "the preparation made for man in the 
 slow and secular changes and melioration of the surface 
 of the planet ; his house built, the grounds laid out, the 
 cellar stocked." 
 
 In October, 1834, Edward Emerson, "brother of the 
 brief but blazing star,* died in Porto Rico, to the deep 
 grief of Waldo and the intense disappointment of many 
 
70 LIFE OF 
 
 who had regarded the younger brother as by far the more 
 brilliant of the two. 
 
 " His from youth the leader's look 
 Gave the law which others took, 
 And never poor beseeching glance 
 Shamed that sculptured countenance." 
 
 Edward, however, had said, " The real lion of the tribe 
 of Judah is at home." His gifts appear rather to have 
 fitted him for an active than a literary life; only one short 
 poem, and no written meditation, came of the long 
 decline he bore with heroic constancy. Charles, a 
 younger brother of scarcely inferior promise, was engaged 
 to a lady at Concord, and this perhaps had its influence 
 in leading Mrs. Emerson's uncle, the now almost nona 
 genarian Dr. Ripley, the pastor of the town, to offer 
 Mrs. Emerson and Waldo a home in the Old Manse, 
 celebrated by Hawthorne, and which seems to have had 
 a genius for growing old, seeing that in Hawthorne's 
 own day it was younger than its late occupant. Its pic 
 turesque outline is given in Mr. Sanborn's paper in 
 Scribner's Monthly. They went there in October, 
 1834. Ere long Emerson himself became engaged, and 
 it was necessary to look out for a house of his own. He 
 " dodged the doom of building, and bought the Coolidge 
 house in Concord. It is a mean place." It does not 
 appear mean in the view published by Mr. Sanborn, 
 which justifies his description of it "as a modest, homelike, 
 comfortable residence " not unlike, it may be added, 
 except for its wooden material, the half-marine, half-rustic 
 villa that may be espied hiding itself in a plantation near 
 
EMERSON. 71 
 
 many a quiet English watering-place. The scenery of the 
 neighbourhood, though not striking, sufficed a poet of 
 Wordsworthian sympathies who had sat down in the shadow 
 of Etna without ecstasy, and mainly sought to glean from 
 Nature " the harvest of a quiet eye." " It might seem,'' 
 he said, "to bright eyes a dull rabbit-warren," but it gave 
 him what he wanted. Hawthorne, coming afterwards to 
 dwell in the old manse of Dr. Ripley where Emerson had 
 dwelt before him, has depicted the landscape from 
 several different points of view, and notwithstanding his 
 wrath at the muddiness of the slow river, " too lazy to 
 keep itself clean," the general impression is eminently 
 pleasing. He paints the semicircular sweep of the stream, 
 looking under certain aspects, for all its impurity, like a 
 strip of sky let into the earth; the broad, peaceful 
 meadows, of which it was the central line, the bordering 
 ridges swelling forward or sloping gradually back, with a 
 white village here and there embowered in its wood 
 landsDutch nature spiritualized by Western influences. 
 Not far away was Walden Pond, the sylvan lake more 
 indissolubly associated with Thoreau's name than even 
 with Emerson's, often as he 
 
 " Smote the lake to please his eye 
 With the beryl beam of the broken wave, 
 And flung in pebbles, well to hear 
 The moment's music which they gave." 
 
 It was natural, too, that he should feel as a patriot 
 towards Concord, remembering his descent from its 
 founder, and that his fellow-townsmen (who also con 
 ferred upon him the dignity of hog-reeve) should call 
 
72 LIFE OF 
 
 upon him for an address on their second centennial 
 anniversary, September, 1835. With simple but striking 
 eloquence he discoursed of the heroic passages of the 
 history of Concord, especially the hardships and renun 
 ciations of the original settlers. " Many were their wants, 
 but more their privileges. The light struggled in through 
 windows of oiled paper, but they read the Word of God 
 by it. They were fain to make use of their knees for a 
 table, but their limbs were their own. Their religion 
 was sweetness and peace amidst toil and tears." Coming 
 down to later times, he could tell his audience how " the 
 first organized resistance to the British arms was made 
 about half a mile from this spot ; " how he himself had 
 found within the last few days a narrative of the fight in 
 the handwriting of his grandfather, then pastor, and 
 himself a martyr to the cause of independence, and an 
 entry in an almanack in that ancestor's handwriting : 
 " This month remarkable for the greatest events of the 
 present age." Speaking of his researches among the 
 town records, " which must ever be the fountains of all 
 just information respecting your character and customs," 
 he could say : " They exhibit a pleasing picture of a com 
 munity almost exclusively agricultural, where no man has 
 much time for words in his search after things, of a 
 community of great simplicity of manners, and of a 
 manifest love of justice. These soiled and musty books 
 are luminous and electric within. The old town-clerks 
 did not spell very correctly, but they contrive to make 
 pretty intelligible the will of a free and just community." 
 On the next anniversary of the Battle of Lexington, 
 April 19, 1836, the monument erected to commemorate 
 
EMERSON. 78 
 
 the birth of American independence was inaugurated by 
 verses from the pen of Emerson, destined, like the shot 
 he celebrates, to be " heard round the world " 
 
 " By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
 
 Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
 Here once the embattled fanners stood, 
 And fired the shot heard round the world. 
 
 The foe long since in silence slept ; 
 
 Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ; 
 And Time the ruined bridge has swept 
 
 Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. 
 
 On this green bank, by this soft stream, 
 
 We set to-day a votive stone ; 
 That memory may their deed redeem, 
 
 When, like our sires, our sons are gone* 
 
 Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
 
 To die, and leave their children free, 
 Bid Time and Nature gently spare 
 
 The shaft we raise to them and thee." 
 
 Two days after Emerson's Concord oration, he " drove 
 over to Plymouth, and was married." His wife Lydia, 
 or as he chose to call her Lidian, Jackson, sister to Dr. 
 Charles Jackson, of anaesthetic fame has made his re 
 nown her obscurity. Her modest figure occasionally flits 
 across the background of his public career, and the few 
 letters from him to her which have found their way into 
 print reveal both affection and the assurance of sympathy. 
 " The soul of faith," was the character he gave her. He 
 had expected to enlarge the house for the joint occupancy 
 
74 LIFE OF 
 
 of Charles Emerson and his bride, but the new chambers 
 were never needed. In April, 1836, Emerson went south 
 ward with Charles, who needed a milder climate. He left 
 him in New York apparently better, was sharply summoned 
 back, and arrived too late. " I shall have my sorrow to 
 myself," he exclaims, " for if I speak of him I shall be 
 thought a fond exaggerator. How much I saw through 
 his eyes ! I feel as if my own were very dim." There 
 is but one opinion as to Charles Emerson's promise, 
 though he was less conspicuously brilliant than Edward. 
 Like Edward, he was rather an orator and a man of 
 action than a writer ; " he looked forward,'' says Emerson, 
 " to the debates of the senate on great political questions, 
 as to his first and native element. And with reason, for 
 in extempore debate his speech was music, and the pre 
 cision, the flow, and the elegance of his discourse equally 
 excellent. His memory was a garland of immortal 
 flowers, and all his reading came up to him as he talked." 
 "After the death of his brothers," says Mr. Cooke, 
 "Emerson took a much greater interest in public matters, 
 feeling that his duties were increased, and that he must 
 fill more perfectly his place as a citizen." 
 
 Emerson's main intellectual occupation during these 
 two years of domestic enrichment and bereavement was 
 the slow composition of his epoch-making tract on 
 Nature ; but he also found time for public discourse. 
 He gave five biographical lectures at Boston on Michael 
 Angelo, Luther, Milton, George Fox, and Burke. Those 
 on Michael Angelo and Milton are extant in The North 
 American Review. Emerson himself thought them un 
 worthy of preservation, and he was right. They were 
 
EMERSON. 75 
 
 well adapted for their immediate purpose, but have no 
 special originality or force. Ten lectures on English 
 literature delivered in the Masonic Temple, Boston, have 
 not been printed, but are fully analyzed by Mr. Cabot. 
 Emerson's connection with the pulpit was resumed for a 
 time : for three years he preached regularly to a small 
 flock at East Lexington a work of necessity on the 
 showing of one of the sheep, who declared that the simple 
 people laboured under a positive incapacity of under 
 standing any one but Mr. Emerson. And, in fact, the 
 charge of obscurity so frequently brought against Emerson 
 is exceedingly unjust as respects individual sentences. 
 His thought is transparent and almost chillingly clear, " he 
 casts forth his ice like morsels." The obscurity, when there 
 is any, arises from the want of logical sequence in his argu 
 ment, and of tone and keeping amid the mass of glittering 
 beauties, not duly subordinate to the general impression. 
 Emerson was now called upon to deal editorially with a 
 Prophet. Admiration for Carlyle had made him subscribe 
 to Fraserzs long as "Sartor Resartus " appeared in it, and 
 his critical faculty was thus subjected to the severest test 
 to which such faculty can be exposed in the summons to 
 recognize an entirely new order of excellence. To this he 
 failed to respond. It is a remarkable phenomenon, con 
 tinually verified, that minds of unusual subtlety and pene 
 tration seem to labour under an incapacity for appreciating 
 the sublime. The instrument of such minds often seems 
 rather the spectroscope which dissects a single beam in a 
 darkened room than the telescope which ranges infinite 
 space from the summit of the mountain. The intellect 
 which finds thoughts too deep for tears in the flower 
 
76 LIFE OF 
 
 responds with no thrill of agitation to the tempest; 
 the perception which detects the microscopic though real 
 beauties of a Clough cannot see the splendour which 
 invests heaven and earth in the verse of a Shelley. 
 Emerson's was such a mind : the sublimity of " Sartor " 
 was lost upon him ; and that other defect in his mental 
 constitution, which, while allowing him a vein of epi 
 grammatic humour, left him insensible to the glorious 
 mirth of an Aristophanes or a Dickens, abolished for 
 him the second element of greatness in " Sartor," its 
 humour. Its philosophical truth remained, 'and this 
 Emerson appreciated, but tlie form and style were sore 
 trials to him. " O Carlyle ! " he exclaims in his diary, 
 " the merit of glass is not to be seen, but to be seen 
 through ; but every crystal and lamina of the Carlyle 
 glass shows." A sound criticism, if the purpose of 
 " Sartor " had been to make things plain to the meanest 
 capacity. Men of poetical gifts like Emerson and Car 
 lyle are on safer ground when they admire than when 
 they blame : as with Swedenborg's angels, it is only when 
 they affirm a truth that their wands blossom in their hands. 
 As the importer of the only copy in America, he never 
 theless stood towards the book in loco parentis ; and when 
 Dr. Le Baron Russell defrayed the cost of the first trans 
 atlantic edition, Emerson contributed the preface. His 
 introduction was deemed by the enthusiastic timid and 
 superfluously apologetic ; but he felt that he was breaking 
 his own rule " to do nothing which I cannot do with my 
 whole heart." Soon The North American Review came 
 to the rescue, and Emerson could report to Carlyle, " I 
 have quite lost my plume as your harbinger." 
 
EMERSON. 77 
 
 After editing "Sartor" Emerson turned seriously to 
 the publication of his own gospel. His tract on " Nature," 
 the most intense and quintessential of his writings, and the 
 first in which he came forward teaching as one having 
 authority, seems to have been commenced even before 
 he took up his residence at Concord, but was not com 
 pleted till August, 1836. It was published in the follow 
 ing month, without at first attracting much attention. It 
 proved, however, a seed implanted in a fissure of the 
 crumbling New England theology, whose unnoticed ex 
 pansion had force enough to shatter the whole fabric. 
 By its conception not of course original with Emerson 
 or peculiar to him of external Nature as an incarna 
 tion of the Divine Mind, it utterly abolished most of the 
 controversies which had agitated the intellect of America, 
 and in particular caught up the philosophy of Jonathan 
 Edwards, that masterpiece of earthly reasoning, into a 
 heaven of which Edwards had never dreamed. The 
 rigid despotism of an extra-mundane ruler now appeared 
 the free agency of an indwelling power : and similarly, 
 without infringing a single moral rule, the stiff morality 
 of the Unitarians was transfigured and glorified until it 
 hardly knew itself. At the same time God and Nature 
 were by no means confounded ; the former was recognized 
 as the infinite cause, the latter as the infinite effect : and 
 though a cause without an effect is certainly inconceiv 
 able, the formal duality is made not less clear than the 
 substantial unity. Man was represented as the inter 
 mediate phase of being, tending upwards or downwards, 
 according as he inclines to Divine freedom or natural 
 necessity. To quote Mr. Cabot's analysis, " regarded as 
 
78 LIFE OF 
 
 part of nature, he is the victim of his environment: of race, 
 temperament, sex, climate, organization. But man is not 
 simply a part of nature, not mere effect, but, potentially, 
 shares the cause. When he submits his will to the Divine 
 inspiration, he becomes a creator in the finite. If he is 
 disobedient, if he would be something in himself, he 
 finds all things hostile and incomprehensible. As a man 
 is, so he sees and so he does. When we persist in dis 
 obedience, the inward ruin is reflected in the world about 
 us. When we yield to the remedial force of spirit, then 
 evil is no more seen." Evil, then, may be regarded as 
 the price man pays for being above Nature ; and as 
 Emerson could not deem this as by any means too high x 
 he was necessarily an optimist to the extent, at least, of 
 maintaining that, much as we suffer from moral evil, we 
 should be worse off without it. Without it we should be 
 but a part of the machinery of Nature ; its existence is a 
 proof of our liberty, which involves the liberty to rise 
 superior to it. " As when the summer comes from the 
 south, the snowbanks melt, and the face of the earth 
 becomes green before it, so shall the advancing spirit 
 create its .ornaments along its path, and carry with it the 
 beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it ; it shall 
 draw beautiful faces, and warm hearts, and wise discourses, 
 and heroic acts around its way, until evil is no more 
 seen." This prophecy was confirmed by cogent though 
 highly poetical reasoning, an appeal to admitted facts 
 showing that Nature and Man actually were in sympathy. 
 "When a noble act is done perchance in a scene of 
 great natural beauty ; when Leonidas and his three 
 hundred martyrs consume one day in dying, and the 
 
EMERSON. 79 
 
 sun and the moon come each and look at them once in 
 the steep defile of Thermopylae; when Arnold Winkelried, 
 in the high Alps, under the shadow of the avalanche, 
 gathers in his side a sheaf of Austrian spears to break the 
 line for his comrades : are not these heroes entitled to 
 add the beauty of the scene to the beauty of the deed ? 
 When the bark of Columbus nears the shore of America; 
 before it, the beach lined with savages fleeing out of all 
 their huts of cane; the sea behind, and the purple 
 mountains of the Indian Archipelago around, can we 
 separate the man from the living picture? ... In private 
 places, among sordid objects, an act of truth or heroism 
 seems at once to draw to itself the sky as its temple, the 
 sun as its candle. Nature stretcheth out her arms to 
 embrace man, only let his thoughts be of eaq*fl gTfij*- 
 ness. Willingly does she follow his steps with the rose 
 and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur and grace 
 to the decoration of her darling child. Only let his 
 thoughts be of equal scope, and the frame will suit the 
 picture. A virtuous man is in unison with her works, 
 and makes the central figure of the visible sphere." 
 Man, then, had but to place himself in a right relation 
 with God and Nature, and the inextricable puzzles, qf 
 liberty and necessity would be solved of themselves. If 
 the logical connection of the treatise was not always very 
 close, it is to be remembered that it was the work of a 
 poet, and that the ideas it embodied were for the most 
 part so exquisite and ennobling as to be their own best 
 credentials. The most fascinating part of the little book 
 was the alluring delineation of natural beauty ; the 
 most substantially valuable, the resolute assertion of the 
 
80 LIFE OF EMERSON. 
 
 identity of natural and spiritual law ; the convertibility 
 of natural and spiritual forces ; every existence in nature 
 the counterpart of an existence in the world of mind ; 
 every natural truth a truth also in human life. In the 
 pregnant phrase of George Herbert, quoted by the 
 writer 
 
 " Man is one world, and hath 
 Another to attend him." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A CERTAIN boisterous zone of ocean is known to 
 the seaman as "the roaring forties." The future 
 historian of this century may dwell on " the still thirties," 
 as a decade more pregnant with intellectual than with 
 political revolution. In 1830 occurred the great debate on 
 fixity of type between Cuvier and Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, 
 which Goethe thought infinitely more important than 
 the Revolution of July. In 1831 Darwin departed on his 
 eventful voyage, " Sartor Resartus " was written, and the 
 British Association founded. In 1835 appeared the 
 epoch-making works of Strauss andTocqueville; statistics 
 first assumed the dignity of a science; and the names 
 of Copernicus and Galileo vanished from the Index Ex- 
 purgatorius. In March of the same year Emerson speaks 
 to Carlyle of a projected journal to be called the Trans- 
 cendentalist. The christening nevertheless, Hibernically, 
 perhaps mystically, preceded the birth, for it was not until 
 September, 1836 the month which the publication of 
 " Nature " would alone have sealed as an epoch that 
 Emerson, Dr. Hedge, George Ripley, and an unnamed 
 companion, meeting on occasion of the second centennial 
 anniversary of Harvard College, "chanced to confer on the 
 state of current opinion in theology and philosophy, which 
 
 6 
 
82 LIFE OF 
 
 we agreed in thinking very unsatisfactory." The upshot 
 was a larger meeting of some dozen "like-minded seekers," 
 at George Ripley's house in Boston, followed by a some 
 what larger gathering at Emerson's own, to which others 
 succeeded, and by and by the participants got the name of 
 Transcendentalists. How they came by it, Dr. Hedge, 
 our witness, does not know ; not, he apprehends, on the 
 ground of any special acquaintance with Kant's transcen 
 dental philosophy, seeing that no one knew anything about 
 it except himself, and he will not affirm that he knew 
 enough for a dozen. But Kant's name must have been 
 heard in New England, for in 1833 Emerson told Words 
 worth that all Boston was talking about Victor Cousin, 
 which brilliant Frenchman had undoubtedly profited by 
 his opportunities of studying the philosophy of Germany 
 when he happened to be imprisoned in that country. 
 Mr. Freeman Clarke gives another name, and another 
 reason. " We called ourselves the club of the like- 
 minded. I suppose because no two of us thought alike." 
 " Or rather, we may say," adds Mr. Cabot with justice, 
 " because, in spite of all differences of opinion, they were 
 united by a common impatience of routine thinking." In 
 any case, the designation of transcendentalist was not one 
 to be ashamed of. "The transcendental philosophy," 
 says Frothingham, "is the philosophy that is built on 
 these necessary and universal principles, the primary 
 laws of mind, which are the ground of absolute truth." 
 Since these meetings began and ceased the special dogma 
 of Transcendentalism proper, the assertion of knowledge, 
 independent of experience, has been, one may say, 
 both proved and disproved. Observation, more fruitful of 
 
EMERSON. 83 
 
 result than speculation, has, by the study of the phenomena 
 of heredity, triumphantly vindicated the doctrine of innate 
 ideas as respects the individual, while overthrowing it 
 as respects the race. It is certain that the human mind 
 at birth is by no means a sheet of blank paper ; it is 
 equally certain that the impressions which it brings into 
 the world are the result of the accumulated experiences 
 of its progenitors. But though the discovery might have 
 silenced the controversialists on both sides in Emerson's 
 time, it would not have quelled the controversy. The 
 dispute was only one item among large issues. Was 
 utility the measure of right? Could truth be appre 
 hended by intuition ? Could religion be identified with 
 the letter of a book, or proved by a miracle ? The affir 
 mative and negative of any of these propositions seemed 
 a priori, equally rational ; if Emerson and his followers 
 speedily got a bad name with sober people, it was not that 
 their side of the question was intrinsically unreasonable, 
 but because it was naturally congenial to the more 
 imaginative, and therefore the more impulsive and refrac 
 tory. "Your accomplished friend," said a denizen of 
 Brook Farm, " would hoe corn all Sunday if I would 
 let him, but all Massachusetts could not make him do it 
 on Monday." Hence no school of thought was less sym 
 pathetic with Emersonianism than that in whose bosom it 
 had been developed into a creed the Unitarian. " The 
 Unitarians of New England," says Frothingham, " good 
 scholars, careful reasoners, clear and exact thinkers, 
 accomplished men of letters, humane in sentiment, sin 
 cere in moral intention, belonged, of course with indi 
 vidual exceptions [such as Channing], to the class which 
 
84 LIFE OF 
 
 looked without for knowledge, rather than within for in 
 spiration." It was to this habit of mind, and not to any 
 theological differences, that Channing referred when he 
 said, u I am little of a Unitarian." Unitarianism, in fact, 
 had worked itself out, as Romanism and Calvinism had 
 done before it. It had brought Christianity to such per 
 fection that, as an admirer of Paley said, " it could be 
 written out at examinations." And now the restless spirit 
 of man, discontented with even this great result, was 
 protesting that here it could find no abiding tabernacle. 
 
 In the winter of 1836 Emerson followed up his dis 
 course on Nature by a course of twelve lectures on " The 
 Philosophy of History," a considerable portion of which 
 eventually became embodied in his Essays. From the 
 abstract preserved by Mr. Cabot, the connection with 
 history would seem to have been but remote ; nor is 
 the connection of the lectures among themselves very 
 apparent. The most important was that on Religion, 
 which dwelt forcibly on "the great fact of the unity of 
 the mind in all individual men." This, said Emerson, 
 we learn from the sense of duty. "I seek my satis 
 faction at my neighbour's cost, and I find that he has an 
 advocate in my own breast, interfering with my private 
 action, and persuading me to act, not for his advantage 
 or for that of all others, for it has no reference to persons, 
 but in obedience to the dictate of the general mind. 
 Virtue is this obedience, and religion is the accompany 
 ing emotion, the thrill at the presence of the universal 
 soul." He went on to say that the attempt to embody 
 this emotion in an outward form made the Church, but as 
 "the truest state of thought rested in becomes false," the 
 
EMERSON. 85 
 
 Church was continually lapsing into unbelief, and as con 
 tinually being recovered from it by " the light rekindling 
 in some obscure heart." " Only a new Church is alive." 
 A man who thus taught need not have wondered that 
 his " one doctrine, the infinity of the private man," was 
 only accepted " as long as I call the lecture Art, or 
 Politics, or Literature, or the Household. The moment 
 I call it Religion people are shocked, though it be only 
 the application of the same truth which they receive 
 everywhere else." Every Church is sufficiently alive to 
 resent being told that it is dead ; and the less the 
 vitality the greater the resentment. In June, 1837, he 
 tried the experiment of preaching in the pulpit of his 
 his friend, Dr. Farley, " a sermon precisely like one of his 
 lectures in style." "After returning home," says Dr. 
 Farley, "I found Emerson with his head bowed in his 
 hands, which were resting on his knees. He looked up 
 and said, ' Now tell me honestly, plainly, just what you 
 think of that service. 1 I replied that before he was half 
 through I had made up my mind that it was the last time 
 he should have that pulpit. * You are right,' he rejoined, 
 * and I thank you. On my part before I was half through 
 I felt out of place.' " He did not mean, as Mr. Cabot re 
 marks, that he was out of place in the pulpit when he 
 could find a sympathising congregation, for ten years had 
 yet to pass ere he should preach his last sermon. But 
 the pulpit was no longer to be his platform, the Lyceum 
 had definitely gained what the Church had lost ; and it 
 must be added that in this particular aspect the whole 
 spiritual tendency of the age was for the moment incarnated 
 in Emerson. Different indeed was the reception which 
 
86 LIFE OF 
 
 Literature, as impersonated in the Phi Beta Kappa Society, 
 gave him on his next public appearance, the delivery of 
 his oration on " Man Thinking, or the American Scholar," 
 August 31, 1837. "It was," says Mr. Lowell, "an event 
 without any former parallel in our literary annals, a scene 
 to be always treasured in the memory for its picturesque- 
 ness and its inspiration. What crowded and breathless 
 aisles, what windows clustering with eager heads, what 
 enthusiasm of approval, what grim silence of foregone 
 dissent ! " This great effect was no doubt partly due to 
 the Fourth of July quality pervading the oration, which 
 Dr. Holmes calls " our intellectual Declaration of Inde 
 pendence." "We were," says Mr. Lowell, "still socially 
 and intellectually moored to English thought till Emerson 
 cut the cable and gave us a chance at the dangers and 
 glories of blue water." Americans felt inspirited and 
 flattered by the assurance the discourse breathed that 
 their literature need no longer be imitative ; that they 
 need but rise to the level of their opportunities and duties 
 as a free people, and their literature would rise along with 
 them. The excellent counsel to the individual student, 
 bursting forth in epigrammatic flashes which seemed 
 paradoxes until reflection proved them aphorisms, also 
 told for much. (" Books are for the scholar's idle times." 
 "Action is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essen 
 tial." "The scholar is one who raises himself from 
 private considerations." " He, and he only, knows the 
 world.") But these things were only subsidiary to the 
 main purpose of the discourse, the proclamation of the 
 oneness of mankind, and the omnipresence of God. 
 '* The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean, 
 
EMERSON. 87 
 
 A man is related to all nature. This perception of the 
 worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries. Let me see 
 every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it in 
 stantly as an eternal law ; and the shop, the plough, and 
 the ledger referred to the like cause by which light undu 
 lates and poets sing ; and the world lies no longer a dull 
 miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and order; 
 there is no trifle, there is no puzzle ; but one design unites 
 and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest 
 trench. . . . The dread of man and the love of man 
 shall be a wall of defence and a wreath of joy around all. 
 A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each 
 believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also 
 inspires all men." 
 
 In addressing his fellow-students, Emerson spoke 
 urbi; but when his speech was directed orbi, he proved 
 that this faith in the inspiration of all men by the 
 Divine Soul was no idle figure of speech with him. He 
 deemed that Idealism might be preached with good 
 hope of acceptance even to bankers. In a passage 
 from a subsequent lecture entitled " Transcendentalism," 
 recalling and rivalling the finest pages of "Sartor 
 Resartus," he says : 
 
 " How easy it is to show the materialist that he also is 
 a phantom walking and working amid phantoms, and 
 that he need only ask a question or two beyond his 
 daily questions to find his solid universe proving dim 
 and impalpable before his sense ! The sturdy capitalist, 
 no matter how deep and square on blocks of Quincy 
 granite he lays his foundations of his banking house 
 
66 LIFE OF 
 
 or Exchange, must set it at last not on a cube corre 
 spending to the angles of his storehouse, but on a mass 
 of unknown materials and solidity, red-hot or white-hot, 
 perhaps, at the core; which rounds off to an almost 
 perfect sphericity, and lies floating in soft air, and goes 
 spinning away, dragging bank and banker with it at the rate 
 of thousands of miles an hour, he knows not whither, 
 a bit of bullet now glimmering now darkling through a 
 small cubic space on the edge of an unimaginable pit of 
 emptiness. And this wild balloon, in which his whole 
 venture is embarked, is just an emblem of his whole 
 state and faculty. Ask him why he believes that an 
 uniform experience will continue uniform, or on what 
 grounds he founds his faith in his figures, and he will 
 perceive that his mental fabric is built up on just as 
 strange and quaking foundations as his proud edifice 
 of stone." 
 
 The course on Human Culture delivered in the follow 
 ing winter appears from Mr. Cabot's analysis to have been 
 an expansion of a passage in " Man Thinking." " The 
 main enterprise of the world for splendour, for extent, is 
 the upbuilding of a man." Thus, inverting the obvious 
 truth that the individual exists by and for the universe, 
 he showed that there was also a sense in which it might 
 be said that the universe existed by and for the individual. 
 In his next important public appearance he ventured on 
 no such daring inversion, but by merely following out a 
 tendency of thought already widely diffused, involved 
 himself in what would have proved a sharp contro 
 versy for one controversially given. The graduating 
 
EMERSON. 89 
 
 Divinity class of Cambridge invited him to deliver the 
 customary discourse upon their entering on the ministry. 
 On July 15, 1838, he appeared before them, his breast 
 a mine of perilous stuff. His lonely meditations had 
 been much exercised with the questions of the infalli 
 bility of Christ and the reality of miracles, and on both 
 points he had been more orthodox than he then was. 
 To the former he had alluded significantly in a passage 
 in "Man Thinking." "The man has never lived that 
 can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be 
 enshrined in a person who shall set a barrier on any 
 one side to this unbounded, unboundable empire. 
 It is one central fire, which, flaming now out of the 
 lips of Etna, lightens the capes of Sicily; and now, 
 out of the throat of Vesuvius, illuminates the towers 
 and vineyards of Naples. It is one light which beams 
 out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which illumi 
 nates all men." Of the miracles attributed to Christ 
 he had, in 1834, expressed himself doubtfully. "I 
 suppose he wrought them. It has not yet been shown 
 that the account is only the addition of credulous and 
 mistaking love." This was to be expected : no mind 
 was ever less competent than Emerson's to appreciate 
 the weight of historical evidence for or against any 
 alleged fact, or more indifferent to the test, or more 
 impatient of the office. But in his own sphere of 
 the spiritual, his opinion was sufficiently decided. "I 
 should be well content to lose them. Indeed I should 
 be glad. No person capable of perceiving the force 
 of spiritual truth but must see that the doctrines of the 
 teacher lose no more by this than the law of gravity 
 
90 LIFE OF 
 
 would lose if certain facts alleged to have taken place 
 did not take place." The excrescence of 1834 had 
 become an ulcer by 1838. "The word Miracle," he 
 told his hearers, " as pronounced by Christian Churches, 
 gives a false impression, it is Monster. It is not one 
 with the blowing clover and the falling rain." On the 
 other point he was equally explicit : " Do not degrade 
 the life and dialogues of Christ by insulation and 
 peculiarity. Let them lie as they befell, alive and 
 warm, part of the landscape, and of the cheerful day. 
 . . . Friends enough you shall find who will hold up 
 to your emulation Wesleys and Oberlins, Saints and 
 Prophets. Thank God for these good men, but say, 
 1 1 also am a man.' " The mistake of continuing to 
 yield a professional assent to what was not really 
 believed had, the speaker thought, infected religion 
 with unreality ; and the staple of his discourse was a 
 powerful description of its decay and an urgent appeal 
 to his hearers to redeem it by being real, not merely 
 professional men; not preachers from whose preaching 
 it could not be inferred whether they were freeholders 
 or paupers, fathers or childless, but such as " converted 
 life into truth." The remedy for the deformities of 
 the Church was first, soul ; and second, soul ; and 
 evermore, soul. It did not, perhaps, occur to him 
 that such a clerisy as he desiderated would soon have 
 claimed to govern the country, and would have left 
 no room for the journalists and politicians to whom 
 that task had been assigned by Providence. The dis 
 course is, in truth, the cry of a soul thirsting for the 
 water-springs, the protest of ideal aspiration against the 
 
EMERSON. 91 
 
 inevitable limitations of humanity : it was struck off 
 at a heat, and is well-nigh the only example of sustained 
 passion in his writings. He had been less emphatic 
 in what he called "a shriek of indignation," a remon 
 strance addressed a short time before to President Van 
 Buren on the wrongs of the Indians. He might have 
 turned the edge of the attacks upon his oration but 
 for what Miss Peabody justly calls an extreme of 
 gentlemanliness. A passage had been omitted for want 
 of time, containing a not unneeded warning against 
 making the new truth a fanaticism, " looking down on 
 the head of all human culture; setting up against 
 Jesus Christ every little self magnified." Miss Peabody 
 begged him to restore it in the discourse as published. 
 " No," said Emerson, " these gentlemen have com 
 mitted themselves against what I did read, and it would 
 not be courteous or fair to spring this passage upon 
 them now." 
 
 The Divinity School address might have passed with 
 slight notice if it had been delivered anywhere else ; 
 but the shepherds of Harvard could hardly be expected 
 to allow the wolf to carry off the lambs in their very 
 presence, even at the invitation of the innocents them 
 selves. Andrews Norton, a great scholar and divine, but 
 one for whom truth could not be tangible enough, pro. 
 nounced an emphatic anathema upon it in The Boston 
 Daily Advertiser. It was absurd, he said, to suppose 
 that religious truth could be demonstrated or guaranteed 
 without violations of natural law, or that Christianity 
 could endure without belief in the miraculous. It is not 
 for us to determine whether the Professor proved his 
 
92 LIFE OF 
 
 point, but if he did, the entire drift of thought since 
 his time warrants the remark that he did Christianity 
 a singular disservice : 
 
 " Da miei amici mi guarda Dio : 
 Da miei nemici mi guardero io. " 
 
 As concerned Emerson himself the article was an excom 
 munication as crushing, though not as dramatically 
 impressive, as Spinoza's. He was handled in a different 
 spirit by the saintly Henry Ware, his former colleague in 
 the Second Church, who feared that his doctrine of the 
 universal soul tended to merge Deity in humanity. To his 
 gentle remonstrance Emerson characteristically replied : 
 
 " I could not give an account of myself, if challenged. 
 I could not possibly give you one of the arguments 
 you covertly hint at, on which any doctrine of mine 
 stands ; for I do not know what arguments are in 
 reference to any expression of a thought. I delight in 
 telling what I think, but if you ask me how I dare say so, 
 or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men. I 
 do not even see that either of these questions admits 
 of an answer. So that in the present droll posture of 
 my affairs, when I see myself suddenly raised to the 
 importance of a heretic, I am very uneasy when I 
 advert to the supposed duties of such a personage, who 
 is to make good his thesis against all comers. I cer 
 tainly shall do no such thing. I shall read what you 
 and other good men write, as I have always done, 
 glad when you speak my thoughts, and skipping the 
 page that has nothing for me." 
 
EMERSON. 93 
 
 These lines show that Emerson had formed a just idea 
 of his strength and his weakness. He could see, but he 
 could not prove ; he could announce, but he could not 
 argue. His intuitions were his sole guide ; what they 
 revealed appeared to him self-evident ; the ordinary paths 
 by which men arrive at conclusions were closed to him. 
 To those in spiritual sympathy with himself he is not 
 only fascinating, but authoritative ; his words authenticate 
 themselves by the response they awake in the breast. 
 But the reader who will have reasons gets none, save 
 reason to believe that the oracle is an imposition. 
 " He is not a philosopher," said one who conversed with 
 him at this time, " he is a seer. If you see truth as he 
 does, you will recognize him for a gifted teacher ; if not, 
 there is little or nothing to be said." This inability to 
 comply with the apostolic precept by rendering a reason 
 for the faith that was in him had obvious drawbacks, 
 balanced by two great advantages. It spared him irri 
 tating controversy, and kept him an almost impersonal 
 influence, exempt from the soils and smirches of the 
 purest party- chief. " If it be true," he wrote at this time 
 in his diary, " that the scholar is merely an observer, a 
 dispassionate reporter, no partisan, his position is one of 
 perfect immunity. To him no disputes can attach, he is 
 invulnerable. The vulgar think he would found a sect and 
 be installed and made much of. He knows better, and 
 much prefers his melons and his woods." He was never 
 theless always ready to respond to private inquirers, and 
 only regretted that with the best intentions he could not 
 but be to a certain extent insincere, " knowing that there 
 are other words." He laments having been beguiled by 
 
94 LIFE OF 
 
 " friendly youths " into " a rambling exculpatory talk 
 upon Theism," whereas he ought to have said that he 
 had no language ; as he did in effect to an Episcopalian 
 clergyman, his cousin Mr. Haskins. " When I speak of 
 God I prefer to say It." " I confess," says Mr. Haskins, 
 "that I was at first startled by this answer ; but as far as 
 he explained his views in the conversation which followed, 
 I could discover no difference between them and the 
 commonly accepted doctrine of God's omnipresence." 
 When asked by Mr. Haskins, on another occasion, " to 
 define his views," he answered with greater deliberate- 
 ness and longer pauses between his words than usual, " I 
 am more of a Quaker than anything else. I believe in 
 the still, small voice, and that voice is Christ within us." 
 The expansion of Emerson's intellectual horizon, and 
 the prominent position which, would he would he not, 
 he was driven to assume as a leader of thought, inevitably 
 widened the sphere of his intimacies, and made Concord 
 the resort of thinkers more or less exceptional or eccen 
 tric, " wearing their rue with a difference." Among them 
 the most remarkable was Margaret Fuller, one of those 
 Sibyls or Alruna women who really and truly do appear, 
 although for one genuine instance there are a hundred 
 and fifty pretenders. Margaret, however, was a true 
 counterpart to the Rahels and Bettinas of Germany ; 
 unlike the first, intelligible, though oracular; unlike the 
 second, neither capricious nqr insincere. When Emerson 
 first knew her, her character was in the fulness both of 
 its force and its angularity, qualities greatly tempered in 
 her latter years. Not one of the contributors to her 
 patchwork biography has succeeded in conveying a 
 
EMERSON. 95 
 
 living resemblance of her; Emerson does not even 
 attempt a portrait. Indeed he must have entertained 
 something of the feeling towards her with which Goethe 
 and Schiller regarded Madame de Stae'l, save that the New 
 England meteor "came to stay." "It is to be said," he 
 bravely admits, " that Margaret made a disagreeable first 
 impression upon most persons ; " and when we learn 
 in addition that "the problems that chiefly attracted 
 her were Mythology and Demonology," the thought will 
 arise that she must have been formidable as well as 
 disagreeable. Yet, though Emerson paints no portrait, 
 he does contrive to make us understand how much 
 more Margaret was really interested in her fellow crea 
 tures than in these mystic fancies, which served to 
 exercise a powerful imagination, while the real business 
 of her life was intellectual comradeship and spiritual 
 sympathy. With her imperious disposition this sympathy 
 must needs be measured by the degree in which she 
 could charm the recipient into her own circle, and as 
 Emerson's serene star never 
 
 " Shot madly from its sphere 
 To list this sea-maid's music : " 
 
 their mutual bond was less close than her ambition would 
 have desired. " He seemed to her," says Mrs. Howe, 
 borrowing Margaret's own figure, " the palm-tree in the 
 desert, graceful and admirable, bearing aloft a waving crest, 
 but spreading no sheltering and embracing branches.'' 
 Their acquaintance nevertheless became, if not a spiritual, 
 an intimate literary alliance, which neither had any 
 reason to regret. 
 
96 LIFE OF 
 
 Another ally of the period, with whom Emerson 
 sympathized more heartily, was " the innocent char 
 latan," Amos Bronson Alcott, who repaid the con 
 fidence accorded him with the fondest reverence. It 
 is well for Alcott that he never fell into the hands 
 of Dickens, to whom he would have been irresistible, 
 but encountered nobody worse than Carlyle, who has 
 photographed him for all time as " the good Alcott, with 
 his long lean face and figure, with his grey worn temples 
 and mild radiant eyes ; all bent on saving the world 
 by a return to acorns and the golden age." Emerson 
 found in the self-taught, self-sustained, " peacefully irre 
 fragable " Alcott, an authentic inlet of pure light from 
 the universal soul; which rebuked the involuntary 
 scepticism of depressed moods by demonstrating that 
 spirituality was no figment of the imagination. " I 
 might have learned to treat the Platonic world as 
 cloudland had I not known Alcott, who is a native of 
 that country." He was therefore indulgent when it 
 proved that spirituality could not write a book, or 
 describe a fact as it really was. He intends no slur 
 when he goes so far as to speak of Alcott's " victims " ; 
 certain that the deluder himself was the first and the 
 chief. In the Blake-like Jones Very he found another 
 piece of pure gold, needing something of terrestrial 
 alloy for general circulation among men. Very's rapt 
 spiritual countenance bears the image and superscrip 
 tion of Divine enthusiasm, and his translucent sonnets 
 amber without a fly remain to attest that his claims 
 to inspiration were no pretence. Their form is that 
 of Shakespeare's, under whose spell Very had fallen as 
 
EMERSON. 97 
 
 he sought to solve the problem, knotty to him, how a 
 man can be a genius without being a saint. Emerson's 
 notes and memoranda on Very are an interesting study 
 of the contact of an enthusiastic, but perfectly sane 
 mind, with another too weak to bear the visitations of 
 Divine light. Like all prophets, Very was intolerant ; 
 but unlike most, he could accommodate himself to 
 reason, as Mahomet did to the mountain. " He seemed 
 to expect from me a full acknowledgment of his mission, 
 and a participation in the same. Seeing this, I asked him 
 if he did not see that my thoughts and my position were 
 constitutional, that it would be as false and impossible 
 for me to say his things or try to occupy his ground 
 as for him to usurp mine ? After some frank and full 
 explanation he conceded this. In dismissing him I seem 
 to have discharged an arrow into the heart of society." 
 Society thought so too, and locked Very up as a lunatic. 
 Though for a season mentally disturbed and dazzled, 
 Very was no lunatic, only one who really believed what 
 others said they believed. After a while the world and 
 he so adjusted their relations as to allow of his becoming, 
 with some detriment to his poetical faculty, a very 
 excellent clergyman. Another saint of similar type, 
 stainless but flighty as the fabled bird of Paradise which 
 has forfeited its foothold in ridding itself of its feet 
 William Henry Channing was also a member of Emer 
 son's circle, and has left a picture of him in his home. 
 " I do confess myself fascinated. He had been before 
 to me an icy pinnacle only, away in the ether, but as I 
 came nearer I found there was verdure of sweet affec 
 tions and the beauteous blossoms of lowly thoughts 
 
 7 
 
98 LIFE OF 
 
 and common herbs around the base. His family de 
 lighted me; his fondness for his little boy, his tender 
 ness towards his wife, the unaffected politeness and 
 courtesy and the merry cheerfulness of the man did 
 more to win me than all his lofty contemplations." 
 
 Among these figures, radiant with sincere, if some 
 times ill-directed aspiration, moved at intervals a dark 
 silent figure of spiritual nature too, but much more of a 
 gnome than of a sylph. Nathaniel Hawthorne half- 
 consciously contributed an element of tragedy to the 
 Concord society ^"1 suppose he tfied of his painful 
 solitude," Emerson afterwards wrote), and, quite un 
 consciously, an element of comedy. Wifely devotion 
 should be too sacred for a smile, yet it is hard to resist 
 something broader than a smile in contrasting the fas 
 cination which Mrs. Hawthorne supposes her husband to 
 have exerted upon Emerson with Emerson's own frank 
 avowal that he talked continually to Hawthorne in the 
 hope that, for very shame's sake, Hawthorne would one 
 day say something himself, which he never did. Evi 
 dently he had been insufficiently impressed by Emerson's 
 maxim " It is the one base thing to receive and not to 
 give." They lived on neighbourly terms, but there could 
 be no true sympathy between authors who so greatly 
 underrated each other's work. Emerson, whose literary 
 judgments when not absolutely right are apt to be 
 absurdly wrong, calls work which might embody the 
 accumulated experience of several lives, too young. 
 Hawthorne, on his part, had too much imagination not 
 to be sensitive to "the pure intellectual gleam" with 
 which Emerson lit up the woodland paths around Walden 
 
EMERSON. 99 
 
 Pond. "Like the garment of a shining one," he says; 
 nor did the " austere beauty " of Emerson's poetry repel 
 him. But several passages in his notebooks reveal im 
 patience at Emerson's intellectual aloofness, and in one 
 suppressed at first, but injudiciously restored by his son, 
 he describes Emerson as "stretching his hand out of 
 cloudland in the vain search for something real." The 
 Civil War was to show which of the two men more firmly 
 grasped reality, but that time of fiery trial was not yet, 
 and meanwhile Hawthorne sat by Emerson's hearth and 
 drew the guests in charcoal. " Young visionaries," he 
 says, "to whom just so much of insight had been im 
 parted as to make life all a labyrinth around them, came 
 to seek the clue that should lead them out of their self- 
 involved bewilderment. Grey-headed theorists whose 
 systems, at first air, had imprisoned them in an iron 
 framework travelled painfully to his door, not to ask 
 deliverance, but to invite his free spirit into their own 
 thraldom. People that had lighted on a new thought, or 
 a thought that they fancied new, came to Emerson, as the 
 finder of a glittering gem hastens to a lapidary to ascer 
 tain its value." 
 
 Where Hawthorne saw fit dramatis persona for his 
 " Twice Told Tales," Emerson discerned the heirs of all 
 the ages, the children of the kingdom. 
 
 " No one can converse much with different classes of 
 society in New England without remarking the progress 
 of a revolution. Those who share in it have no external 
 organization, no badge, no creed, no name. They do 
 not vote, or print, or even meet together. They do not 
 
100 LIFE OF 
 
 know each other's faces or names. They are united only 
 in a common love of truth and love of its work. They 
 are of all conditions and constitutions. Of these acolytes, 
 if some are happily born and well bred, many are no 
 doubt ill-dressed, ill-placed, ill-made, with as many scars 
 of hereditary vice as other men. Without pomp, without 
 trumpet, in lonely and obscure places, in solitude, in 
 servitude, in compunctions and privations, trudging 
 beside the team in the dusty road, .or drudging as hire 
 lings in other men's cornfields, schoolmasters who teach 
 a few children rudiments for a pittance, ministers of small 
 parishes of the obscure sects, lone women in dependent 
 condition, matrons and young maidens, rich and poor, 
 beautiful and hard-favoured, without concert or proclama 
 tion of any kind, they have silently given in their several 
 adherence to a new hope, and in all companies do signify 
 a greater trust in the nature and resources of man than 
 the laws or the popular opinions will well allow." 
 
 This fine passage is from the confession of faith pre 
 fixed by Emerson to "The Dial," which, under the 
 editorship of Margaret Fuller, appeared as the organ of 
 New England Transcendentalism, in July, 1840. The 
 reality of the phenomena thus eloquently described was 
 universally admitted, but others saw in them " the Pente 
 cost of Shinar." And, unquestionably, a Babylonish 
 dialect was not unfrequently heard, and Mrs. Hominy 
 was no mere creation of the novelist's brain. It was pro 
 bably she who inquired at a lecture : " Mr. Alcott, does 
 omnipotence abnegate attribute?" Yet, as ever, the 
 loving and hoping spirit went nearer the mark than the 
 
EMERSON. :: '/ ; - Ipi 
 
 sceptical and negative. " The Dial " has become a bye- 
 word for crazy mysticism, as Wordsworth became to his 
 own generation for namby-pamby, and with hardly more 
 reason. There is, no doubt, a good deal of the Orphic, 
 a good deal of the oracular ; some verse that will not 
 scan, and some prose that will not construe ; not a little 
 really well-composed rhetoric that is too plainly diluted 
 Emersonianism. But there are also many contributions 
 of sterling value, showing perfect sanity and sound 
 insight; others valuable even now for the information they 
 contain, and in their day welcome harbingers of intel 
 lectual changes to come ; there are fictions, such as W. 
 E. Channing's "Youth of the Poet and Painter," artless in 
 structure, but charming as prose poems ; and verses by 
 the same writer and others, wanting in finish, but wood- 
 notes wild of genuine poetic passion. "The Dial" 
 translated Schelling's introductory lecture to his last 
 philosophical course; published Keats's notes on Milton; 
 saved his brother George from undeserved oblivion ; and 
 showed by some happily rescued fragments what an 
 Emerson was lost in Charles. On the whole it will 
 compare most favourably with any similar rally of undis 
 ciplined and unsalaried enthusiasm round a flag which 
 must of necessity attract eccentricity; and the wonder 
 is rather that so much ability should have been mustered 
 in support of such a venture from so limited a section 
 of New England culture. The real charm, however, is 
 not so much any special literary excellence, as the fresh, 
 disinterested, unworldly spirit, warrant of youth in the 
 present and large possibilities in the future. 
 
 Margaret Fuller bore the burden of " The Dial " as 
 
LIFE OF 
 
 long as she could, and in 1842 Emerson assumed it, 
 though foreseeing that he should "rue the day of 
 accepting such an intruder on my peace, such a consumer 
 of my time. But you have played martyr a little too 
 long alone ; let there be rotation in martyrdom." He by 
 no means belonged to the "able editor" species so 
 enviously admired by Carlyle. On one occasion he 
 stood out against a proffered contribution by Theodore 
 Parker, which, being admitted at last, carried the number 
 into a second edition. " The Dial's " pages, notwith 
 standing, owe much of the freshness which clings to them 
 after half a century, to his love for bright and promising 
 young persons, and their eagerness to be associated with 
 him. His own contributions include the introduction 
 already quoted, his " Man the Reformer " " Transcen- 
 dentalist," "Young American," reviews of Landor and 
 of Carlyle's " Past and Present " ; among his poems, 
 "Saadi," "The Snowstorm," "Wood Notes," "The 
 Sphinx," and others. He was not only "The Dial's " 
 editor, but its banker, and his connection with it cost him 
 not only the worry he had foreseen, but several hundred 
 dollars, not easily replaced by a philosopher or spared by 
 the father of a family. In April, 1844, the doom of all 
 journals that do not pay their contributors finally over 
 took " The Dial," and it expired with the precept in its 
 mouth, "Energise about the Hecatic sphere." Years 
 afterwards a quantity of unsold copies were discovered 
 and sent to Emerson, who gave of them to all who would, 
 and burned or wasted the remainder. Had they been 
 preserved to this day they would have been a small 
 fortune. Mr. Ireland is the envied possessor of a copy 
 
EMERSON. 103 
 
 containing a list of the contributors in Emerson's hand 
 writing. The information thus imparted is made public 
 property in Mr. Cooke's interesting article in "The 
 Journal of Speculative Philosophy" for July, 1885, 
 where biographical particulars respecting the principal 
 contributors are also to be found. 
 
 " We are a little wild here," wrote Emerson to Carlyle, 
 on October 30, 1840, "with numberless projects of 
 social reform. Not a reading man but has his draft of 
 a new community in his waistcoat pocket. I am gently 
 mad myself." Socialism was indeed in the air of the 
 time, and not wholly without reason. Even the staid 
 George Combe, visiting America in 1839, was induced 
 by the difficulties which he perceived to attach to the 
 management of American households, to conjecture that 
 the richer Americans might in time agree to solve them 
 by co-operation. The practical outcome of this unrest 
 was the establishment of Alcott's little and luckless com 
 munity at Fruitlands, and the more famed experiment at 
 Brook Farm, immortalized in Hawthorne's " Blithedale 
 Romance." It was inevitable that Emerson should be 
 pressed to cast in his lot with the projectors, and, 
 conscious of a certain responsibility towards professed 
 followers, he felt compunction at hanging back. But 
 he was an individual of individuals ; a crystal isolated, 
 infrangible, infusible ; the last of mankind to be merged 
 in a joint-stock association. He wisely determined that his 
 service must consist for the present in standing still and 
 waiting, and that he must needs " submit to the degra 
 dation of owning bank stock and seeing poor men suffer." 
 By way of atonement he himself tried some experiments 
 
104 LIFE OF 
 
 on a small scale. Feeling that he would be happier if 
 his house sheltered more fellow-creatures, he offered the 
 Alcotts free hospitality for a year, a scheme which for 
 tunately came to nothing. He had always been remark 
 able for considerateness to his servants, and now tried to 
 revive the patriarchal, feudal, and in a simple state of 
 society most seemly institution of a common family 
 board. But Louisa the maid would not sit down without 
 Lydia the cook, and Lydia held that a cook, unlike her 
 dishes, was never fit to come to table. He theorized 
 upon the advantage of combining manual labour with 
 literary composition, but experience soon convinced him 
 that his fine speeches must be unsaid. All these things 
 he regarded as, at most, counsels of perfection for the in 
 dividual: he perceived that the impossible expectations of 
 the rank and file must force the leaders into charlatanism, 
 and touched the extravagances of Fourierism with playful 
 satire. But he saw more deeply into it than those for 
 whom it was quite enough that Fourier proposed to turn 
 the seas into lemonade. " I regard these philanthropists 
 as themselves the effects of the age in which we live, 
 and, in common with so many other good facts, the 
 efflorescence of the period, and predicting a good fruit 
 that ripens. They were not the creators they believed 
 themselves, but they were unconscious prophets of a 
 true state of society : they were describers of that which 
 is really being done. The large cities are phalansteries, 
 and the theorists drew all their arguments from facts 
 already taking place in our experience." 
 
 The Brook Farm adventure has been much mis 
 apprehended. Though inspired by Fourier's ideas, it 
 
EMERSON. 105 
 
 was hardly a socialistic experiment. The freedom of the 
 individual member was jealously guarded by its consti 
 tution. Members were not required to impoverish 
 themselves, or resign the fruits of their earnings. It was 
 especially Fourieristic in the stress laid upon culture and 
 refinement, and one of the leading features was an 
 excellent school. It hence attracted many considerably 
 in need of such humanizing influences, and such profited 
 largely by the opportunity ; but, as Emerson shrewdly 
 remarks, they came rather to learn than to work, " and 
 were charged by the heads of the departments with a 
 certain indolence and selfishness." It may be added 
 that others came less to work than to play, and, what 
 was worse, could not discover that their work, when they 
 performed any, was attended by those ennobling effects 
 on the character which theoretically ought to have 
 accrued. "They scratched their heads sometimes, to 
 see, was the hair turned wool ? " On the other hand, 
 the art of letter- writing was immensely cultivated, and 
 plain people saw with astonishment that he who ploughed 
 all day earned no more than he who looked out of the 
 window. The scheme had a beautiful side, but it wanted 
 reality. " What I am doing," says Emerson, most wisely, 
 "may not be the highest thing to do in all the world, 
 but while I am doing it I must think that it is, or I shall 
 not do it with impunity." Brook Farm was little more 
 than a highly intellectual picnic, and though it might have 
 prolonged its existence indefinitely if it had not involved 
 itself in industrial competition, its existence could have 
 demonstrated nothing more than the agreeableness of 
 association with agreeable company, and, which was 
 
106 LIFE OF 
 
 certainly more important, the possibility of frank equality 
 among different orders of society. To this, Emerson, a 
 sharp observer and no indiscriminate panegyrist, may be 
 accepted as a sufficient witness : " What knowledge of 
 themselves and of each other, what various practical 
 wisdom, what personal power, what studies of character, 
 what accumulated culture, many of the members owed to 
 it ! What mutual measure they took of each other ! It 
 was a close union, like that in a ship's cabin, of clergy 
 men, young collegians, merchants, mechanics, farmers' 
 sons and daughters, with men and women of rare oppor 
 tunities and delicate culture, yet assembled there by a 
 sentiment which all shared some of them hotly shared 
 of the honesty of a life of labour, and the beauty of a 
 life of humanity. The yeoman saw refined manners in 
 persons who were his friends, and the lady or the 
 romantic scholar saw the continuous strength and faculty 
 in people who would have disgusted them but that these 
 powers were now spent in the direction of their own 
 theory of life." 
 
 Even if Emerson had not been too much of an indi 
 vidualist to be deeply fascinated by co-operative schemes, 
 he had long taken root in Concord " When I bought 
 my farm," he says, " I did not know what a bargain I 
 had in the bluebirds, bobolinks, and thrushes, which 
 were not charged in the bill. As little did I guess what 
 sublime mornings and sunsets I was buying, what reaches 
 of landscape, and what fields and lanes for a tramp. 
 Still less did I know what good and true neighbours I 
 was buying, men of strength and virtue, some of them 
 now known the country through, but whom I had the 
 
EMERSON. 107 
 
 pleasure of knowing long before the country did." Other 
 neighbours of homelier note had an equal share of his 
 esteem; "not doctors of laws, but doctors of land, 
 skilled in turning a swamp or a sandbank into a fruitful 
 field." Hawthorne shows us the type of such an one: 
 " A short and stalwart and sturdy personage, of middle 
 age, with a face of shrewd and kind expression, and 
 manners of natural courtesy. He had a very free flow 
 of talk, and not much diffidence about his own opinions ; 
 for, with a little induction from Mr. Emerson, he began 
 to discourse about the state of the nation, agriculture, 
 and business in general, uttering thoughts that had come 
 to him at the plough, and which had a sort of flavour 
 of the fresh earth about them." Such were the men by 
 whose homely wisdom Emerson loved to profit. " He is 
 a thinker," wrote Miss Martineau, who visited him in his 
 home, " without being solitary, abstracted, and unfitted 
 for the time. He is ready at every call of action. He 
 lectures to the factory people at Lowell when they ask. 
 He preaches when the opportunity is presented. He is 
 known at every house along the road he travels to and 
 from home by the words he has dropped, and the deeds 
 he has done." He attended the town-meetings with the 
 punctuality of a good citizen, though never participating 
 in the proceedings otherwise than by his vote. The tall, 
 slender, somewhat stooping figure, with narrow and 
 aquiline mould of countenance, brow not high but finely 
 modelled, deep-set eyes of such intense blue as has been 
 said to be only found in sea-captains, firm but sensitive 
 mouth, expression compounded of enthusiasm and kindly 
 shrewdness, as of a spirit entrusted with earthly interests, 
 
108 LIFE OF 
 
 mingled habitually with the twenty-five " solidest men " 
 who made up the Concord Social Club. " Much the best 
 society I have ever known," says Emerson; who adds that 
 he never liked to be away from Concord on Tuesdays, 
 when the club met. He probably found it a welcome 
 relief to the strain of lonely thought, for the nature of 
 his intellectual labour condemned him to solitude while 
 it lasted ; and meditation, if not actual composition*, 
 was his daily habit. He worked partly in his study, 
 partly in the woods ; and his account of his method to 
 Mr. Haskins recalls the remark of Wordsworth's servant, 
 that her master's library was outside, though his books 
 were indoors. He went out early, he said, to hunt a 
 thought, as a boy might hunt a butterfly, and, when suc 
 cessful, pinned the prize in his cabinet by entering it in 
 his "Thought Book." Down the capture went, without 
 any order, but when the need for essay or lecture arose, 
 inquisition was made, and, by the aid of an index, the 
 thoughts which fitted the subject were unearthed, 
 polished, and linked together, like beads on a thread, 
 Emerson said ; but we, whose scrutiny the thread some 
 times eludes, may agree with Mr. Haskins that com 
 parison with a mosaic would have been more accurately 
 descriptive. " I write," he tells Carlyle, "with very little 
 system, and, as far as regards composition, with most 
 fragmentary result paragraphs incomprehensible, each 
 sentence an infinitely repellent particle." Yet his 
 " Method of Nature " was " written in the heat and 
 happiness of a real inspiration : " and he speaks in 
 "Circles" of "days when he was full of thoughts, and 
 could write as he pleased." His peculiar genius rendered 
 
EMERSON. 109 
 
 him more independent of books than any other great 
 writer of his age. Depending so exclusively on his own 
 intuitions, his attitude towards other men was necessarily 
 somewhat that of the Caliph Omar towards the Alexandria 
 Library. He would deeply venerate them only when he 
 felt them to have gone beyond himself on some line 
 of his own, like Swedenborg or Montaigne. On the 
 whole, the chief use of books to him was the same as 
 the chief use he drew from his neighbours : to provide 
 himself with intellectual stimulus (" make my top spin," 
 he called it), and kee'p his faculties from rusting. " They 
 inspire," he said, " or they are nothing." " He was never 
 comfortable away from them, and yet," says Mr. Cabot, 
 " they were pleasing companions, not counsellors, hardly 
 even intimates." No author seems at any time to have 
 exercised a controlling influence over him. He would 
 have been the same Platonist if Plato had never lived. 
 He pleased himself as well as Carlyle by reading through 
 the whole of Goethe at Carlyle's instance, but the traces 
 of his study would have been faint if Goethe had not 
 figured among his " Representative Men." Next to 
 poetry and mystic wisdom his favourite reading was 
 biography " Plutarch," he says, "is the Doctor and 
 historian of heroism" and he delighted in anecdote. 
 His literary taste, on the whole, was in one sense very 
 exclusive, rejecting Scott and Shelley as well as Aristo 
 phanes and Cervantes ; in another very catholic, ranging 
 from the Bhagavat Ghita to Martial. In literature, as 
 in life, his aim was spiritual manhood, and he valued 
 books and men mainly as he found or deemed them 
 to conduce to it. What he said of " The Dial " was 
 
110 LIFE OF EMERSON. 
 
 true of himself : " Our resources are not so much 
 the pens of practised writers as the discourse of the 
 living, and the portfolios which friendship has opened 
 to us." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 IT is a testimony at once of Heaven's kindness to 
 Emerson, and of his own kindliness, that the only 
 misfortunes of his life which he felt as cruel wounds, were 
 the untimely deaths of those near and dear to him. He 
 had lost the first choice of his heart and his two marvel 
 lous brothers ; and now, at the beginning of 1842, he 
 was to be more heavily afflicted still. If he was more 
 exemplary in any one relation of life than another it 
 was in the father's. The recollections of his surviving 
 children depict the ideal of wisdom, thoughtfulness, and 
 gentleness. It seemed as though the best of fathers had 
 been rewarded by the best of sons. Whether the re 
 markable promise of his first-born would have been ful 
 filled, it is of course impossible to say ; but much might 
 reasonably be augured of a boy of five so affectionate as 
 to be his father's constant companion, and so considerate 
 as to spend hours in his study without one noisy out 
 break. " A domesticated sunbeam," says a friend of the 
 house, "with his father's voice, but softened, and 
 beautiful dark blue eyes with long lashes." Emerson 
 himself names no family likeness ; like the lover in his 
 own essay he " sees "no resemblance except to summer 
 
112 LIFE OF 
 
 evenings and diamond mornings, to rainbows and the 
 son? of birds." 
 
 song of birds," 
 
 " The wondrous child, 
 Whose silver warble. wild 
 Outvalued every pulsing sound 
 Within the air's cerulean round, 
 The hyacinthine boy, for whom 
 Morn well might break and April bloom, 
 The gracious boy, who did adorn 
 The world whereinto he was born, 
 And by his countenance repay 
 The favour of the loving Day." 
 
 Waldo Emerson was born October 30, 1836, and died 
 January 27, 1842, after a few days' illness, from scarlet 
 fever. Emerson's grief was the grief depicted on a Greek 
 funeral monument, beautiful in its subdued intensity. 
 He dissembled nothing from himself, not even his grati 
 tude for every anodyne. " The innocent and beautiful," 
 he wrote, " should not be sourly and gloomily lamented, 
 but with music and fragrant thoughts and sportive 
 recollections. . . . Life wears on, and ministers its un- 
 delaying and grand lessons, its uncontainable endless 
 poetry, its stern dry prose of scepticism like veins 
 of cold air in the evening woods, quickly swallowed by 
 the wide warmth of June its steady correction of the 
 rashness and short-sight of youthful judgments, and its 
 pure repairs of all the rents and seeming ruin it operates 
 in what it gave ; although we love the first gift so well 
 that we cling long to the ruin,, and think we will be cold 
 to the new if new shall come. But the new steals on us 
 like a star which rises behind our back as we walk, and 
 we are borrowing gladly its light before we know the 
 
EMERSON. 118 
 
 benefactor." In the thrilling threnody already quoted, 
 after the stricken heart has long afflicted itself with the 
 agonising pictures traced by Memory and Fancy, Philo 
 sophy and Religion bring it consolation at last 
 
 "Fair the soul's recess and shrine, 
 Magic-built to last a season, 
 Masterpiece of love benign : 
 Fairer that expansive Reason 
 Whose omen 'tis, and sign. 
 Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know 
 What rainbows teach, and sunsets show ? 
 Revere the Maker, fetch thine eye 
 Up to his style, and manners of the sky. 
 Not of adamant and gold 
 Built he heaven, stark and cold. 
 No, but a nest of bending reeds, 
 Flowering grass, and scented weeds ; 
 Or like a traveller's fleeing tent, 
 Or bow above the tempest bent ; 
 Built of tears and sacred flames, 
 And virtue reaching to its aims ; 
 Built of furtherance and pursuing, 
 Not of spent deeds, but of doing. 
 House and tenant go to ground, 
 Lost in God, in Godhead found." 
 
 "A few weeks ago," wrote Emerson to Carlyle, on 
 occasion of his loss, " I accounted myself a very rich 
 man, and now the poorest of all." " Your calm tone of 
 deep, quiet sorrow," returned Carlyle, " coming in on the 
 rear of your trivial worldly businesses, all punctually de 
 spatched and recorded too, as if the Higher and Highest 
 had not been busy with you, tells me a sad tale." The 
 " businesses " related principally to the publication of 
 
114 LIFE OF 
 
 Carlyle's works in America. It would be difficult to find 
 a single action in Emerson's life not disinterested, and 
 none were more beautifully inspired by unselfishness than 
 his effort to assure Carlyle's works their due publicity and 
 Carlyle his due reward. Carlyle's gratitude was warm, 
 but it would have been warmer still if he had known 
 the extent of his indebtedness. On August 3, 1839, 
 Emerson wrote in his diary, "Carlyle's accounts have 
 required what were for me very considerable advances, 
 and so have impoverished me in the current months very 
 much." On April 2oth of the following year : " I suppose 
 that I am now at the bottom of my wheel of debt, and 
 shall not hastily venture lower. But how could I help 
 printing * Chartism,' sent to me for that express purpose, 
 and with the encouragement of the booksellers ? They 
 will give T. C. fifteen cents per copy." On May 1 1, 1840, 
 " J. Munroe and Co., in making out the account of T. C., 
 find he was in my debt between six and seven hundred 
 dollars, although some important amounts paid by me 
 were not entered in the account." It must have been a 
 relief to him when, after having published " Sartor," 
 "The French Revolution," the "Miscellanies," "Chart 
 ism," and " Hero Worship," with no man to make him 
 afraid, upon occasion of the arrival of " Past and Present " 
 in 1843 he had to report to Carlyle that he had be 
 come worth pirating, inasmuch as " the cheap press has, 
 within a few months, made a total change in our book- 
 markets. Every English book of any name or credit is 
 instantly converted into a newspaper or coarse pamphlet, 
 and howled by a hundred boys in the streets." He 
 nevertheless printed fifteen hundred copies at seventy- 
 
EMERSON. 115 
 
 five cents, and for a few weeks succeeded in repelling the 
 pirates, till a corsair calling himself Collyer, supposed to 
 be another publisher's domino or dummy, bore down upon 
 him with an edition at twelve cents and a half, and 
 Emerson struck his flag, rejoiced that at least no money 
 would be lost. Small remittances for Carlyle still 
 crossed the Atlantic for some time longer, and he on his 
 part could send Emerson twenty-four pounds on account 
 of the English reprint of his Essays, notwithstanding the 
 competition of "a scoundrel interloper, who prints on 
 grey paper." 
 
 Even so, for the year preceding Emerson's great 
 calamity had made him worth robbing. The first series 
 of his Essays appeared in 1841. Up to this date he 
 had been chiefly known as a lecturer, and although the 
 imputation of heresy had helped his discourse before 
 the Divinity class to a sale of a thousand copies, his 
 reputation was still mainly local, and confined to the 
 inner circles even of New England culture. But the 
 Essays went wherever the English language was spoken, 
 and the revelation of his name was also the revelation of 
 his ripest power. They were not, like " Nature," too 
 mystic and dithyrambic for the reader who valued him 
 self on his common sense; nor, like the addresses on 
 public occasions, were they in some measure of local 
 and limited application. A considerable portion, indeed, 
 had been originally delivered in the shape of lectures. 
 "Love," "Friendship," "Prudence," " The Over-Soul," 
 " Spiritual Laws," for instance, had been largely treated 
 of in the courses for 1836 and 1837 ; and much material 
 for a second series existed in these and in other courses. 
 
116 LIFE OF 
 
 But in this shape they had been blended with matter 
 of less value, and lacked the polish of perfect literary 
 expression which, as regarded the finish of individual 
 sentences, they now received to a degree rarely surpassed 
 by intellectual craftsmanship. The threefold test of lustre, 
 of durability, and of uniqueness, ranks them definitively 
 among the diamonds of literature. Diamonds, however, 
 are no material for statues ; and Emerson's writings, some 
 short poems excepted, prefer no claim to the yet higher 
 grace of logical unity and symmetrical completeness. 
 His usual method of literary work, already described, 
 precluded the composition of an essay in the proper 
 sense of the term. The thought that came to him to 
 day generally bore slight affinity to the thought of yester 
 day or to-morrow. In exploring the notebooks where 
 these casual visitations of the Spirit lay stored like 
 autumnal leaves heaped in a forest dingle, Emerson 
 might find numerous analogies, but to fashion these into 
 a coherent whole were a task akin to that which Michael 
 Scott rightly judged too hard for the devil himself. 
 There is just enough unity of purpose and endeavour after 
 artistic construction in each several Essay to raise it 
 from the category of Table-Talks, the desultory record 
 of the wisdom of an Epictetus, a Luther, a Coleridge, 
 and to inscribe the collection upon the roll of great 
 unsystematic books, along with Marcus Aurelius and 
 Thomas a Kempis, Pascal and Montaigne. It differs 
 from their monumental writings as the nineteenth century 
 differs from the Roman period, or the middle age. It is 
 less massive, but it is far more opulent. Emerson is 
 rarely sublime like Marcus Aurelius, but he disposes of a 
 
EMERSON. 117 
 
 wealth of varied illustration of which Marcus Aurelius 
 knew nothing ; and he has turned every page of the book 
 of Nature, which, until these latter ages, it has been the 
 fault of ethical writers to neglect. 
 
 Were we to look for the conductor of the Emerson 
 orchestra, we should perhaps find it in the essay entitled 
 " The Over-Soul." It seems to set the music to which 
 the others march. It enforces the ideas which draw all 
 else after them that the universe is one existence by 
 virtue of its interpenetration by a single divine essence, and 
 that one soul animates all mankind. " We see the world 
 piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the 
 tree ; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, 
 is the soul. . . . From within or from behind, a light 
 shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that 
 we are nothing, but the light is all. What we commonly 
 call man, the eating, drinking, planting, calculating man, 
 does not, as we know him, represent himself, but mis 
 represents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, 
 whose organ he is, would he let it appear through his 
 action, would make our knees bend. When it breathes 
 through his intellect, it is genius ; when it breathes through 
 his will, it is virtue ; when it flows through his affection, 
 it is love. ... All reform aims, in some one particular, 
 to let the great soul have its way through us." Starting 
 from this postulate, the writer works his way through a 
 number of beautiful illustrations to Carlyle's conclusion, 
 "All history is sacred." The possible exaggeration of 
 this pantheistic optimism into absolute apathy is warded 
 off by a supplementary discourse on Compensation, point 
 ing out the " inevitable dualism that bisects nature," and 
 
118 LIFE OF 
 
 which is reproduced in every separate existence, and every 
 fact of the spiritual and intellectual life. " If the good 
 is there, so is the evil ; if the affinity, so the repulsion ; if 
 the forces, so the limitation." The world is not, there 
 fore, a monotonous effluence of Divinity ; but it is an 
 effluence nevertheless : and by nothing is the fact proved 
 more clearly than by the nice adjustment and absolute 
 balance of compensation throughout the whole of it. It 
 is an utter fallacy to imagine that the bad are successful, 
 that justice is not done now. 
 
 " Hast not thy share ? On winged feet, 
 Lo ! it rushes thee to meet : 
 And all that Nature made thine own, 
 Floating in air or pent in stone, 
 Will rive the hills and swim the sea, 
 And, like thy shadow, follow thee." 
 
 The object of the fine essay quaintly entitled " Circles " 
 is to reconcile this rigidity of unalterable law with the 
 fact of human progress. Compensation illustrates one 
 property of a circle, which ahvays returns to the point 
 where it began. But it is no less true that around every 
 circle another can be drawn. "The life of man is a 
 self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly 
 small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger 
 circles, and that without end. Hence all forms of culture, 
 however relatively perfect, become in time obsolete. For 
 the genius that created them creates now something 
 else." Hence there is no security but in infinite pro 
 gress. " As soon as you once come up with a man's 
 limitations, it is all over with him. Infinitely alluring and 
 
EMERSON. 119 
 
 attractive was he to you yesterday, a great hope, a sea to 
 swim in ; now you have found its shores, found it a pond; 
 and you care not if you never see it again." 
 
 Emerson followed his own counsel ; he always keeps 
 a reserve of power. His theory of " Circles " reappears 
 without the least verbal indebtedness to himself, in the 
 splendid essay on Love. Here, having painted as hardly 
 any other has painted, the beauty of personal relations 
 and the " mighty ravishment " of the passion of love, he 
 rebukes his own raptures by treating it as after all some 
 thing rudimentary, ancillary and preparatory to the liberal 
 use and the perfect knowledge of life, Nature's lure to a 
 higher end, " only one scene in our play." "At last 
 they discover that all which at first drew them together 
 these once sacred features, that magical play of charms 
 was deciduous, had a prospective end, like the scaffold 
 ing by which the house was built j and the purification 
 of the intellect and the heart, from year to year, is the 
 real marriage, foreseen and prepared from the first, and 
 wholly above their consciousness." Notwithstanding the 
 assurance that " we need not fear to lose anything by the 
 progress of the soul," this deliverance can hardly act 
 otherwise than as a drench of cold water to the " fine 
 madman " whom the writer, himself performing the part 
 which he attributes to Nature, has allured to this sober 
 conclusion by the bait of gorgeous and impassioned 
 speech. It is, therefore, with all its poetry, rather for the 
 mature than the young. 
 
 '* The gay enchantment is undone : 
 A gentle wife, but fairy none." 
 
 The austere stoicism of the companion essay on Friendship 
 
120 LIFE OF 
 
 may affect even the mature reader with something of a 
 similar jar. Here, however, it is the general drift that 
 wounds, and the conclusion that redeems. " These things 
 may hardly be said without a sort of treachery to the rela 
 tion. The essence of friendship is entireness, a total magna 
 nimity and trust. It must not surmise or provide for 
 infirmity. It treats its object as a god, that it may deify 
 both." " Self-Reliance " and " Heroism " are another 
 pair of essays, the former of which must have had especial 
 influence in shaping the social type then growing up in 
 New England. We must pass by these, as well as " Pru 
 dence," " Intellect," and " Spiritual Laws," to devote a 
 word to "History" and "Art." These illustrate what 
 an abstract principle, if just in itself, will do for the 
 elucidation of a given subject, and how far it fails in the 
 absence of special study. In the essay on History we 
 feel that Emerson's view of human nature as an incarna 
 tion of the Divine Spirit binds all the ages together, and 
 makes them all equally living and real to the man of to 
 day, in so far as his knowledge of them supplies colour 
 for the mental picture. But we also feel that Emerson 
 does not personally get much beyond his grand generali 
 zation, and that he is indifferent to the archaeological 
 research which is needed for a just realization of the past, 
 which would have saved him from many fanciful ex 
 travagances. In the essay on Art the fundamental con 
 ception of Art as an educational process, elevating the 
 soul to the perception of beauty, is valuable if not ex 
 haustive ; but in concluding that the perception, once 
 attained, would supersede the educational process and 
 render art obsolete, Emerson overlooked the fact that 
 
EMERSON. 121 
 
 many men are born with physical and mental aptitudes 
 impelling them to artistic employment, and which can 
 find no other exercise. Man must continue to paint and 
 carve, and cultivate music, or the finer endowments of 
 his sense will become as atrophied as the naturalist's 
 relish for Milton and Shakespeare. 
 
 Carlyle repaid his obligations to Emerson by a preface 
 to the English edition of the Essays, which secured it 
 immediate recognition in this country. He was evidently 
 not entirely in sympathy with Emerson's literary manner, 
 which he criticizes with justice as abrupt and fitful, nor 
 does he repeat the verdict of his private correspondence 
 on its characteristic merits. These he had already defined 
 with inimitable felicity as "brevity, simplicity, softness, 
 homely grace, with such a penetrating meaning, soft 
 enough, but irresistible, going down to the depths and 
 up to the heights, as silent electricity goes." The public 
 expression of his admiration is mainly reserved for the 
 moralist, the man of sure intuition. "One man more 
 who knows and believes of very certainty that Man's Soul 
 is still alive, that God's universe is still godlike, that of 
 all Ages of Miracles ever seen, or dreamt of, by far the 
 most miraculous is this age in this hour." He had said 
 to like effect in a private letter : " Once more the voice 
 of a man ! Ah me ! I feel as if in the wide world there 
 were still but this one voice that responded intelligently 
 to my own : as if the rest were all hearsays, melodious 
 or unmelodious echoes. My blessing on you, good 
 Ralph Waldo ! " The book's sale in England was at 
 first slow, but its reception in intellectual circles was 
 never doubtful. Milnes, wrote Carlyle, was warm, and 
 
122 LIFE OF 
 
 Harriet Martineau enthusiastic. John Sterling, he 
 added, scolded and kissed, as the manner of the man 
 was, and concluded by asking whether it was possible 
 to obtain the author's likeness. By and by lovers began 
 to buy the volume in duplicate, and, having marked 
 their favourite passages in one copy, to lend the other 
 to the beloved one in hopes that she would mark the 
 same ; but it was never found to make much difference 
 what she marked. An anonymous critic in Fraser classed 
 Emerson among heresiarchs rightly in the judgment of 
 Carlyle, who described the reviewer as " emphatic, ear 
 nest, not without a kind of splay-footed thought and 
 sincerity," and opined that he had enough in him to 
 warrant his holding his peace for the next five years. 
 
 Emerson's generosity in the republication of Carlyle's 
 works and the conduct of " The Dial " was the more mag 
 nanimous as the situation of his affairs was not brilliant. 
 He had married with a modest competency, but expenses 
 had multiplied, and he could only meet his obligations 
 by lecturing. Lecturing was not then the gainful profes 
 sion it has since become ; nor had Emerson attained the 
 popularity which attracts lookers as well as hearers, rein 
 forcing those who come to hear by those who come to see. 
 A course of ten lectures which it had taken months to pre 
 pare might bring five hundred dollars in Boston ; the 
 county lyceum could only afford ten dollars a lecture with 
 travelling expenses. Even when Emerson got a windfall 
 he was admonished of the truth of Goethe's saying that the 
 trees are not permitted to grow into the sky. " I crowed 
 unto myself on the way home on the strength of my 
 three hundred dollars earned in New York and Pro- 
 
EMERSON. 123 
 
 vidence. But the Atlas Bank declares no dividend ; so 
 I find myself pretty nearly where I was before." Pure 
 literature was not then a pursuit eminently conducive to 
 a livelihood in America ; nor did Emerson understand 
 or care to make the most of it. " The pains," says Mr. 
 Cabot, " he gave himself with bargaining and with book 
 sellers' accounts for Carlyle, and the common sense he 
 always showed in practical affairs, have sometimes given 
 the impression that he was a shrewd man of business. 
 But in bargaining for himself he was easily led to under 
 value his own claims and take an exaggerated view of 
 those of the other party, and so usually bought dear and 
 sold cheap." It must be forgiven to a poet that he bought 
 a piece of land to prevent his view being obstructed, and 
 a field in which he had been accustomed to walk lest 
 a new proprietor should turn him out, and a pine-grove 
 lest the old proprietor should cut it down. All this 
 made lecturing doubly necessary that he might continue 
 "to raise his own blackberries." The consideration of 
 some of the most important of his discourses at this 
 period will be best reserved for a review of his relation 
 to national politics. In one of a course on " The 
 Present Age" he put the religious tendencies of the 
 age into a sentence : " Religion does not seem now 
 to tend to a cultus, but to a heroic life." In another 
 he dwelt on the narrowness of temperance reformers, and 
 all such as would regenerate society by special nos 
 trums ; which he exhibited with even more terseness 
 in a passage in his diary written about this time. " You 
 take away, but what do you give? Mr. Jefts has 
 been preached into tipping up his barrel of rum into the 
 
124 LIFE OF 
 
 brook ; but day after to-morrow, when he wakes up cold 
 and poor, will he feel that he has somewhat for some 
 what ? If I could lift him up by happy violence into a 
 religious beatitude, or imparadise him in ideas, then I 
 should have greatly more than indemnified him for what 
 I have taken." "The Method of Nature" (1841) was 
 composed, he says, in the heat and happiness of what 
 he thought a real inspiration, as it certainly was. It is 
 one of the most eloquent and most pregnant of his 
 productions, a glowing rapture of idealistic Pantheism, a 
 paraphrase of Goethe's pithy text : 
 
 " Natur hat weder Kern noch Schaale : 
 Alles ist Sie mit einem Male." 
 
 "The method of Nature cannot be analysed. The 
 new book " (hear this, ye ultra-Darwinians !) " says, * I 
 will give you the key to Nature,' and we expect to go 
 like a thunderbolt to the centre. But the thunder is 
 a surface phenomenon, makes a skin-deep cut, and so 
 does the sage. The rushing stream will not stop to be 
 observed : it is the characteristic of insanity to hold 
 fast to one thought, and not flow with the course of 
 Nature. Nature can only be conceived as existing to 
 a universal and not a particular end, to a universe of 
 ends, and not to one. She knows neither palm nor 
 oak, but only vegetable life. We can point nowhere 
 to anything final ; but tendency appears on all hands ; 
 planet, system, constellation, total nature is growing 
 like a field of maize in July." Possessed for the time by 
 the divine ecstasy he describes, Emerson recommends 
 Nature's method as a model for frail man in language 
 of unsurpassed splendour, and with arguments and 
 
EMERSON. 125 
 
 illustrations appropriate to a state of inspiration, but 
 which might well seem extravagant in colder moods. 
 Notwithstanding some golden sayings fit for any time and 
 place, such as " Do what you know, and perception is 
 converted into character," the discourse should as a 
 whole only be read as it was spoken, in the choicest 
 hour. One is not much surprised that the worthy 
 Baptist minister who presided on occasion of its 
 delivery prayed that the audience might be preserved 
 from ever again hearing such transcendental nonsense. 
 Emerson asked his name, and remarked : " He seems a 
 very conscientious, plain-spoken man." 
 
 The second series of Emerson's essays appeared in 
 1844. It may be described as generally dealing with 
 matters of more immediate practical concern than the 
 first had done, as more ethical in spirit, and less rich 
 in imagination. There is, notwithstanding, no lack of 
 poetry in it, any more than of ethic in its forerunner. 
 " Character " is a discourse on the text, " Character is 
 nature in the highest form." It shows that the recluse 
 of Concord had a sound knowledge of life, and of the 
 conditions necessary for enduring success and true 
 greatness. The essay on " Experience " seems at first a 
 singular discourse for a preacher of righteousness. It 
 must be regarded as an endeavour to atone for previous 
 over-statements by a frank recognition of the unmoral 
 aspects of the universe. " Nature, as we know her, is no 
 saint. The lights of the church, the ascetics, Gentoos, 
 and Grahamites, she does not distinguish by any favour. 
 She comes eating and drinking and sinning. Her dar 
 lings, the great, the strong, the beautiful, are not children 
 
126 LIFE OF 
 
 erf our law, do not come out of the Sunday School, never 
 weigh their food, nor punctually keep the command 
 ments. If we would be strong with her strength, we 
 must not harbour such disconsolate consciences." The 
 essay is full of the apparent contradictions established 
 by experience, but concludes that experience indefinitely 
 protracted will reconcile all. " Manners " insists on 
 self-reliance and self-respect as the first requisites of good 
 manners, and eloquently describes the function of woman 
 in promoting them. " Our American institutions have 
 been friendly to her, and at this moment I esteem it a 
 chief felicity of this country, that she excels in women. 
 Let her be as much better placed in the laws and social 
 forms as the most zealous reformer can ask, but I confide 
 so entirely in her aspiring and musical nature, that I be 
 lieve only herself can show us how she shall be served. 
 The wonderful generosity of her sentiments raises her at 
 times into heroical and godlike regions, and verifies the 
 pictures of Minerva, Juno, or Polyhymnia; and by the 
 firmness with which she treads her upward path, she con 
 vinces the coarsest calculators that another road exists 
 than that which their feet know. But besides those who 
 make good in our imagination the place of muses and of 
 Delphic Sibyls, are there not women who fill our vase 
 with wine and roses to the brim, so that the wine runs 
 over and fills the house with perfume ; who inspire us 
 with courtesy ; who loose our tongues, and we speak ; 
 who anoint our eyes, and we see ? We say things we 
 never thought to have said; for once our walls of habitual 
 reserve vanish, and leave us at large; we are children 
 playing with children in a wide field of flowers. * Keep 
 
EMERSON. 127 
 
 us,' we cry, c in these influences, for days, for weeks, and 
 we shall be sunny poets, and will write out in many- 
 coloured words the romance that you are/ " 
 
 As might be expected from a poet, the essay on 
 " Poetry " is of special beauty and significance. The 
 conception of the poet and his mission is of the highest. 
 " Poetry was all written before time was, and whenever 
 we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that 
 region where the air is music, we hear those primal warb- 
 lings, and attempt to write them down ; but we lose ever 
 and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of 
 our own, and thus miswrite the poem." The sign and 
 credentials of the poet are that he announces " that 
 which no man foretold." "He is the Namer, or 
 Language-maker. Each word was at first a stroke of 
 genius. Language is fossil poetry." " He re-attaches 
 things to nature and the whole." " Readers of poetry 
 see the factory-village and the railway, and fancy that the 
 poetry of the landscape is broken up by them for these 
 works of art are not yet consecrated in their reading ; 
 but the poet sees them fall within the great order not less 
 than the beehive or the spider's geometrical web. Nature 
 adopts them very fast into her vital circles, and the gli 
 ding train of cars she loves like her own." J Hence the 
 
 1 "Just then the train, with shock on shock, 
 
 Swift rush and birth-scream dire, 
 Grew from the bosom of the rock, 
 And passed in noise and fire. 
 
 With brazen throb, with vital stroke, 
 
 It went, far heard, far seen, 
 Setting a track of shining smoke 
 
 Against the pastoral green." 
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE. 
 
128 LIFE OF 
 
 true American poet, when he arrives, will make poetiy of 
 the most unpromising subjects : " our log-rolling, our 
 stumps and their politics, our repudiations, banks, and 
 tariffs, newspaper and caucus, Methodism and Unitarian- 
 ism;" no less than the northern trade, the southern 
 planting, Oregon and Texas. " Thou true land-lord ! 
 sea-lord ! air-lord. Wherever sun falls, or water flows, 
 or birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, 
 wherever the blue heaven is hung by clouds or sown with 
 stars, wherever are forms with transparent boundaries, 
 wherever are outlets into celestial space, wherever is 
 danger and awe and love, there is beauty, plenteous as 
 rain, shed for thee, and though thou shouldst walk the 
 world over, thou shalt not be able to find a condition 
 inopportune or ignoble." 
 
 Emerson's second series of essays also appeared with 
 a preface from Carlyle, treating this time of the book 
 merely in its aspect of literary property, perhaps because 
 Emerson had apprehended that the former preface might 
 be " too splendid for my occasion. I fancy my readers 
 to be a very quiet, plain, even obscure class men and 
 women of some religious culture and aspirations young, 
 or else mystical, and by no means including the great 
 literary and fashionable army who now read your books." 
 Carlyle assured him that his public was truly aristocratic ; 
 being of the bravest inquiring minds that England had. 
 Among these was George Eliot, who wrote of Car- 
 lyle's first preface : " This is a world worth abiding in 
 while one man can thus venerate and love another." 
 Emerson's correspondence with Carlyle had been main 
 tained since their first acquaintance, though with occa- 
 
EMERSON. 129 
 
 sional fluctuations. Seldom have two men conceived a 
 more genuine and abiding regard for each other on the 
 strength of a single meeting. Emerson betrays that he 
 has been deeply impressed by Mrs. Carlyle also, and is 
 unsuspicious of the negative elements in her character. 
 Carlyle's infirmities of temper come out clearly enough 
 in the correspondence, as also does the deep inward 
 tenderness of his nature. Emerson is always plotting to 
 bring his friend to Concord, and thinks himself so near 
 his object that he inquires whether Carlyle will burn 
 wood or anthracite. But Providence knew better. Car 
 lyle would not have appeared to advantage among trans 
 atlantic Transcendentalists ; decent civility was all he 
 could achieve towards the individuals of the species 
 occasionally despatched to him by Emerson. It is 
 doubtful whether the precious substance of his lectures 
 would have repaid the American ear for the want of 
 oratorical fluency : and in any event his perversity on the 
 slavery question would have estranged him hopelessly and 
 deservedly from the flower of his audience. Thanks, 
 however, to Emerson in great measure, Carlyle had be 
 come an intellectual force in America, and it was natural 
 for New England to pit her seer against her mother's. 
 The contrast between them was exhibited with equal wit 
 and penetration in Mr. Russell Lowell's "Fable for 
 Critics "(1848). 
 
 " There are persons, mole-blind to the soul's make and style, 
 Who insist on a likeness 'twixt him and Carlyle 
 To compare him with Plato would be vastly fairer, 
 Carlyle's the more burly, but E. is the rarer ; 
 He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, truelier 
 If C's. an original, E's. more peculiar ; 
 
 9 
 
130 LIFE OF 
 
 That he's more of a man you might say of the one, 
 
 Of the other he's more of an Emerson ; 
 
 C's. the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb ; 
 
 E's. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim. 
 
 The one's two-thirds Norseman, the other's half Greek, 
 
 Where one's most abounding, the other's to seek ; 
 
 C's. generals require to be seen in the mass, 
 
 E's. specialities gain if enlarged by the glass ; 
 
 C. gives nature and God his own fits of the blues, 
 
 And rims common-sense things with mystical hues 
 
 E. sits in a mystery calm and intense, 
 
 And looks coolly around him with sharp common-sense ; 
 
 C. shows you how every-day matters unite 
 
 With the dim transdiurnal recesses of night, 
 
 While E. in a plain preternatural way 
 
 Makes mysteries matters of mere every day. 
 
 E. is rather like Flaxman, lines straight and severe, 
 
 And a colourless outline, but full, round, and clear ; 
 
 To the men he thinks worthy he frankly accords 
 
 The design of a white marble statue in words. 
 
 C. labours to get at the centre, and then 
 
 Take a reckoning from there of his actions and men. 
 
 E. calmly assumes the said centre as granted, 
 
 And, given himself, has whatever is wanted." 
 
 This may be a suitable place to introduce a notice of 
 Emerson's own poetry, as, although " uncertain whether 
 he had one true spark of that fire which burns in verse," 
 he was at this period contributing poems freely to "The 
 Dial," and even entertaining proposals from publishers for 
 a collected edition. The genius of his verse is best 
 characterized by a happy phrase of Dr. Holmes's it is 
 elemental. It stands in a closer relation to Nature than 
 that of almost any other poet. He has an unique power 
 of making us participate in the life of Nature as it is in 
 Nature herself, not as Wordsworth gives it, blended with 
 
EMERSON. 131 
 
 the feelings or at least coloured by the contemplations of 
 humanity. Such intimacy with Nature has sometimes all 
 the effect of magic; there are moments and moods in 
 which Emerson seems to have as far outflown Words 
 worth as he outflew Thomson and Collins. But the 
 inspiration is in the highest degree fitful and fragmentary, 
 and is but seldom found allied with beautiful and dignified 
 Art. The poems offend continually by lame unscannable 
 lines, and clumsinesses and obscurities of expression. 
 Sometimes the poet seems to struggle with more meaning 
 than he knows how to convey ; at other times the meaning 
 bears no proportion to the laboured intricacy of the dic 
 tion. When, however, he is fortunate enough to find the 
 precise fitting for his idea, the result is a diamond of the 
 purest water. 
 
 " Not from a vain or shallow thought 
 His awful Jove young Phidias wrought ; 
 Never from lips of cunning fell 
 The thrilling Delphic oracle." 
 
 " The silent organ loudest chants 
 The master's requiem." 
 
 " No ray is dimmed, no atom worn, 
 
 My oldest force is good as new ; 
 And the fresh rose on yonder thorn 
 
 Gives back the bending heavens in dew." 
 
 " There is no god dare wrong a worm." 
 
 "As the wave breaks to foam on shelves, 
 
 Then runs into a wave again ; 
 So lovers melt their sundered selves, 
 Yet melted would be twain." 
 
132 LIFE OF 
 
 " The musing peasant lowly great 
 Beside the forest water sate ; 
 The rope-like pine-roots crosswise grown 
 Composed the network of his throne ; 
 The wide lake, edged with sand and grass, 
 Was burnished to a floor of glass, 
 Painted with shadows green and proud 
 Of the tree and of the cloud." 
 
 ART. 
 
 IN the vaunted works of Art 
 The master-stroke is Nature's part. 
 
 GIPSIES. 
 
 THE wild air bloweth in our lungs, 
 The keen stars twinkle in our eyes, 
 
 The birds gave us our wily tongues, 
 The panther in our dances flies. 
 
 You doubt we read the stars on high, 
 Nathless we read your fortunes true ; 
 
 The stars may hide in the upper sky, 
 But without glass we fathom you. 
 
 TO EVA. 
 
 O FAIR and stately maid, whose eyes 
 Were kindled in the upper skies 
 
 At the same torch that lighted mine ; 
 For so I must interpret still 
 Thy sweet dominion o'er my will, 
 
 A sympathy divine. 
 
 Ah ! let me blameless gaze upon 
 Features that seem at heart my own ; 
 
 Nor fear those watchful sentinels, 
 Who charm the more their glance forbids, 
 Chaste-glowing, underneath their lids, 
 
 With fire that draws while it repels. 
 
EMERSON. 133 
 
 On the whole, Emerson the poet presents a singular 
 contrast to Emerson the thinker and orator. As the latter 
 be is potent, epoch-making, the morning star of a new era, 
 both literary and intellectual. As a poet he is the lovely, 
 wayward child of the American Parnassus, more fascinating 
 and captivating than his elders and betters, and nearer by 
 many degrees to the central source of inspiration ; but 
 beautiful rather than strong, and ever in need of allow 
 ance and excuse. Could he have always written with the 
 mastery he shows in detached passages, he would have 
 stood in a class by himself. Some few of his poems are 
 actual models of perfection, as, for instance, the lines in 
 the dedication of the Concord monument ; but here, as 
 Dr. Holmes remarks, his originality of style has for 
 saken him, and he writes in the manner of Campbell. 
 Another noble poem quoted by Dr. Holmes " Days " 
 would certainly have been given to Landor if it had not 
 been signed by Emerson. There are, however, pieces 
 of faultless perfection entirely in the Emersonian style. 
 Such a piece is the "Rhodora," worthy of the Greek 
 Anthology : 
 
 " In May, when sea- winds pierced our solitudes, 
 I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, 
 Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, 
 To please the desert and the sluggish brook. 
 The purple petals, fallen in the pool, 
 Made the black water with their beauty gay ; 
 Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool, 
 And court the flower that cheapens his array. 
 Rhodora 1 if the sages ask thee why 
 This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, 
 Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, 
 Then Beauty is its own excuse for being : 
 
134 , LIFE OF 
 
 Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose 1 
 
 I never thought to ask, I never knew, 
 
 But in my simple ignorance, suppose 
 
 The self-same Power that brought me there brought you. " 
 
 Almost equally finished, and gushing from a yet deeper 
 well-spring of feeling, is the mystic yet transparent allegory 
 entitled "Two Rivers": 
 
 " Thy summer voice, Musketaquit, 
 Repeats the music of the rain ; 
 But sweeter rivers pulsing flit 
 Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain. 
 
 Thou in thy narrow banks art pent ; 
 
 The stream I love unbounded goes : 
 Through flood and sea and firmament, 
 
 Through light, through life, it forward flows. 
 
 I see the inundation sweet, 
 
 I hear the spending of the stream 
 Through years, through men, through Nature fleet, 
 
 Through passing thought, through power and dream. 
 
 Musketaquit, a goblin strong, 
 
 Of shard and flint makes jewels gay ; 
 They lose their grief who hear his song, 
 
 And where he winds is the day of day. 
 
 So forth and brighter fares my stream, 
 
 Who drinks it shall not thirst again ; 
 No darkness stains its equal gleam, 
 
 And ages drop in it like rain." 
 
 Such music and such power of spiritualizing material 
 Nature would have vindicated a high place for a more 
 faulty poet than Emerson : but his claims rest by no 
 means solely even on these high gifts. The Runic, 
 Orphic, mystic, and aphoristic element in his poetry, 
 
EMERSON. 135 
 
 though there is too much of it, is still an original and 
 valuable element. He always means something,, and his 
 meaning is always worth trying to penetrate. Better still, 
 he always sings something : his verse, good or bad, is 
 poetry ; he does not, like some greater poets, chequer his 
 inspired moods with commonplace or mere literary 
 elegances. But after all it is his greatest glory as a poet 
 to have been the harbinger of distinctively American 
 poetry to America : 
 
 " He was the first that ever burst 
 Into that silent sea." 
 
 Emerson hesitated over the publication of his poems 
 for four years. He had come, as he said himself, " to a 
 solstice of the stars of his intellectual firmament," and 
 though he retained freshness enough to write " Repre 
 sentative Men " to be noticed subsequently, felt the need 
 not only for change, but for a more thorough change than 
 he could find in America. He had pretty well gone 
 through all the fermentations and combinations of which 
 American intellectual life was then susceptible, and began 
 to think that he needed the stimulus of an English 
 audience. He was dimly conscious of something pro 
 vincial in his reputation. The very enthusiasm he had 
 excited half-frightened him. " In the acceptance that 
 my papers find among my thoughtful countrymen in these 
 days, I cannot help seeing how limited is their reading. 
 If they read only the books that I do, they would not 
 exaggerate so wildly." With his usual delicacy, he 
 breathed no hint of his inclination to Carlyle, fearing that 
 an audience might be artificially collected for him. But 
 
136 LIFE OF EMERSON. 
 
 when, in 1846, invitations came from various English 
 Mechanics' Institutes, he accepted them with hope and 
 pleasure. The prime mover was his old friend Mr. Alex 
 ander Ireland, " infinitely well affected towards the man 
 Emerson." Feeling himself safe in strong, sure hands, 
 Emerson sailed for Liverpool in the Washington Irving 
 (name of fair omen !) October 5, 1847. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 EMERSON, as has been seen, believed in the inward 
 light. He thought a man needed but to keep him 
 self open to the Divine influences to have his life happily 
 moulded for him, and his creed appeared justified by his 
 experience. 
 
 " Early or late, the falling rain 
 Arrived in time to swell his grain ; 
 Stream could not so perversely wind, 
 But corn of Guy's there was to grind." 
 
 The Divine blessing, indeed, rarely took in his case the 
 form of money, but intellectual events came as they were 
 wanted, and, unless when in the fulfilment of an obli 
 gation of courtesy or conscience he took upon himself 
 some extraneous task like the editorship of " The Dial," 
 everything happened at the right moment for the further 
 ance of the inner soul and the external end. His well- 
 timed visit to England was a case in point. His cele 
 brity was just in the stage to render him an object of 
 interest, without rendering him an object of adulation. 
 There was enough curiosity respecting him to warrant the 
 best efforts of his devoted friend Mr. Ireland to gain him 
 
138 LIFE OF 
 
 a hearing, and not enough to tempt a contractor to 
 vulgarize him by "running" him. He came simply 
 and modestly to proffer his thoughts to those who cared 
 for them, and to take in return the impressions derived 
 from the study of a polished society and a social order 
 venerable and stable, yet in process of transformation. 
 England, on her part, was in a more congenial humour 
 towards a man of optimistic faith than she had ever been 
 before, or has ever been since. God forbid that we 
 should be discouraged by anything that has happened 
 since 1847 Y 6 * we mav admit that the millennium seemed 
 nearer then than it does now. People were not then 
 gravely asking whether life was worth living. The peace 
 of the world, on the brink of such rude disturbance, 
 seemed well-assured. The black cloud depicted with such 
 power in Carlyle's " Chartism " and Disraeli's " Sybil," 
 had lifted off the English working class. By passing the 
 Ten Hours Bill, Parliament had just declared that a man 
 was not a horse. Free Trade had not only been adopted 
 as a political measure, but was thought to have been 
 demonstrated as an economical principle ; and therefore 
 its reception by the whole world seemed but a question 
 of time. It was inconceivable that reasons of State 
 should prevail over reasons of arithmetic that France 
 and the United States should go on denying two and two 
 to be four, merely because self-interest would have them 
 to be five. Peel was the first man in the country, and 
 Cobden the second. This sanguine faith has since been 
 rudely shaken; the demon has rebuked the exorcist. 
 But were Free Trade to die out of Manchester itself, the 
 fact would remain that its triumph in 1846 was a great 
 
EMERSON. 139 
 
 moral victory the triumph of logic and eloquence. It 
 had won with everything against it, and its success had 
 engendered a conviction of the adequacy of moral force 
 to effect all reforms, and of moral reforms to cure all 
 physical evils. Peace men, temperance men, ocean 
 penny postage men, enemies of capital punishment, 
 friends of Africa and Poland, educationalists, sanitary 
 reformers, philanthropists, some devoted as Shaftesbury 
 and practical as Southwood Smith, others in various 
 stages of lunacy, did incredibly prevail. The very Pope 
 had set up as a reformer, to the dismay of Prince 
 Metternich. Lecturing and lecturers were rising nearer 
 to the American level : the eloquence of W. J. Fox and 
 George Thompson had won them seats in Parliament, 
 and George Dawson was beginning to be a power in the 
 land. Progress was for the time the national watchword, 
 and it was a real creed and no cant. Save for the Irish 
 famine, there seemed scarcely a cloud in the sky when 
 Emerson made his lecturing arrangements ; he arrived on 
 the eve of a revolution, and in the middle of a panic. 
 
 On landing at Liverpool on October 22nd, Emerson 
 found an invitation from Carlyle, irresistible as gravita 
 tion, he says, in its heartiness and urgency. After 
 spending some hours with Mr. Ireland in Manchester, 
 he proceeded to London, and found the Carlyles very 
 little changed in appearance from their old selves of 
 fourteen years before. Spiritual progress there had been, 
 not change, for Carlyle had travelled as steadily on his 
 own line as Emerson had, and their progress had been in 
 different directions. They might be compared to two 
 streams which, rising on the same mountain crest, gush 
 
140 LIFE OF 
 
 down opposite steeps, and diverge the more the further 
 they wend their way. The central idea of each was 
 alike the Divine Immanence in all things; but, to 
 employ Heine's convenient generalization, one presented 
 it like a Hebrew, the other like a Greek. One note of 
 Hebraism is intolerance. Carlyle's personal tenderness 
 to his fellows was profound, but his intellectual anti 
 pathies were bitter and fierce, and the serene sage, the 
 " Gymnosophist sitting on a flowery bank," was among 
 them. His aversion to Emersonianism equalled his love 
 of Emerson ; it is a proof of the sincerity of his love 
 that it survived such estrangement " We had immense 
 talking with him here," he writes, "but find that he 
 did not give us much to chew the cud upon. He is a 
 pure, high-minded man, but I think his talent is not 
 quite as high as I had anticipated." At another time he 
 says, " Good of him I could get none, except from his 
 friendly looks and elevated, exotic, polite ways." Emerson 
 could not be expected to shine in conversation with the 
 first talker of his age ; even if, which is improbable, he 
 was allowed the chance. His was not an exuberant mind. 
 The habit of nicely fitting his thought with the one right 
 word in his public utterances made him hesitate in ordi 
 nary conversation, and grew upon him until " to hear him 
 talk," says Dr. Holmes, " was like watching one crossing a 
 brook on stepping-stones." He the more admired the 
 affluent discourse of the apostle of Silence, which he classed 
 as one of the four things that had most impressed him in 
 Europe. " You will never discover," he told Mrs. Emer 
 son, " his real vigour and range, or how much more he 
 might do than he has ever done, without seeing him." 
 
EMERSON. 141 
 
 This visit to London was short, but was graced by a 
 social passport in the shape of a breakfast with Rogers, 
 who received him with the fatigued politeness of one who 
 had provided for all the lions of the last half-century. 
 Returning to Liverpool and Manchester to fulfil his 
 lecturing engagements, he felt oppressed by the gigantic 
 development of industrial life, and shocked by the tragic 
 aspects of the streets. " My dearest little Edie costs me 
 many a penny. I cannot go up the street but I shall see 
 some woman in rags, with a little creature just of Edie's 
 size and age, but in coarsest ragged clothes, and bare 
 footed, stepping beside her ; and I look curiously into 
 her Edie's face with some terror, lest it should resemble 
 mine, and the far-off Edie wins from me the half-pence 
 for this near one." But he was impressed by the strength, 
 bigness, and solidity of the people, and "a certain 
 fixedness and determination in each person's air that 
 discriminates them from the sauntering gait and roving 
 eyes of Americans. In America you catch the eye of 
 every one you meet, here you catch no eye, almost." 
 
 Everything in the provinces went well with Emerson. 
 The Manchester newspapers, distinguished then as now 
 for the excellence of their reports, gave his lectures a 
 wide circulation. Alexander Ireland, though with the 
 care of one of them on his shoulders, " approved himself 
 the king of all friends and helpful agents; the most 
 active, unweariable, imperturbable." Invitations to lec 
 ture crowded on Emerson, until he felt ashamed to read 
 yet again " the musty old discourses so often reported." 
 But managers and audiences would have no other. 
 Making Manchester his headquarters, he ranged over all 
 
142 LIFE OF 
 
 the northern and midland counties, acquainting himself 
 in the most agreeable manner possible with the flower of 
 English middle class culture, and rejoicing in the proof 
 thus afforded that here, as at home, he had beguiled young 
 people into better hopes than he could realize for them. 
 The English railways, he remarked, conveyed him with 
 twice the speed of the American, and half the motion. 
 Perhaps this observation the better prepaied him for his 
 meeting with George Stephenson ; the more interesting 
 to him in that it brought proof of his doctrine of one 
 soul in many men. No two persons' pursuits could have 
 been more dissimilar than those of the man of specu 
 lation and the man of steam. But their minds moved 
 in the same lofty plane of perfect simplicity and sincerity, 
 and in a few moments Stephenson had his hand upon 
 the American's coat-collar, and talked to him of the 
 marvels of electricity and his own engineering experiences, 
 until Emerson declared that it was worth crossing the 
 Atlantic to see him. The great Duke should have been 
 the third man of the party. At Edinburgh, where he went 
 with a lecture composed for the occasion, he met a man 
 as remarkable as Stephenson, but as unlike him as the 
 imagination can conceive. He had formed his con 
 ception of De Quincey from the " voluminous music " of 
 his writings, and expected a presence and an elocution 
 " like the organ of York Minster." He saw and heard 
 "a small old man of seventy years (De Quincey was 
 sixty-two), with a very handsome face, expressing the 
 highest refinement ; a very gentle old man, speaking 
 with the greatest deliberation and softness, and so re 
 fined in speech and manners as to make quite indifferent 
 
EMERSON. 143 
 
 his extremely plain and poor dress." He afterwards 
 dined at De Quincey's cottage with him and his three 
 admirable daughters, and laments, as we do, that time 
 failed to record the conversation. Jeffrey he found very 
 French and rather affected ; and Professor Wilson's lec 
 tures to his class seemed to him to call into exercise 
 more strength of body than of mind. Professor Nichol, 
 George Combe, Mrs. Crowe, David Scott, Robert 
 Chambers, and other Scotch notabilities, came within his 
 ken; but his chief friend and entertainer was Samuel 
 Brown, then in quest of that Sangreal of science, the 
 demonstration of the unity of substance. 
 
 Emerson travelled up to London in the last days of 
 February, with the exciting tidings of the French Revo 
 lution ringing all around him. He saw Wordsworth and 
 Harriet Martineau on the road, and on his arrival in 
 town took up his abode with his English publisher, 
 Mr. (now Dr.) John Chapman, whose house was to 
 Harbour George Eliot by and by. Aided by the intro 
 ductions of the American Minister, he took place at 
 once as one of the conspicuous figures of the London 
 season. His letters home are crowded with the names 
 of the intellectual leaders he had met, the most remark 
 able exceptions being Browning, then in Italy, and Stuart 
 Mill, who had at this time almost given up society. He 
 seems to have been especially impressed by Leigh Hunt, 
 whom, along with De Quincey, he thought the finest 
 mannered man of letters in England ; by Macaulay, in 
 whom he rightly discerned the nearest approximation 
 among them all to the typical Englishman, incarnating 
 the differentia of the race ; and by Owen, whom he with 
 
144 LIFE OF 
 
 equal justice pronounced " one of the best heads in Eng 
 land." "Richard Owen," he says in the " Traits," "adds 
 sometimes the divination of the old masters to the 
 unbroken power of labour in the English mind." It is 
 interesting to get a glimpse of him from a Nestor of 
 observation, Crabb Robinson, who writes : " It was with 
 a feeling of predetermined dislike that I had the curiosity 
 to look at Emerson at Lord Northampton's, when, in an 
 instant, all my dislike vanished. He has one of the most 
 interesting countenances I ever beheld a combination 
 of intelligence and sweetness that quite disarmed me." 
 Miss Martineau had told Robinson that Emerson would 
 not be apprehended till he was seen. " There is a vague 
 nobleness and thorough sweetness about him which 
 moves people to their very depths, without being able 
 to explain why." Robinson agreed that Emerson's first 
 lecture left " a dreamy sense of pleasure, not easy to 
 analyse, or render an account of." Emerson had been 
 lazy about lecturing, and indeed the political circum 
 stances of the times were unfavourable for the promul 
 gation of abstract thinkings. The blaze of Europe 
 threatened to extend to England ; and Chartist and 
 constable were the " representative men " of the hour. 
 At length, however, a course was arranged for the begin 
 ning of June, and in the interim Emerson started for a 
 trip to Paris, where he arrived just in time for the abor 
 tive revolution of May i5th. The terrible days of June 
 were preparing, but in the meantime Paris showed 
 bravely, crowded with sashes and helmets and men 
 bearded like goats or lions ; full too of living fire, and, 
 as Emerson thought, of genuine passion for justice and 
 
EMERSON. 145 
 
 humanity. He afterwards said that the French had best 
 discussed what other nations had best done. He had 
 just been inspecting a very different place Oxford, 
 where seeds of thought were quietly germinating, des 
 tined perhaps to produce greater results than the brilliant 
 demonstrativeness of Paris. The new Liberalism was 
 for the moment represented for Emerson by two young 
 men whose fellowships even then hung by a hair 
 Clough, whom his writings had deeply impressed, and 
 Froude, " a noble youth, to whom my heart warms." 
 Froude was greatly struck by his resemblance to Newman, 
 which is indeed undeniable, and goes deeper than the 
 physical likeness. It is a curious speculation what would 
 have happened if the two could have changed places. 
 Could Newman have found his way to Rome from Mas 
 sachusetts ? What tints would Emerson's spiritualism 
 have imbibed from the painted windows of Oxford? 
 Somewhat later he made a pilgrimage to Stratford-on- 
 Avon with a party from Coventry, among them a very 
 plain young woman who told him that she liked Rousseau's 
 " Confessions " best of all books. He started ; then said, 
 "So do I \ " and the plain young woman wrote next day 
 that the American stranger was the one real man she had 
 seen. He had had his first and last meeting with George 
 Eliot. 
 
 Emerson had all but decided not to lecture in London, 
 but " came to have a feeling that not to do it would be 
 a kind of skulking." He seems to have felt instinctively 
 that, while in the provinces he was heard with serious, 
 almost reverential interest, in London he was only 
 regarded as the last sensation, and the more so the more 
 
 10 
 
146 LIFE OF 
 
 aristocratic his audience. He nevertheless paid the 
 intellectual capital the compliment of preparing three 
 new discourses on "The Natural History of the Intellect," 
 which, with two old ones and that composed for Edin 
 burgh, made up a course under the title of " Mind and 
 Manners of the Nineteenth Century." He had no 
 lack of dignified and accomplished auditors, from the 
 Duchess of Sutherland downwards, but his great pleasure 
 was in "Jane Carlyle and Mrs. Bancroft, who honestly 
 came/' Carlyle also took a lively interest in the course, 
 and Emerson was pleased to observe how much he was 
 looked at. The London reporters fell far behind their 
 Manchester brethren in fulness and accuracy, and though 
 Emerson writes, " Our little company grows larger each 
 day," the lectures seem to have produced no great effect 
 beyond the walls of the Marylebone Institute. Men's 
 minds, besides, were abundantly occupied with more 
 exciting themes : and the net pecuniary product was only 
 ;8o instead of the promised ^200 : while the high 
 price of the tickets caused Emerson to be taxed with for 
 saking the middle class, like the Belgian canons who not 
 only had to give up their dinners to the bishops, but 
 were pelted because they had not thrown them out to 
 the people. He gave three "expiatory lectures dull 
 old songs " in Exeter Hall, and took his leave of the 
 English platform amid Carlyle's good-humoured laughter 
 at what he termed the orator's moonshine. But Crabb 
 Robinson thought it the most liberal discourse that 
 Exeter Hall had ever heard, and, little suspecting whom 
 he was hitting, spoke with disdain of those who " shook 
 their heads at what they could not reduce to proposition? 
 
EMERSON. 147 
 
 as indisputable as a sum in arithmetic." Mr. Cabot 
 somewhat doubtfully identifies this lecture with that on 
 Home, the second of the series on Human Life, delivered 
 in 1838. The process of thought is not very clear in 
 the summary, but the conclusion, at which it is hard to 
 conceive Carlyle smiling, is that of the Essay on Love. 
 " Man no longer dies daily in the perishing of local and 
 temporary relations, but finds in the Divine soul the rest 
 which in so many types he had sought, and learns to 
 look on them as the movables and furniture of the City 
 of God." Emerson's last adventure in England was the 
 expedition to Stonehenge in Carlyle's company, recorded 
 in " English Traits." On his way from London to 
 Liverpool he spent a night in Manchester with Mr. 
 Ireland, and was full of pleasant recollections of his visit 
 to England. He said he had not been aware " that 
 there was so much kindness in the world." He sailed 
 from Liverpool on July i5th, taking a rocking-horse for 
 his girls and a cross-bow for his son, and was under his 
 own roof before the end of the month. 
 
 Emerson lectured on England in the year of his return, 
 and again in 1853, but his full impressions were not pub 
 lished until 1856, when they appeared under the title of 
 " English Traits." In this book he has matched himself 
 with the English people, and both are upon their trial. 
 Could an idealist display true insight in dealing with so 
 practical a nation ? Could so material a civilization stand 
 the criticism of an idealist ? England and Emerson both 
 came well out of the ordeal. He cannot help setting 
 down the English intelligence as somewhat beefy and 
 obtuse, for such is the fact. But he does not, like Haw- 
 
148 LIFE OF 
 
 thorne, resent the phenomenon as an affront to the foreign 
 observer : he finds in this stiff soil the substratum of fine 
 qualities, and boldly declares that the intellect of Eng 
 land owes more to Plato than to Aristotle. The solidity 
 of the English is no doubt the great primal fact with him. 
 " I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands 
 firmest in his shoes." Practicality, veracity, conser 
 vatism, all the traits too plain to be missed, are fully 
 recognized. But when he comes to literature he pro 
 nounces that the two nations in England of whom so 
 much has been written are not the Norman and the 
 Saxon, nor the Poor and the Rich, but " the perceptive 
 class and the practical finality class, ever in counterpoise, 
 interacting mutually : these two nations, of genius and 
 of animal force, though the first consist only of a dozen 
 souls, and the second of twenty millions, for ever by 
 their discord and their accord yield the power of the 
 English state." The preponderance of the practical 
 finality class in his own day is indeed admitted and 
 deplored. " Even what is called philosophy and letters 
 is mechanical in its structure, as if inspiration had 
 ceased, as if no vast hope, no religion, no song of joy, 
 no wisdom, no analogy, existed any more." "English 
 science is false by not being poetic. It isolates the 
 reptile or the mollusc it strives to explain ; whilst reptile 
 or mollusc only exists in system, in relation." This par 
 ticular reproach has been well-nigh removed from English 
 science : and in many other departments Emerson would 
 now find that his hint of " a retrieving power in the 
 English mind, which makes recoil possible," had been 
 fully justified. He must also, if Darwin ever engaged his 
 
EMERSON. 149 
 
 attention, have had to acknowledge that the recovery of 
 the lost faculty of generalization came in a great measure 
 from the very method to which he ascribes its extinction. 
 "The absence of the faculty in England is shown by the 
 timidity which accumulates mountains of facts, as a bad 
 general wants myriads of men and miles of redoubts 
 to compensate the inspirations of courage and conduct." 
 The good general often will not move till he has made 
 his communications safe, and provided for his supplies. 
 
 Emerson's book sparkles with epigrams such as these : 
 " There should be temperance in making cloth, as well 
 as in eating. A man should not be a silkworm, nor a 
 nation a tent of caterpillars." " The lawyer lies perdu 
 under the coronet, and winks to the antiquary to say 
 nothing." " The upper classes have only birth, say the 
 people here, and not thoughts. Yes, but they have 
 manners." " Loyalty is in the English a sub-religion." 
 " When the Englishman wishes for amusement he goes 
 to work." " There is in an Englishman's brain a 
 valve that can be closed at pleasure, as an engineer 
 shuts off steam. The most sensible and well-informed 
 men possess the power of thinking just so far as the 
 bishop in religious matters." Amid all these kindly 
 sarcasms there is not one sneer : it is plain that our 
 visitor liked us better than he knew, and did both him 
 self and us injustice when he told Margaret Fuller that 
 his respect for the Englishman was the more generous 
 in that he felt no sympathy with him, only admiration. 
 Carlyle said that " English Traits " was worth all the 
 books ever written by New England upon the Old; 
 and in it England assuredly imported from her descen- 
 
150 LIFE OF 
 
 dants much better ware than anything of its class that 
 she had exported to them, except Sir Charles Lyell's. 
 Emerson is so little concerned with the fashion of the 
 day, and so much with the solid foundations of English 
 life, that his book should endure as long as these do. It 
 should be a mirror for England to consult from time to 
 time, and see whether, in gaining the more spiritual look 
 which Emerson missed, her countenance has lost any of 
 the frankness and resoluteness which he found. " I see 
 England," he said in a speech at Manchester, in allusion 
 to the commercial crisis under which he found the country 
 labouring and by republishing his words nine years 
 afterwards he signified that he had found them true " I 
 see her not dispirited, not weak, but well remembering 
 that she has seen dark days before; indeed with a kind of 
 instinct that she sees a little better in a cloudy day, and 
 that in storm of battle and calamity she has a secret vigour 
 and a pulse like a cannon. I see her in her old age, not 
 decrepit, but young, and still daring to believe in her 
 power of endurance and expansion. Seeing this, I say, 
 All hail, mother of heroes, with strength still equal to the 
 time; still wise to entertain and swift to execute the 
 policy which the mind and heart of mankind requires 
 in the present hour, and thus only hospitable to the 
 foreigner, and truly a home to the thoughtful and 
 generous who are born in the soil. So be it ! So let 
 it be ! If it be not so, if the courage of England goes 
 with the chances of a commercial crisis, I will go back 
 to the capes of Massachusetts, and my own Indian 
 stream, and say to my countrymen, the old race are all 
 gone, and the elasticity and hope of mankind must 
 
EMERSON. 151 
 
 henceforth remain on the Alleghany ranges, or no 
 where." 
 
 Accidental as the coincidence may be, his visit to prac 
 tical England synchronizes with a healthy crisis in Emer 
 son's mind. His discourses on " Representative Men," 
 first delivered in 1845, though not published till 1850, 
 exhibit a greater tendency to the oracular than anything 
 written before or afterwards. The first lecture, "The 
 Uses of Great Men," is obscure in the only sense in which 
 obscurity is justly imputable to Emerson. It is a suc 
 cession of sayings, for the most part individually compre 
 hensible and sometimes of stimulating freshness, but so 
 abrupt and discontinuous that we find ourselves landed 
 at last in Emerson's favourite conclusion with but slight 
 idea how we have arrived at it. Genius " appears as an 
 exponent of a vaster mind and will. The opaque self 
 becomes transparent with the light of a First Cause." It 
 is the purpose of the remaining lectures to resolve this 
 pure ray of primal intellect into the sixfold spectrum of 
 philosopher, mystic, sceptic, poet, man of the world, and 
 writer; respectively personified by Plato, Swedenborg, 
 Montaigne, Shakespeare, Napoleon, and Goethe. Here 
 we find Emerson's success to be proportioned to his hold 
 on concrete fact. The figure of Plato, of whose per 
 sonality so little is known, is, as Carlyle complains, vague 
 and indefinite. " Can you tell me," asked an auditor of 
 his neighbour, " what connection all this has with Plato?" 
 " None, my friend, save in God ! " But the other figures 
 are visible if not palpable. Nothing can be more gene 
 rous than his trampling down of prejudice in recognizing 
 the true inspiration of Swedenborg, or more crushing 
 
i5fc LIFE of 
 
 than his criticism of the merely mechanical element in 
 that seer. " When he mounts into the heaven I do not 
 hear its language. A man should not tell me that he has 
 walked among the angels ; his proof is that his eloquence 
 makes me one." The lecture on Montaigne teaches that 
 a wise scepticism leads to the same result as a large faith. 
 " The lesson of life is to believe what the years and the 
 centuries say against the hours. Things seem to tend 
 downward, to justify despondency, to promote rogues, to 
 defeat the just ; and by knaves, as by martyrs, the just 
 cause is carried forward. Let a man learn to look for 
 the permanent in the mutable and fleeting; let him 
 learn to bear the disappearance of things he was wont to 
 reverence without losing his reverence; let him learn 
 that he is here, not to work, but to be worked upon ; and 
 that though abyss open under abyss, and opinion displace 
 opinion, all are at last contained in the Eternal Cause." 
 The discussion on Napoleon shows Emerson at his best 
 as a connoisseur of men, and would alone prove that he 
 did not addict himself to speculation out of incapacity or 
 contempt for the affairs of the world. The ideologist 
 judges the man of action more shrewedly and justly than 
 the man of action would have judged the ideologist; and 
 after having most brilliantly painted Napoleon's perfect 
 sufficiency in all things for which virtue is not needful, 
 puts him on his right footing with, " Bonaparte is the 
 idol of common men, because he had in transcendent 
 degree the qualities and the powers of common men." 
 On Goethe and Shakespeare Emerson says many excel 
 lent things, but the former's activity is too multifarious 
 to be condensed into a lecture, though the man him- 
 
EMERSON. 153 
 
 self is got into a sentence : " The old Eternal Genius 
 who built the world has confided himself more to this 
 man than to any other " and Emerson is incapable of 
 contemplating Shakespeare with the eye of the dramatic 
 artist. His unsatisfied demands ignore the fact that 
 Shakespeare's plays were designed for the stage, and must 
 not be burdened with incongruous wisdom. The marvel 
 is how he has made them carry so much ; and, after all, 
 it may be suspected that in the original representations 
 not a little of what the student most prizes shared the fate 
 of Mr. Puffs description of Queen Elizabeth's side-saddle. 
 Emerson, who afterwards said of Shakespeare, " the 
 greatest mind values him the most," appears in "Re 
 presentative Men " under concern " that the best poet 
 led an obscure and profane life, using his genius for 
 the public amusement." His criticism thus coincides 
 with the Englishman's observation to Mr. Fields on his 
 visit to Stratford-on- Avon : " Shakespeare ! who would 
 have cared for Shakespeare if he hadn't written them 
 plays?" 
 
 During Emerson's absence in Europe a literary under 
 taking had been initiated in which it is to be regretted 
 that he did not see his way to participate. It at that 
 time required the collective exertions of the best minds 
 in America to support a first-class journal which should 
 at the same time be an organ of serious thought. The 
 North American Review since greatly modified was 
 then cautious, conservative, and quite out of keeping with 
 the aspirations of reformers. To provide them with an 
 organ, The Massachusetts Quarterly was established under 
 the direction of Theodore Parker. 
 
154 LIFE OP 
 
 Tennyson, in 1830, inscribed a sonnet to a friend who 
 was to be " a later Luther, and a soldier-priest," and was 
 to shoot "arrows of lightning into the dark." Choosing to 
 war with Giant Pagan rather than Giant Pope, the friend 
 became a most eminent archaeologist. The poet's 
 prophecy went wandering homeless about the world 
 until it found exact fulfilment in the person of Theodore 
 Parker, who lacked nothing pertaining to the character of 
 Luther, nor superadded anything material. Parker must 
 seem as much less than Luther as the abolition of slavery 
 is less than the Reformation : yet it can scarcely be 
 doubted that in Luther's age he might have played 
 Luther's part. In an age like ours, however, he must 
 inevitably be judged in a great degree by his standing as 
 author and orator, and this is but in the second rank. 
 This incontestable fact is also an incontestable proof of the 
 fallacy of Sir Joshua Reynolds's definition of genius as an 
 infinite faculty for taking pains. This may be an indis 
 pensable accompaniment to the thing : it is not the thing 
 itself. Parker's great natural powers were cultivated to 
 the uttermost ; and, in truth, it is hardly possible to name 
 a bookish or oratorical accomplishment that was wanting 
 to him. Vehement, sonorous, copious, terrible in his 
 wrath and moving in his tenderness ; exuberantly imagi 
 native yet severely logical ; erudite yet perspicuous ; 
 ornate yet compact ; he possessed every merit of the 
 orator, while his earnestness delivered him from every 
 defect of the rhetorician. Fine as his parts were, his 
 character was finer : no man so loved God, no man so 
 hated wrong. Yet it is plain that, though his name is 
 indelibly inscribed in the civil and religious history of 
 
EMERSON. 155 
 
 New England, it will not endure as that of a theologian or 
 man of letters ; and no reason can be given except a certain 
 second-rateness in the stuff of the mind, the lack of that 
 inscrutable something which stamps Emerson, so greatly 
 Parker's inferior in whatever can be taught, as a man 
 superior in natural endowment. If Emerson was ever 
 tempted to identify genius with character, he might have 
 found the correction of his error in his friend. He seems 
 to have even underrated Parker's gifts, so different to his 
 own. "A little more feeling of the poetic significance 
 of his facts," he said, " would have disqualified him for 
 some of his severer offices to his generation." The main 
 function of the great radical preacher is thus defined with 
 no less truth than eloquence : " His commanding merit 
 as a reformer is this, that he insisted beyond all men in 
 pulpits that the essence of Christianity is its practical 
 morals : it is there for use, or it is nothing ; and if you 
 combine it with sharp trading, or with ordinary city am 
 bitions to gloss over municipal corruptions, or private 
 intemperance, or successful fraud, or immoral politics, or 
 unjust wars, or the cheating of Indians, or the robbery of 
 frontier nations, or leaving your principles at home to 
 show on the high seas or in Europe a supple complais 
 ance to tyrants, it is an hypocrisy, and the truth is not in 
 you ; and no love of religious music, or of dreams of 
 Swedenborg, or praise of John Wesley or of Jeremy 
 Taylor, can save you from the Satan which you are." 
 With this high and just view of Parker's mission, more 
 active co-operation from Emerson in The Massachusetts 
 Quarterly might have been expected. He seems to 
 have been annoyed at having been announced as a 
 
156 LIFE OF 
 
 joint editor without his consent, and perhaps winced 
 under the " one fault " which he finds in Parker. " He 
 over-estimated his friends, and sometimes vexed them 
 with the importunity of his good opinion, whilst they 
 knew better the ebb which follows exaggerated praise." 
 His only contribution was the admirable introductory 
 address (December, 1847), pregnant with ideas then 
 deemed unpractical, but which the recent history of 
 America has made common property. The United 
 States of that day wore in his eyes the aspect of "a 
 certain maniacal activity, an immense apparatus of 
 cunning machinery which turns out, at last, some Nu 
 remberg toys." More pungent criticism of the same 
 kind follows, but Emerson, unlike Carlyle in similar cases, 
 refuses to despair, will not believe that so stupendous a 
 phenomenon as the American Republic can have been 
 called into being for nothing. " Moral and material 
 values are always commensurate. Every material organi 
 zation exists to a moral end, which makes the reason of 
 its existence. Here are no books, but who can see the 
 continent with its inland and surrounding waters, its 
 temperate climates, its west wind breathing vigour through 
 all the year, its confluence of races so favourable to the 
 highest energy, and the infinite glut of their production, 
 without putting new questions to Destiny as to the pur 
 pose for which this muster of nations and this sudden 
 creation of enormous values is made ? " The questions 
 with which a journal aspiring to leadership must deal are 
 indicated with admirable exactness, among them slavery, 
 " in some sort the special enigma of the time, as it has 
 provoked against it a sort of inspiration and enthusiasm 
 
EMERSON. 157 
 
 singular in modern history ; " and the adjustment of the 
 balance between " the exact French school of Cuvier and 
 the genial catholic theorists, Geoffrey St. Hilaire, Goethe, 
 Davy, and Agassiz." (Here the wish seems to have be 
 gotten the thought, for Agassiz did not belong to 
 Geoffrey St. Hilaire's party.) The life of The Massachu 
 setts Quarterly was brief but honourable ; it died of supe 
 riority to its public within three years. Among its many 
 memorable contributions the only one which concerns us 
 here is Parker's general review of Emerson, a creditable 
 piece of work, bringing out most of Emerson's strong 
 points and by no means sparing his weak ones, his want 
 of logical connection, his occasional inconsistencies and 
 extravagances, his deference to Oriental writers whom in 
 fact he misapprehends. The preponderance of the 
 ethical sentiment in Parker's mind makes him cold to 
 Emerson's mystic absorption in Nature, and the essay 
 is disfigured by a gratuitous comparison of Emerson 
 with a light of the Old World, Milton. But, on the 
 whole, it was a worthy sentence, the first authoritative 
 announcement by an American that his country, at last, 
 possessed a classic. 
 
 Another ally of those days, much nearer than Parker, 
 was Henry Thoreau, in whom Emerson took half-pater 
 nal, half-fraternal interest, as he had every right to do. 
 Without him Thoreau might never have existed as the 
 hermit-poet of Walden. He had had him in his house 
 two years (1841-1843), and so moulded the young man, 
 not previously deemed over-susceptible to intellectual 
 influences, that Mr. Haskins started with amazement 
 when he found his former classmate " in the tones and 
 
158 LIFE OF 
 
 inflections of his voice, in his modes of expression, even 
 in the hesitations and pauses of his speech, the counter 
 part of Mr. Emerson." He adds indeed : " After conver 
 sing with Mr. Emerson for even a brief time, I always 
 found myself able and inclined to adopt his voice and 
 manner of speaking." Hawthorne probably had this 
 metamorphosis in mind when he drew Thoreau on 
 one side of his nature as Donatello in his "Marble 
 Faun." Thoreau adopted more than Emerson's manner 
 and tones : he worked out his creed of the suffi 
 ciency of the individual, and demonstrated that it is 
 easy to live according to nature in the neighbourhood 
 of a civilized and corrupt society : but, so far at least as 
 his experiments went to show, in such neighbourhood 
 only. "Thoreau's experiment," says Mr. Lowell, "ac 
 tually presupposed all that complicated civilization which 
 it theoretically abjured. He squatted on another man's 
 land; he borrows an axe; his boards, his nails, his 
 bricks, his mortar, his books, his lamp, his fish-hooks, his 
 plough, his hoe, all turn state's evidence against him as 
 an accomplice in the sin of that artificial civilization 
 which rendered it possible that such a person as Henry 
 D. Thoreau should exist at all." But whatever affectation 
 may have infected his method of life, the testimony of 
 his friends, and, better still, of his own writings, forbids 
 the belief that it went further. " To hold intercourse 
 with him," wrote Hawthorne, " is like hearing the wind 
 among the boughs of a forest tree ; and with all this wild 
 freedom, there is high and classic cultivation in him 
 too." There is even ^higher testimony to the charm of 
 his character in the elevating effect which the remem- 
 
EMERSON. 159 
 
 brance of it wrought upon Emerson when he penned 
 Thoreau's funeral tribute. Hardly any of his writings 
 have so much natural magic, or such captivating sim 
 plicity, down to the noble peroration, itself simple : " It 
 seems a kind of indignity to so noble a soul that it should 
 depart out of Nature before yet he has been really shown 
 to his peers for what he is. But he, at least, is content. 
 His soul was made for the noblest society; he had 
 in a short life exhausted the capabilities of this world ; 
 wherever there is knowledge, wherever there is virtue, 
 wherever there is beauty, he will find a home." 
 
 On July 1 6, 1850, Margaret Fuller Ossoli was drowned, 
 with her husband and child, on her return from Italy, 
 after sitting for twelve hours on the stranded wreck 
 amid driving rain, in sight of the coast and of sundry 
 persons too diligently picking up whatever came ashore 
 to busy themselves in procuring a lifeboat. To find such 
 another contrast of dying or dead genius in presence of 
 dull, soulless inhumanity, we must go to memoirs of the 
 "realistic" school of biography. Emerson exclaimed, 
 " I have lost my audience ! " He could not honestly say 
 more, for his nature and Margaret's, though by no means 
 antipathetic, were hardly congenial. Her part had been 
 that of the ardent mistress, and his the cold beauty's. Fail 
 ing in her attempts to gain his confidence by storm, she 
 cried, " Why do I write thus to one who must ever regard 
 the deepest tones of my nature as those of childish fancy 
 or worldly discontent ? " Emerson could never feel at 
 home outside his own sphere, whether of thought or 
 affection : it was impossible, therefore, that there should 
 not be something of constraint in his portion of the 
 
160 LIFE OF 
 
 biography which, two years after Margaret's death, 
 appeared as the joint production of her most intimate 
 friends. Yet, having helped himself, by reminiscences of 
 conversation and quotations from correspondence, over 
 the intellectual region of Margaret's nature, into which 
 he entered but imperfectly, he kindles up when at last 
 he comes to the generous helpful woman, who went 
 straight from a wedding to attend a relative undergoing 
 a surgical operation, and who, when in after years she 
 found scope for the exercise of all her love and devotion 
 in Italy, " came to it as if it had been her habit and her 
 natural sphere." 
 
 Two visitors from Europe about this time have given 
 us glimpses of Emerson. Arthur Hugh Clough, his host 
 at Oxford, his companion at Paris, and in whom he had 
 found (but he cannot have sought very diligently) the 
 only Englishman who put Wordsworth at the top of the 
 modern English Parnassus, having gone through a spiritual 
 revolution in England and looked political revolution in 
 the face abroad, came by his invitation to Massachusetts 
 in search of a quiet haven in which to anchor, and tem 
 poral provision upon which to wed. Better provision was 
 shortly found at home, and the translation of Plutarch's 
 " Morals," on which the exiled scholar had been work 
 ing at Harvard, was finished on this side of the Atlantic. 
 The iconoclast who profanely called Walden " a wood 
 with a prettyish pool," " more and more recognized Emer 
 son's superiority to everybody he had seen. Energy is a 
 very common thing ; reasonableness is much less com 
 mon, and does ten times the good." Another European 
 guest, less to Emerson's taste, was Frederika Bremer, 
 
EMERSON. 161 
 
 who, carrying the war into Africa, avenged the indiscre 
 tions of American tourists by repaying them in kind. 
 There is little harm but exaggeration, however, in her 
 magniloquent account of Emerson, who is alternately a 
 lion and an eagle. The picture of him at Alcott's 
 conversation parties, to which " ladies were invited with 
 out distinction of sex," tolerant of rude interruption and 
 quietly embanking the flood of talk, is decidedly interest 
 ing. Emerson's manner on such occasions was admir 
 able. To a child of nature who resisted every hint to 
 take his hat off in the drawing-room, he remarked, " We 
 will continue our conversation in the garden." Miss 
 Bremer carried off his " strong, beautiful head " in her 
 album, where Crabb Robinson afterwards saw it. It 
 should be sought for in Sweden. 
 
 Emerson's correspondence with Carlyle went on mean 
 while with no diminution of cordiality, rather increase, 
 for Carlyle's heart smote him when he thought upon his 
 brusqueness. " Of one impression," he wrote, " we fail 
 not here : admiration of your pacific virtues, of gentle 
 and noble tolerance, often surely tried in this place " 
 Chelsea, not London. "Representative Men" he pro 
 nounces " a most finished, clear, and perfect set of en 
 gravings in the line manner " a neat example of a 
 compliment sheathing a criticism. 
 
 ii 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE vein of originality which the man of genius 
 brings into the world must in process of time be 
 exhausted. Well for him if external circumstances or 
 inward resources help him to a new lease of inspiration. 
 In trying to evolve new ideas from his mere brain, Car- 
 lyle but exaggerated the old ; historical themes restored 
 to him the freshness of his youth. Emerson confesses 
 the infrequency of original thoughts after his return from 
 Europe ; but as invention waned, his intellectual activity 
 found a new stimulus in a quickened interest in public 
 affairs. Banks and tariffs had given place to questions 
 involving the most momentous problems of law and 
 morality. Emerson was cradled into politics by wrong, 
 as other men into poetry. The Fugitive Slave Law was 
 to him for a decade what for one brief fiery moment the 
 oppression of the Indians had been in 1838. His 
 general attitude towards politics, ere political issues had 
 become absolutely vital and all-absorbing, is thus defined 
 by himself in the address prefixed to The Massachusetts 
 Quarterly 
 
 " Lovers of our country, but not always approving of 
 the public counsels, we should certainly be glad to give 
 
LIFE OF EMERSON. 163 
 
 good advice in politics. We have not been able to 
 escape our national and endemic habit, and to be liberated 
 from interest in the elections and public affairs. Nor 
 have we cared to disfranchise ourselves. We are more 
 solicitous than others to make our politics clear and 
 healthful, as we believe politics to be nowise accidental 
 or exceptional, but subject t s> the same laws with trees, 
 earths, and acids." 
 
 This characteristic aphorism is at the root of all Emer 
 son's thinking in political and social questions. The creed 
 of the Conservative of his dialogue is his own also. " The 
 system of property and law is the fruit of the same mys 
 terious cause as the mineral or animal world." But so 
 is the tendency which is always undermining this system. 
 "The party of Conservatism and the party of Inno 
 vation have disputed this world ever since it was made." 
 Their respective claims are set forth in his discourse, 
 " The Conservative " (1841), with such fairness that while 
 the author's personal leanings are evidently to the Liberal 
 side, the Conservative case seems advocated with the 
 more energy and point. Each case, nevertheless, is un 
 answerable from its own point of view ; but the dispu 
 tants are admonished that " each is a good half, but an 
 impossible whole." The combination of these irrecon 
 cilable moieties is attempted in " Man the Reformer " 
 (1841). The answer is that of the poetic enthusiast. All 
 things are possible to Love. " Let our affection flow out 
 to our fellows ; it would operate in a day the greatest ol 
 all revolutions. Let us begin by habitual imparting. 
 Let us understand that the equitable rule is that no one 
 
164 LIFE OF 
 
 should take more than his share, let him be ever so rich. 
 Let me feel that I am to be a lover. I am to see to it 
 that the world is the better for me, and to find my reward 
 in the act. Love would put a new face on this weary old 
 world in which we dwell as pagans and as enemies too 
 long, and it would warm the heart to see how fast the vain 
 diplomacy of statesmen, the impotence of armies and 
 navies, and lines of defence, shall be superseded by this 
 unarmed child." These generous views had their 
 dangers ; combined with Emerson's faith in the indivi 
 dual, they at one period went near to make him an 
 Anarchist. In his oration on " The Young American " 
 (1844) he observed that "Government in our times is 
 beginning to wear a clumsy and cumbrous appearance." 
 In the essay on Politics, published in the same year, he 
 expressed surprise that no one had steadily denied the 
 authority of the laws on the ground of his own moral 
 nature a hint taken by Thoreau. It was but consistent 
 that he should ridicule " the terror of old and vicious 
 people, lest the union of these States be destroyed. The 
 wise and just man will always feel that he stands on his 
 own feet; that he imparts strength to the State, not 
 receives security from it ; and that if all went down, he, 
 and such as he, would quite easily combine into a new and 
 better constitution/' This excessive individualism, partly 
 founded on a hasty assumption of the decay of the State 
 from the extent to which its work was getting to be 
 done by private associations, was sharply checked by the 
 emergence of the slavery question. Emerson could not 
 help discovering that the wise and just were impotent in 
 this matter as individuals ; and that the solution which 
 
EMERSON. 165 
 
 he rightly deemed most fit could only be obtained by 
 the action of the State. He wished America to follow 
 the example of England by combining compensation with 
 emancipation. " Here," he said, " is a right social or 
 public function which one man cannot do, which all 
 men must do. We will have a chimney-tax. We will 
 give up our coaches and wine and watches. The churches 
 will melt their plate. The father of his country shall 
 wait, well pleased, a little longer for his monument ; 
 Franklin for his; the Pilgrim Fathers for theirs, and the 
 patient Columbus for his. The merchants will give ; the 
 needle-women will give; the children will have cent 
 societies. Every man in the land will give a week's 
 work to dig away this accursed mountain of sorrow once 
 and for ever out of the world." This was justice and 
 therefore statesmanship. Unfortunately, not only was 
 there little disposition on the part of the North to give, 
 but there was none on the part of the South to receive. 
 It is a shrewd remark of Arbuthnot's, that all political 
 parties die at last of swallowing their own lies. The 
 slaveholders had gone on asserting the divinity of slavery 
 until they believed it. Their growing insolence and 
 brutality, culminating in the attempt to strangle free 
 suffrage in Kansas, and the ruffianly assault on Charles 
 Sumner in the Senate House as he sat writing at his 
 desk, made Emerson an Abolitionist. He had clung 
 to conservatism as long as possible. The annexation of 
 Texas (1845) na cl not perturbed him; he saw it to be 
 inevitable, and was content if his own State held fast her 
 integrity. Even in resisting the Fugitive Slave Law 
 (1850) he had said, " We will never intermeddle with your 
 
166 LIFE OF 
 
 slavery, but you can in no wise be suffered to bring it to 
 Cape Cod or Berkshire." The South had now made this 
 attitude impossible, but her truculence seemed to 
 Emerson pardonable in comparison with the moral torpor 
 of his own beloved Massachusetts. He was himself 
 twice hissed at public meetings by descendants of the 
 Pilgrim Fathers. Smarting with grief and shame, he, 
 for a time, forgot his accustomed moderation, lauded 
 John Brown's incendiarism, and appeared to blame the 
 judges for not assuming the functions of legislators. At 
 last, however, the attack on Fort Sumter made everything 
 right. Upholders and antagonists of slavery shook hands 
 over the Union ; the logic of events converted every loyal 
 citizen to emancipation as at least a sound military 
 measure ; and, as Emerson said, " The wish that never 
 had legs long enough to cross the Potomac can do so 
 now." He himself, now as good a civic patriot as 
 anybody, was ever ready with speech and song. " Volun 
 taries," pieces written to encourage the young to enlist for 
 the war, contain this noble stanza 
 
 " So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 
 So near is God to man, 
 When Duty whispers low, Thou must, 
 The youth replies, lean." 
 
 Emerson's earnest feeling on the civil war comes out 
 in his letters to Carlyle. Writing in December, 1862, in 
 the midst of deepest discouragement all around, he 
 stoically says : " We must get ourselves morally right. 
 Nobody can help us. 'Tis of no account what England 
 and France may do." But sympathy was ever precious 
 
EMERSON. 167 
 
 to him ; and even when the fortune of war had so greatly 
 changed as had come to pass by September, 1864, he 
 implores it as fervently as ever : " How gladly I would 
 enlist you with your thunderbolt on our part! How 
 gladly enlist the wise, thoughtful, efficient pens and 
 voices of England ! We want England and Europe 
 to hold our people staunch to their best tendency. Are 
 English of this day incapable of a great sentiment ? 
 Can they not leave cavilling at petty failures, and bad 
 manners, and the dunce part (always the largest part in 
 human affairs), and leap to the suggestions and finger- 
 pointings of the gods, which, above the understanding, 
 feed the hopes and guide the wills of men ? " Alas ! to 
 form a correct opinion on any subject, a nation must 
 know something about it : and the English people, mean 
 ing well as they always do, were disgracefully ignorant 
 of foreign politics, as they always are. Emerson himself 
 had learned much, and found himself more in sympathy 
 than he had ever expected to be with the stern philosophy 
 of Carlyle. " I shall always respect war hereafter. The 
 waste of life, the dreary havoc of comfort and time, are 
 overpaid by the vistas it opens of Eternal Life, Eternal Law, 
 reconstructing and upholding Society." On Carlyle's 
 wild sally against the American cause, Emerson observes 
 the silence of disdain or compassion. He may have been 
 more lenient from a confession he himself had been con 
 strained to make. " Everybody has been wrong in his 
 guess, except good women, who never despair of an ideal 
 Right." If, however, the women had this faith, they had 
 partly caught it from Emerson. Making a poet's use of 
 the laying of the submarine cable, he had grandly written 
 in 1857 : 
 
168 LIFE OF 
 
 " Be just at home ; then write your scroll 
 
 Of honour o'er the sea 
 And bid the broad Atlantic roll 
 A ferry of the free. 
 
 And henceforth there shall be no chain, 
 
 Save underneath the sea, 
 The wires shall murmur through the main 
 
 Sweet songs of Liberty. 
 
 The conscious stars accord above, 
 
 The waters wild below, 
 And under, through the cable wove, 
 
 Her fiery errands go. 
 
 For He that worketh high and wise, 
 
 Nor pauseth in His plan, 
 Will take the sun out of the skies 
 
 Ere freedom out of man." 
 
 Was he conscious of the echo of Campbell in the last 
 stanza ? 
 
 The just, necessary, and glorious war for the Union, 
 had, nevertheless, like cathartics in general, many ob 
 noxious accompaniments among them the temporary 
 impoverishment of Emerson. There was no demand for 
 literature, none for lectures, no dividend on his invest 
 ments, no return from his wife's property, no purchaser 
 for the wood-lot which, though he declared that his 
 spirits rose whenever he entered it, he would now have 
 sacrificed if he could. In time things righted themselves; 
 and in justice to his son, who was intended for the medi 
 cal profession, he allowed his old friend Mr. Abel Adams 
 to defray the cost of Edward's college course. For many 
 winters lecturing had been a main dependence, and he 
 
EMERSON. 169 
 
 had gone further afield in quest of audiences, extending 
 his tours as far as St. Louis. Most of the lectures de 
 livered on these expeditions appear with alterations in 
 " The Conduct of Life," and others of his later collec 
 tions of addresses. The Western people took kindly to 
 him : and the fee was sometimes in proportion to the 
 hardship and discomfort involved. Emerson humorously 
 represents the public as betting him fifty dollars a day 
 for three weeks that he will not go through all manner 
 of indignities every day, and stand up reading in a hall 
 every night ; " and I answer, * I'll bet I will.' I do it 
 and win the nine hundred dollars." It was a happy 
 peculiarity of his physical constitution that he could 
 dispense with food "from morn till dewy eve." His 
 letters are full of reports, too good-humoured to be 
 called complaints, of long journeys and short commons, 
 nights passed on the floor of canal boats, bottomless 
 mud and navigation over fixed ice. " In journeyings 
 often, in watchings often." As he grew older his daughter 
 Ellen came to accompany him, a Mignon of hotel and 
 car, gently interposing between him and the more trying 
 incidents of travel. 
 
 Emerson's elocution has been frequently described, and 
 most hearers attest its magical effect. It was, or seemed, 
 the purest natural endowment ; if it owed anything to 
 art, it was the ars celare. It gave the impression of utter 
 absorption in the theme, and indifference to all rhetoric 
 and all oratorical strategem. Composed and undemon 
 strative as any listener, almost motionless, except for a 
 slight vibration of the body, seldom even adapting his 
 voice to his matter, he seemed to confide entirely in the 
 
170 LIFE OF 
 
 justness of his thought, the felicity of his language, and 
 the singular music of his voice. " He somehow," Mr. 
 Lowell says, " managed to combine the charm of unpre 
 meditated discourse with the visible existence of carefully 
 written manuscript lying before him on the desk ; and 
 while reciting an oration strictly committed to memory, 
 he had the air of fetching inspiration from the clouds." 
 If these were artifices, they did not seem so. We 
 have already heard Mr. Haskins's testimony that he 
 could not be even a short time in Emerson's company 
 without unconsciously copying his manner. This be 
 speaks the strong personal magnetism needed to hold 
 large audiences by ideas so unfamiliar, stated with such 
 deficient continuity, and set off by so few artificial graces. 
 A shrewd judge, Anthony Trollope, was particularly 
 struck with the note of sincerity in Emerson when he 
 heard him address a large meeting during the Civil 
 War. Not only was the speaker terse, perspicuous, 
 and practical to a degree amazing to Mr. Trollope's 
 preconceived notions, but he commanded his hearers' 
 respect by the frankness of his dealing with them. " You 
 make much of the American eagle," he said, "you do 
 well But beware of the American peacock." When 
 shortly afterwards Mr. Trollope heard the consummate 
 rhetorician, Edward Everett, he discerned at once that 
 oratory was an end with him, instead of, as with Emerson, 
 a means. " He was neither bold nor honest, as Emerson 
 had been," and the people knew that while pretending to 
 lead them he was led by them. 
 
 Emerson was a connoisseur in style, and said there 
 never had been a time when he would have refused the 
 
EMERSON. 171 
 
 offer of a professorship of rhetoric at his Alma Mater. 
 The secret of his own method is incommunicable ; for it is 
 even truer in his case than in Carlyle's that the style is the 
 man. To write as Emerson, one must be an Emerson. His 
 precepts, nevertheless, may be studied by artists in all 
 literary manners. They seem especially aimed at the 
 crying sin of nineteenth-century authorship, its diffuse- 
 ness. He insisted on the importance of "the science 
 of omitting, which exalts every syllable." A good writer 
 must convey the feeling of "chemic selection" as well 
 as of " flamboyant richness." One practical counsel 
 is to read aloud what you have written to discover what 
 sentences drag. " Blot them out and read again, and 
 you will find what words drag. If you use a word for a 
 fraction of its meaning, it must drag. It is like a pebble 
 inserted in a mosaic. Blot out the superlatives, the 
 negatives, the dismals, the adjectives, and very. And, 
 finally, see that you have not omitted the word which the 
 piece was written to state." In the controversy between 
 classic and romantic art, he took the side of the former, 
 which seemed to him organic, while romanticism appeared 
 capricious. But he did not regard this as a question 
 between ancients and moderns ; the antique was always 
 with us. 
 
 The discourses of these later years form three volumes, 
 "Conduct of Life" (1860); "Society and Solitude" 
 (1870); "Letters and Social Aims" (1875); tne latter 
 collection pieced together in Emerson's old age with 
 Mr. Cabot's aid, by combining passages selected from 
 different lectures, so slight was the logical connection 
 of Emerson's thought. These writings indicate a period 
 
172 LIFE OF 
 
 of diminished mental activity, but not of decay. They 
 may be compared in this respect to the later works of 
 Wordsworth. The author is not mechanically repeating 
 the inspirations of happier hours, still less endeavouring 
 to simulate originality by extravagance ; he has simply, 
 finding his voice less dominant from the summit than 
 of old, compensated for its diminished resonance by a 
 closer approach to his audience. He has not, as he 
 says Shakespeare or Franklin would have done (and 
 Lincoln did), give i his wisdom a comic form to attract 
 his Western audiences, but he has descended from the 
 shining heights, and discourses from an ordinary platform 
 with even more calmness and self-possession, if with 
 less of mystic rapture and oracular depth. The burden 
 of his message is ever the same, the all-pervading Deity, 
 the one human soul in every breast, the universality of 
 spiritual laws, the exact correspondence of the moral and 
 material worlds, the inexorable impartiality of Nature, 
 the impossibility of stealing a march on eternal justice, 
 the duty of man to yield up his egotism to the universal 
 Soul, and walk by the inward light. But the joy of 
 discovery is over ; instead of the seer, we have the man 
 of practical experience vouching for him. Emerson the 
 old beholds the work of Emerson the young, and finds 
 it very good. Not a precept of the latter but has stood 
 the test. If Emerson had written nothing else than 
 these discourses, his reputation would never have existed; 
 if he had not written them, it would have lacked one 
 pledge of stability. 
 
 The father of the Samnite general who had taken the 
 Roman legions in a trap, advised him either to kill them 
 
EMERSON. 173 
 
 all or to dismiss them without conditions. This seems 
 the world's alternative, the former method for choice. 
 But if the genius will not be killed he suddenly finds 
 himself adored for work often far inferior to that of 
 his neglected prime. As it befell Carlyle, Browning, 
 Mill, so it befell Emerson. It had taken years to 
 exhaust a small edition of "Nature"; "The Dial" had 
 been given away or destroyed; he had written in 1859, 
 "I have not now one disciple"; but in 1860 not a 
 copy of the " Conduct of Life " could be had within two 
 days after the publication of the book. So rapid a sale 
 precluded any deliberate verdict on its merits, and was 
 in fact not a tribute to the book, but to the author, who 
 might in a sense be said to have lived and written only 
 for these forty-eight hours. Fame had at last overtaken 
 desert, and even outrun her ; for, excellent as Emerson's 
 later works still are, they want inspiration. The tersest 
 of writers shows some symptoms of garrulity, and 
 unconsciously evades the trouble of original composition 
 by a free recourse to anecdote. It is also significant 
 that, with great occasional exceptions, like "The Sove 
 reignty of Ethics," and "The Preacher," he has least 
 to say upon the loftiest themes. He writes better on 
 wealth, culture, eloquence ; than on poetry, imagination, 
 immortality. When, as is sometimes the case, grandeur 
 is attained in these later writings, it is not the sublime 
 of poetry, but of ethic. "Every man takes care that 
 his neighbour shall not cheat him. But a day comes 
 when he begins to care that he do not cheat his 
 neighbour. Then all goes well. He has changed his 
 market-cart into a chariot of the sun." A thought still 
 
174 LIFE OF 
 
 more pithily embodied in the precept : " Hitch your 
 waggon to a star." 
 
 In 1867 Emerson published " May Day," the most 
 elaborate of his longer poems. In essentials it resembles 
 " Wood Notes," "Monadnoc," and the other earlier pieces 
 in which he had striven to merge his own individuality 
 in Nature's, and to identify himself with the life that 
 " sleeps in the stone, dreams in the plant, wakes in 
 the animal." It exhibits a decided advance on these 
 effusions, being nearly free from harshnesses and 
 obscurities, while the poet's absorption into the general 
 life of Nature is even more complete. Nothing can 
 more perfectly express the intoxication of fine spring 
 weather hurrying the minstrel, sometimes dropping a 
 rhyme in his speed, along in the general frolic of 
 dithyrambic joy : 
 
 " Where shall we keep the holiday ; 
 And duly greet the entering May ? 
 For strait and low our cottage doors, 
 And all unmeet our carpet floors ; 
 Nor spacious court nor monarch's hall 
 Suffice to hold the festival. 
 Up and away 1 where haughty woods 
 Front the liberated floods : 
 We will climb the broad-backed hills, 
 Hear the uproar of their joy ; 
 We will mark the leaps and gleams 
 Of the new-delivered streams, 
 And the murmuring rivers of sap 
 Mount in the pipes of the treen, 
 Giddy with day, to the topmost spire 
 Which for a spike of tender green 
 Bartered its powdery cap ; 
 
EMERSON. 175 
 
 And the colours of joy in the bird, 
 And the love in its carol heard ; 
 Frog and lizard in holiday coats, 
 And turtle brave in his golden spots. 
 We will hear the tiny roar 
 Of the insects evermore, 
 While cheerful cries of crag and plain 
 Reply to the thunder of river and main." 
 
 From the sensuous revel of teeming life and reckless 
 energy the poet ascends by many passages of beautiful 
 natural description to the spiritual conception of Spring 
 as the earthly type of the renovation of the soul : 
 
 " Under gentle types, my Spring 
 Masks the might of Nature's King, 
 An energy that searches thorough, 
 From Chaos to the dawning morrow, 
 Into all our human plight, 
 The soul's pilgrimage and flight ; 
 In city or in solitude, 
 Step by step, lifts bad to good ; 
 Without halting, without rest, 
 Lifting Better up to Best ; 
 Planting seeds of knowledge pure, 
 Through earth to ripen, through heaven endure." 
 
 The chief defect of this rapturous and most melodious 
 poem, after its occasional looseness of metrical and gram 
 matical construction, is Emerson's usual fault of want 
 of symmetry and coherence, obscuring the development 
 of the thought, which, without this abruptness, would 
 appear apt and natural. 
 
 We must travel far back to record the decease of 
 Emerson's venerable mother, who, beautiful in her death 
 
176 LIFE OF 
 
 as in her life, softly faded out of the world in November, 
 1853. We have ourselves spoken with those who lovingly 
 remember her gentleness and gentlewomanliness, her 
 sweetness of manner and of voice. No other domestic 
 event is recorded until the marriage of Emerson's 
 youngest daughter, Edith, in 1865, to Colonel William 
 N. Forbes an auspicious union, which in time placed 
 Emerson above pecuniary anxiety, through the prudent 
 management of his son-in-law. Public honours, mean 
 while, were falling fast upon him. In 1863 he was 
 appointed one of the visitors to the Military Academy at 
 West Point, where he attracted attention by his eager 
 curiosity. In 1866 he received the degree of LL.D. 
 from his university, and in 1867 he was chosen orator on 
 Phi Beta Kappa day, "as he had been thirty years 
 before," Mr. Cabot reminds us, " but not now as a pro 
 mising young beginner, from whom a fair poetical speech 
 might be expected, but as the foremost man of letters of 
 New England." He served from 1867 to 1879 on the 
 Board of Overseers of the University, basking conten 
 tedly in the grateful academical environment, but taking 
 little active part in the administration. Once he is re 
 corded to have interfered decidedly, when his casting 
 vote defeated a proposal for exempting the students from 
 compulsory attendance at morning prayers. He would 
 not, he said, deny the young men the opportunity of 
 assuming once a day the noblest attitude man is capable 
 of, that of prayer. It does not seem to have occurred to 
 him that to favour this attitude was one thing, and to en 
 force it another. In 1870 he delivered a course of six 
 teen lectures at the University on "The Natural History 
 
EMERSON. 177 
 
 of the Intellect," "which I know the experts in philoso 
 phy will not praise ; but I have the fancy that a realist is 
 a good corrector of formalism." His mind, it is pro 
 bable, had always been too unsystematic for such a task, 
 and he was by this time incapable of any sustained 
 intellectual effort. He fell back on old material, the 
 most recent being the lectures on " Philosophy for the 
 People," delivered in 1866, and summarized in Mr. 
 Cabot's biography. These seem to have teemed with 
 acute and penetrating remarks, but to have been at most 
 a very modest contribution to so great a theme as the 
 natural history of the intellect. Young in heart as ever, 
 Emerson perceived that he had grown old in faculty, and 
 yielded a cheerful submission to the inevitable dispensa 
 tion in his swan-song, " Terminus " : 
 
 " It is time to be old, 
 To take in sail : 
 The god of bounds 
 Who sets to sea a shore, 
 Came to me in his fatal rounds, 
 And said : ' No more 1 
 No farther spread 
 
 Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root, 
 Fancy departs : no more invent, 
 Contract thy firmament 
 To compass of a tent. 
 There's not enough for this and that, 
 Make thy option which of two ; 
 Economise the failing river, 
 Not the less revere the Giver, 
 Leave the many and hold the few- 
 Timely wise accept the terms, 
 Soften the fall with wary foot ; 
 12 
 
178 LIFE OF 
 
 A little while 
 Still plan and smile, 
 And, fault of novel germs, 
 Mature the unfallen fruit.' 
 
 As a bird trims her to the gale, 
 
 I trim myself to the storm of time, 
 
 I man the rudder, reef the sail, 
 
 Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime t 
 
 " Lowly, faithful, banish fear, 
 
 Right onward drive unharmed ; 
 
 The port, well worth the cruise, is near, 
 
 And every wave is charmed." 
 
 Emerson might now say, " Good-bye, proud world, I'm 
 going home," in another sense than when in his youth he 
 played hide-and-seek with the world in the whortle 
 berry bushes. A repetition of the 1870 course of lectures 
 in 1871 had greatly tried him. Sixty-four miles travel 
 weekly, with intellectual mischief, as he nervously fancied, 
 at the end of it. " I have," he tells Carlyle, " abundance 
 of good reading, and some honest writing on the leading 
 topics, but in haste and confusion they are misplaced 
 and spoiled. I hope the ruin of no young man's soul 
 will here or hereafter be charged to me as having 
 wasted his time or confounded his reason." A kind 
 friend, John M. Forbes, the father of his son-in-law, 
 came to the rescue by carrying him off, April, 1871, as 
 one of a party of twelve bound on a trip to California. 
 Mr. Thayer, one of the travellers, has recorded the 
 incidents of the excursion, and preserved morsels of 
 Emerson's conversation. Emerson had brought with 
 him the manuscript of " Parnassus," a selection of 
 poetry he was then preparing for the press ; and the cjr- 
 
EMERSON. 179 
 
 cumstance made his talk run much upon the poets. 
 " 'Faust' was a destructive poem, it lacked affirmation, he 
 did not like it." The second part he knew but imper 
 fectly. He had observed the peculiarity of the versifica 
 tion of Shakespeare's " Henry the Eighth," and wished 
 for more light on the problem of its authorship. The 
 coarseness, as he severely called it, of the Decameron 
 was made tolerable, not only by the grace and purity 
 of the language, but by its being steeped in Italian 
 nature, physical and moral. Machiavelli, he said, wrote 
 like the Devil, uttering his infernal sentiments with as 
 much sweetness and coolness as if they were summer 
 air. Wordsworth and Tennyson were quoted with high 
 praise : he admired the quality of William Morris's verse, 
 but deplored its quantity. He spoke highly of Byron as 
 an efficient poet, observing "there is a sort of scenic 
 and general luck about him." Imagination was the 
 solemn act of the soul in believing that things have a 
 spiritual significance. People had been to him with 
 scruples about the name of Christian, which he did not 
 share. He was as willing to be called Christian as 
 Platonist or Republican. " It did not bind him to what 
 he did not like. What was the use of going about 
 and setting up a flag of negation ? " There was never, 
 deposes Mr. Thayer, a more agreeable travelling com 
 panion ; he was always accessible, cheerful, sympathetic, 
 considerate, tolerant ; and there was always that same 
 respectful interest in those with whom he talked, even 
 the humblest, which raised them in their own estima 
 tion. The incidents of the trip, indeed, were nowise 
 trying to the temper. The almanac, Emerson told 
 
180 LIFE OF 
 
 Carlyle, said April, but the day said June ; the country 
 was covered with greenhouse flowers, and every New 
 England bird had a gayer counterpart. All California's 
 lions roared for Emerson the Yosemite cataract, the 
 Sequoia grove, the sea-lions of San Francisco, and Brig- 
 ham Young, now not again to roar for any one. But the 
 crown of the journey was perhaps the " Alta California's" 
 character of Emerson's discourse on immortality, re 
 peated in San Francisco : " All left the church feeling 
 that an elegant tribute had been paid to the creative 
 genius of the Great First Cause, and that a masterly use 
 of the English language had contributed to that end." 
 
 On the morning of July 24, 1872, Emerson was waked 
 by the crackling of fire, and saw a light in the closet, 
 which was next the chimney. Unable to reach the fire, 
 he ran down partly dressed to the front gate, and called 
 for help. His cries were heard, the neighbours came 
 running from all sides, but the wooden tenement could 
 not be saved. Books, manuscripts, and furniture were 
 almost entirely rescued by the clever promptitude of the 
 townsmen. They were removed to the Court House, 
 where a study was fitted up for Emerson ; the houseless 
 family found a refuge at the Manse, where he had 
 lived before his marriage. He had taken cold, suffered 
 for some days from an attack of low fever, and, atten 
 tion being naturally drawn to the failure of memory 
 from which he had already begun to suffer, this was 
 commonly attributed to the shock, incorrectly in Mr. 
 Cabot's opinion. 
 
 Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera. The glory of the 
 United States is public spirit : a feeling as finely displayed 
 
EMERSON. 181 
 
 towards men of whom the country is proud as in the 
 case of municipal improvements or charitable founda 
 tions. Americans set to work to repair Emerson's mis 
 fortune as they would have addressed themselves to 
 restore the Capitol. Mr. Francis Cabot Lowell called, 
 chatted, and went away, leaving behind him a letter 
 which was found to enclose a cheque for five thousand 
 dollars, the gift of himself and a few others. Between 
 eleven and twelve thousand dollars more were subscribed, 
 conveyed to Emerson with perfect delicacy, and acknow 
 ledged by him with perfect grace. "The list of my 
 benefactors," he said, " cannot be read with dry eyes or 
 pronounced with articulate voice. I ought to be in high 
 health to meet such a call on heart and mind, and not 
 the thoughtless invalid I happen to be at present." He 
 was indeed terribly shaken: his friends deemed a thorough 
 change to the Old World desirable, and in October a 
 thousand and twenty dollars more were presented to him 
 for that purpose. " I am a lover of men," said Emerson, 
 "but this recent wonderful experience of their tender 
 ness surprises." Accompanied by his daughter Ellen, he 
 sailed on October 28th 
 
 " To see, before he died 
 The palms and temples of the South." 
 
 Egypt was his goal, but he passed through England, 
 France, and Italy. In London he saw Carlyle, " who 
 opened his arms and embraced me. We had a steady 
 outpouring for two hours and more on persons, events, 
 and opinions." " It's a happiness to see Emerson once 
 more," said Carlyle. " But there's a great contrast 
 
182 LIFE OF 
 
 between him and me. He seems very content with life, 
 and takes much satisfaction in the world. It's a very 
 striking and curious spectacle to behold a man in these 
 days so confidently cheerful as Emerson." Though 
 Emerson came from the land of Rip Van Winkle, he 
 eulogized the good, strong sleep he got in England, 
 and in general took things most easily throughout his 
 tour, enjoying all the fine scenery that came in his 
 way, and not going a step out of his way for anything. 
 Egypt he found " good and gentle, if a little soporific. 
 These colossal temples, scattered over hundreds of miles, 
 say, like the Greek and like the Gothic piles, *O ye 
 men of the nineteenth century, here is something you 
 cannot do, and must respect.' " On his return he spent a 
 pleasant fortnight with Mr. Russell Lowell in Paris ; and 
 the list of new acquaintances he made in England includes 
 Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Browning, and Mr. Ruskin. He 
 thought Mr. Ruskin the model lecturer, but his pessim 
 ism worse than Carlyle's, for there was no laugh to clear 
 the air. He went to Milton's grave, and inquired, " Do 
 many come here ? " " Yes, sir, Americans ! " After 
 visiting friends at Oxford, Stratford-on-Avon, and Dur 
 ham, he fitly concluded his travel by two days spent 
 under the roof of the oldest and staunchest of his 
 English intimates, Mr. Alexander Ireland. Returning 
 to Concord, a surprise awaited him. As the engine 
 approached the station it sent forth a note of triumph, 
 peals of bells responded from the town, and. Emerson, 
 escorted with music between files of smiling school 
 children, found his house rebuilt, and every book and 
 every picture in its wonted place. 
 
Emerson had long been a queened pawn; he had 
 advanced from a humble pulpit to a rostrum whence he 
 could speak urbi et orbi. He was now something more, 
 a public institution. All took a pride in him ; and wher 
 ever he went in his own part of the country he was tended 
 by an invisible body-guard, vigilant lest the forgetful old 
 man should take hurt in boat or car. He was deeply 
 touched by the kindness of apparent strangers. " Perhaps 
 there should not be the word stranger in any language," 
 he said. Englishmen had wished to assist in rebuilding 
 his house, but he declined, feeling that his own country 
 men had done enough. Scotch admirers nominated him 
 for the Lord Rectorate of the University of Glasgow, where 
 he was opposed by no less a competitor than Disraeli, 
 and succumbed to the purer Caucasian. Carlyle had 
 beaten Disraeli on a like occasion, but Carlyle was at 
 hand to deliver a speech. He still occasionally wrote, or 
 gave a public reading : in 1876 he went as far as Rich 
 mond to speak before the University of Virginia, unwilling 
 to refuse an invitation which seemed like an overture of 
 reconciliation to the North. His last books were " Par 
 nassus," an extensive selection of poems, published in 
 1874, including, it was thought, many pieces better 
 adapted for recitation than for perusal ; and the compila 
 tion from his later writings entitled "Letters and Social 
 Aims." It had been promised to a London publisher 
 when his powers were more equal to the tasks of selec 
 tion, excision, and combination ; for hardly any lecture 
 appeared as originally delivered. His inability to fulfil 
 his engagement was for long a sore trouble, of which he 
 was relieved by the assistance of his future biographer, 
 
184 LIFE Of 
 
 Mr. J. Elliot Cabot, whose self-denying spirit he had 
 celebrated in the lines entitled " Forbearance " : 
 
 " Hast thou named all the birds without a gun ? 
 Loved the wood -rose, and left it on its stalk ? 
 At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse ? 
 Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust ? 
 And loved so well a high behaviour 
 In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, 
 Nobility more nobly to repay ? 
 O be my friend, and teach me to be thine ! " 
 
 After the completion of his task, Mr. Cabot would go 
 up at intervals, so long as Emerson continued to read 
 lectures, " for the purpose of getting ready new selections 
 from his manuscripts, excerpting and compounding them 
 as he had been in the habit of doing himself. There was 
 no danger of disturbing the original order, for this was 
 already gone past recovery." On the whole, therefore, 
 Mr. Cabot seems disinclined to print any more lectures, 
 and probably his resolution is wise. When thus engaged, 
 Emerson would take him out for afternoon walks, or 
 bring him into his study for a nocturnal chat a 
 bright ghost, the shadow of his former self, but sound 
 in body, and retaining perfect clearness of ideas, only 
 afflicted with failure of memory and a frequent inability 
 to fit his speech to his thought. His conversation ran 
 on happy themes, the progress and wonderful discoveries 
 of the age, the admirable persons he had known from 
 Channing downwards, the surprising virtue of the people 
 of Concord, great and small. In one of his latest letters 
 to Carlyle he says : " A number of young men are growing 
 up here of high promise, and I compare gladly the social 
 
EMERSON. 185 
 
 poverty of my youth with the power on which these draw." 
 As late as 1878 he traversed the western part of the State 
 of New York in a fruitless search for a young mechanic, 
 who had written him a grateful letter, but had questioned 
 his optimism. His last public appearance of importance 
 was at the fiftieth anniversary of the Unitarian Church at 
 Concord, New Hampshire, which was within one day of 
 the same anniversary of his first marriage at that very 
 church. He went to see the house in which his bride 
 had lived, but could not find it. No wonder; it had, 
 American fashion, been moved bodily, but existed still, 
 emblem of the speaker's faculty. He shared in the com 
 memoration proceedings by reading a hymn, undisturbed 
 by the difficulty he found in following the printed text. 
 
 Even in 1 88 1 Emerson spoke on Carlyle's death before 
 the Massachusetts Historical Society, and on " Aristo 
 cracy " before the Concord School of Philosophy. In 
 this last year of his life we obtain a glimpse of him from 
 Walt Whitman, who, on a visit to Mr. Sanborn, and 
 afterwards at Emerson's own house, noted him as a silent 
 but apparently attentive listener to conversation, "a 
 good colour in his face, eyes clear, with the well-known 
 expression of sweetness, and the old, clear-peering aspect 
 quite the same. A word or short phrase only when 
 needed, and then almost always with a smile." 
 
 In February, 1882, Longfellow died, and Emerson, a 
 friend of fifty years' standing, went to the funeral. " The 
 gentleman who lies here was a beautiful soul," he said, 
 " but I have forgotten his name." A few months before 
 he had said to a visitor : " When one's wits begin to fail, 
 it is time for the heavens to open and take him away." 
 
186 LIFE OF EMERSON. 
 
 This aspiration was fulfilled on April 27, 1882, after a few 
 days' illness from pneumonia. " In these last days in his 
 study his thoughts often lost their connection, and he 
 puzzled over familiar objects. But when his eyes fell on 
 a portrait of Carlyle that was hanging on the wall, he 
 said, with a smile of affection, " That is the man, my 
 man." When confined to his bed, "he desired to see all 
 who came. To his wife he spoke tenderly of their life 
 together and her loving care of him ; they must now part, 
 to meet again and part no more. Then he smiled and 
 said, " Oh, that beautiful boy ! " 
 
 Seldom had "the reaper whose name is Death" 
 gathered such illustrious harvest as between December, 
 1880, and April, 1882. In the first month of this period 
 George Eliot passed away, in the ensuing February 
 Carlyle followed ; in April Lord Beaconsfield died, de 
 plored by his party, nor unregretted by his country ; in 
 February of the following year Longfellow was carried to 
 the tomb ; in April Rossetti was laid to rest by the sea, 
 and the pavement of Westminster Abbey was disturbed 
 to receive the dust of Darwin. And now Emerson lay 
 down in death beside the painter of man and the searcher 
 of Nature, the English- Oriental statesman, the poet of 
 the plain man and the poet of the artist, and the prophet 
 whose name is indissolubly linked with his own. All 
 these men passed into Eternity laden with the spoils of 
 Time, but of none of them could it be said, as of Emer 
 son, that the most shining intellectual glory and the most 
 potent intellectual force of a continent had departed along 
 with him. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ^"^HE man in Emerson is easily pourtrayed, not so 
 the author. Other thinkers on his level have 
 usually been more or less systematic. They have, in 
 Emersonian phrase, " hitched their waggons," not to a 
 star, but to a formula, to which their thoughts converge, 
 and around which these may be grouped. But Emerson's 
 want of system is the despair of the natural historian of 
 philosophy, and if we place him rather upon the roll of 
 poets, we are still unable to remove him from the roll of 
 anomalies. Nor can the chronological method be 
 applied to him. A literary activity extending over the 
 third of a century usually implies development, modifi 
 cation, restatement and recantation, an earlier and a 
 later manner. Emerson never sang a palinode, never 
 made a new departure, took no old ideas back, and put 
 no new ideas forward. He did indeed apply his principles 
 more freely to politics and ordinary affairs ; " chemic selec 
 tion,'' moreover, gains more and more the upper hand of 
 " flamboyant richness " in his later style. But with these 
 abatements, and apart from the evidence of date occa 
 sionally afforded by historical allusions, he has left little 
 that he might not have written at any time of his life. 
 
188 LIFE OF 
 
 Renouncing, therefore, the endeavour to give a con 
 nected view of Emerson's writings, we will briefly enu 
 merate some of the respects in which he is most original 
 and remarkable. 
 
 More than any of the other great writers of the age, he is 
 a Voice. He is almost impersonal. He is pure from the 
 taint of sect, clique, or party. He does not argue, but 
 announces ; he speaks when the Spirit moves him, and 
 not longer. Better than any contemporary, he exhibits 
 the might of the spoken word. He helps us to under 
 stand the enigma how Confucius and Buddha and 
 Socrates and greater teachers still should have produced 
 such marvellous effects by mere oral utterance. Our 
 modern instructors, for the most part, seem happily born 
 in an age of print, and labour under singular obligations 
 to Dr. Faustus. With Emerson the printing press seems 
 an accident : he uses it because he finds it in his 
 way, but he does not need it. He would have been 
 a light of the age of Buddha or of Solon, as well as of 
 ours. 
 
 He is a characteristically American voice. He precisely 
 realizes the idea which the American scholar ought to set 
 before him. American literature must not be feeble and 
 imitative. It is vain to transplant a million cultivated 
 Englishmen across the Atlantic, if they think and speak 
 exactly like those who stay at home. But neither must 
 American literature be conceited and defiant, a rebel 
 against rules founded in the eternal fitness of things. Two 
 and two make four on both sides of the Atlantic. " A 
 Kosmos," if you will, but not " one of the roughs." 
 Emerson's attitude is perfect, manly and independent* 
 
EMERSON. 189 
 
 slightly assertive, as becomes the spokesman of a litera 
 ture on its trial. " Meek young men grow up in libraries, 
 believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, 
 which Locke, which Bacon, have given; forgetful that 
 Cicero, Locke, and Bacon, were only young men in 
 libraries when they wrote those books." He puts the Old 
 World under contribution ; he is full of verbal indebted 
 ness to its philosophers and poets; but what he borrows, 
 that he can repay. His thoughts continually repeat Plato 
 and Goethe ; but every competent reader perceives that 
 it is a case of affinity, not of appropriation. Poetical and 
 religious minds will think alike : it would nevertheless 
 have made little real difference to Emerson if Plato and 
 Goethe had never lived. But it would have made a 
 great difference to this American if Washington had never 
 lived. He was thoroughly possessed with the ideas of 
 the Declaration of Independence, and when some one 
 sneered at them as " glittering generalities " " Glittering 
 generalities ! " cried Emerson indignantly, " they are 
 blazing ubiquities ! " 
 
 Further, Emerson is an important figure in American 
 literature, as continuing, supplementing, and combining 
 two of the principal among American thinkers, parted but 
 for him by an immeasurable abyss. It will have suffi 
 ciently appeared from the citations already made that 
 Emerson's thought rests upon two sure pillars God and 
 man God, "re-appearing with all his parts in every moss 
 and cobweb ; " Man's soul " calling the light its own, 
 and feeling that the grass grows and the stone falls by 
 a law inferior to and dependent on its nature." The 
 first is the idea of the greatest of New England reasoners, 
 
190 LIFE OF 
 
 Jonathan Edwards, the Spinoza of Calvinism. " God 
 and real existence," said Edwards, "are the same." 
 "God is, and there is none else." As, however, he 
 retained all the tenets of Calvinism, " he is," says Mr. 
 Leslie Stephen, " in the singular position of a Pantheist 
 who yet regards all nature as alienated from God. Clear 
 ing away the crust of ancient superstition, we may still 
 find in Edwards writings a system of morality as enno 
 bling, and a theory of the universe as elevating, as can be 
 discovered in any theology." This "clearing away " was 
 the very operation which Emerson, whose study may 
 have been but little in Jonathan Edwards, did nevertheless 
 virtually perform on his system : 
 
 " He threw away the worser part of it, 
 And lived the purer with the other half." 
 
 His connection with Channing on the side of humanity is 
 as intimate as his connection with Edwards on the side 
 of Divinity, and his obligation is far more direct and per 
 sonal. The special distinction of Channing is his enthu 
 siastic assertion of the dignity of man, a mean animal 
 in the estimation of most theologians. Emerson, as 
 we have seen, thought that he owed little to Channing's 
 conversation, but he imbibed the speaker's spirit at every 
 pore. His magnificent claims for man as the organ of 
 the Universal Soul are but Channing's humanitarianism 
 quickened and sublimed by alliance with Edwards's 
 Pantheism. When Channing told George Combe that 
 " he did not think much intellect was necessary to dis 
 cover truth ; all that was wanted was an earnest love of 
 it ; seek for it, and it comes of itself somehow," he gave 
 
EMERSON. 191 
 
 Emerson a text to " write large." " The soul is in her 
 native realm, and it is wider than space, older than time, 
 wider than hope, rich as love. Pusillanimity and fear 
 she refuses with a beautiful scorn ; they are not for her 
 who putteth on her coronation robes, and goes out 
 through universal love to universal power." 
 
 Next to religion, morals. Here Emerson's special 
 characteristics are manifold. The most important are 
 summed up in Matthew Arnold's brief and exquisite 
 character of him as " The friend and aider of those who 
 would live in the spirit." Arnold compares him to Marcus 
 Aurelius, to whom the same character is equally applic 
 able. Mr. Thayer, nevertheless, is right in observing 
 that Emerson is Aurelius and something more. " Marcus 
 Aurelius was not a man possessed. Emerson was. His 
 morals are not merely morals, they are morals on fire." 
 Add to this that Aurelius is not an optimist : or at most his 
 optimism is that of acquiescence and resignation ; while 
 Emerson's is that of the morning stars singing together, 
 and the sons of God shouting for joy. His faith (for, 
 after all, optimism is a plain inference from the existence 
 of God) has brought upon him more objurgation than all 
 his heresies. Theologians are distressed at his imperfect 
 realization of evil and sin : that uncomfortable personage, 
 Henry James, senior, doubts if he can have had so much 
 as a conscience, seeing that, unlike James himself, he 
 attained the age of fourteen without 4;he slightest 
 temptation to commit a murder : Carlyle saw in him "a 
 gymnosophist sitting on a flowery bank." Mr. Morley, to 
 whom death is "a terrifying phantom" and life "a piteous 
 part in a vast drama," naturally finds " his eyes sealed 
 
192 LIFE OF 
 
 to at least one half of the actualities of nature and the 
 gruesome possibilities of things." As regards the " pos 
 sibilities," Emerson would perhaps have replied by his 
 own stanza : 
 
 " Some of your ills you have cured, 
 
 And the sharpest you still have survived ; 
 But what torments of pain you endured 
 From the evils that never arrived ! " 
 
 As respects the " actualities," the case is stronger, but 
 Emerson never said that all existing things were the 
 best, but that they were for the best. He insists that 
 all things gravitate towards the good, and that this pro 
 gression is infinite ; which, if we look back only as far as 
 the time when the worm first essayed "to mount the spires 
 of form," seems an irrefragable conclusion. From the 
 moral indifference often justly chargeable upon optimists 
 of Oriental type, Emerson is protected by the Marcus 
 Aurelius element in his constitution. He cannot be 
 accused of making the ways of virtue too easy. His 
 writings are full of the loftiest lessons of renunciation. 
 He it was who wrote : 
 
 " Though love repine and reason chafe, 
 
 There came a voice without reply : 
 Tis man's perdition to be safe, 
 When for the truth he ought to die." 
 
 " It is in vain," he says, " to make a paradise, but for 
 good men. The resources of America and its future 
 will be immense only to wise and virtuous men." 
 "When you shall say," he warns the scholar, "as 
 others do, so will I ; I renounce, I am sorry for it, 
 
EMERSON. 193 
 
 my early visions ; I must eat the good of the land, and 
 let learning and romantic expectations go until a more 
 convenient season : then dies the man in you ; then 
 once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and 
 science, as they have done already in a thousand thousand 
 men." The man," he says elsewhere, " who renounces 
 himself, comes to himself." * 
 
 Politics, being but applied morals, come next under 
 review : and here too Emerson was original and signifi 
 cant. Like Carlyle, he was in this department very weak 
 as well as very strong : and even his strength was chiefly 
 as a protest against certain evil tendencies of his day. 
 Carlyle's paradoxical glorification of despotism had the 
 merit of forcing into strong relief the most pernicious 
 features of the time, the cowardice of rulers, the weak 
 ness of authority, the general disposition to make words 
 do duty for deeds. Emerson's extreme assertion of indi 
 vidual right, which would have logically resulted in the 
 dissolution of the State, was still valuable as a counter 
 active of one of the most mischievous features of American 
 politics, the tendency to swamp all individuality in party 
 organization, controlled in the last resort by the cunning 
 and the base. Those Republicans who on occasion of 
 the late Presidential election broke the " Machine " by 
 preferring their country to their party, were probably not 
 unacquainted with Emerson's writings, and were at all 
 events such men as his writings were meant to produce. 
 Like Carlyle's, Emerson's extravagance eventually corrects 
 
 1 An excellent analysis of Emerson's ethics, and indeed of all his 
 essential characteristics as a thinker, will be found in " The Religion 
 of the Future," by Mr. J. B. Crozier. 
 
 13 
 
194 LIFE OF 
 
 itself : no nation could travel long on the road prescribed 
 by either of them without a sharp recall. Emerson him 
 self came to see that " easy good-nature had been the 
 dangerous foible of the Republic." This admission is 
 from his oration on the death of President Lincoln : the 
 peroration of which is one of the best instances of the 
 grandeur he attains when, rising above the local and 
 temporary in politics, he deals with the essential and 
 eternal : 
 
 " The ancients believed in a serene and beautiful Genius 
 which ruled in the affairs of nations, which, with a slow 
 but stern justice, carried forward the fortunes of certain 
 chosen houses, weeding out sinful offenders or offending 
 families, and securing at last the firm prosperity of the 
 favourites of heaven. It was too narrow a view of the 
 eternal Nemesis. There is a serene providence which 
 rules the fate of nations, which makes little account of 
 time, little of one generation or race, makes no account 
 of disasters, conquers alike by what is called defeat or 
 what is called victory, thrusts aside enemy and obstruction, 
 crushes everything immoral as inhuman, and obtains the 
 ultimate triumph of the best race by the sacrifice of every 
 thing which resists the moral laws of the world. It makes 
 its own instruments, creates the man of the time, trains 
 him in poverty, inspires his genius, and arms him for his 
 task. It has given every race its own talent, and ordains 
 that only that race which combines perfectly with the 
 virtues of all shall endure." 
 
 This maxim of the one special faculty of each race and 
 
EMERSON. 195 
 
 each man was a favourite one with Emerson. " A man," 
 he says, " is like a bit of Labrador spar, which has no 
 lustre as you turn it in your hand until you come to a 
 particular angle, then it shows deep and beautiful colours." 
 The illustration conducts us to the field of science, where 
 Emerson's position is again exceptional, and this time of 
 the very strongest. He fills the place which Goethe's 
 death had left void, of a poet divining the secrets of 
 nature by his instincts of beauty and religion. The 
 gates of the temple of modern science turn upon the two 
 main hinges of his thought real unity in seeming multi 
 plicity ; immanent, not external power. Of unity he says, 
 " Each animal or vegetable form remembers the next in 
 ferior and predicts the next higher. There is one animal, 
 one plant, one matter, and one force." Of Divine imma 
 nence : " There is a kind of latent omniscience not only 
 in every man, but in every particle. That convertibility 
 we so admire in plants and animal structures, whereby 
 the repairs and the ulterior uses are subserved, when one 
 part is wounded, or deficient, by another ; this self-help 
 and self-creation proceed from the same original power 
 which works remotely in grandest or meanest structures 
 by the same design, works in lobster or mite, even as a 
 wise man would if imprisoned in that poor form. 'Tis 
 the effort of God, of the Supreme Intellect, in the extreme 
 frontier of his universe." This is from one of his latest 
 writings : in the earliest he had said : " The noblest min 
 istry of Nature is to stand as the apparition of God. It 
 is the organ through which the universal Spirit speaks to 
 the individual, and strives to lead back the individual to 
 it." No wonder that a natural philosopher who is also a 
 
196 LIFE OF 
 
 poet Professor Tyndall should have written in his copy 
 of " Nature," " Purchased by inspiration." 
 
 Nature glides into art by the pathway of beauty, by 
 which art travels back to her. Emerson, as a writer, 
 stands in this middle ground ; he is rather a votary of the 
 beautiful than an artist. From his preference for the 
 classical over the romantic school, one would have ex 
 pected to have found the sentiment of form strongly 
 developed in him. On the contrary, few have been so 
 incapable of fashioning a symmetrical whole. He does 
 achieve it now and then in a short poem, but only by a 
 sort of casual inspiration or mental miracle. His single 
 thoughts are commonly beautifully moulded and exqui 
 sitely polished, but they are miniature wholes, not mem 
 bers of a great whole. He rarely tests his constructive 
 faculty by the delineation of a character or the narrative 
 of a sequence of events. What is peculiar to him, and 
 ample recompense for all his defects, is the atmosphere 
 of diffused beauty in which his works lie bathed. They 
 glimmer with a magical light, like twilight air, or the 
 waters of the Concord river in his own beautiful descrip 
 tion : " As the flowing silver reached the clump of trees 
 it darkened, and yet every wave celebrated its passage 
 through the shade by one sparkle." This fluid, living, 
 fluctuating beauty, by enveloping the entire composition, 
 makes amends for the want of linked continuity of 
 thought. An essay of his is like a piece of lustrous silk, 
 it changes as the light falls upon it; now one piece 
 chiefly charming, now another ; in a flat mind the whole 
 disappoints ; in a genial mood one would say to Emerson, 
 with Emerson : 
 
EMERSON. 197 
 
 " Thou can'st not wave thy staff in air, 
 
 Or dip thy paddle in the lake ; 
 But it carves the bow of beauty there, 
 And ripples in rhymes the oar forsake." 
 
 This general investiture of loveliness is unfavourable to 
 sustained eloquence. When Emerson essays high-wrought 
 passages they are apt to die away, or rather to melt into 
 a lower strain by such gentle gradations that you must 
 look up to see how far you have come down. His 
 isolated fine sayings may be counted and rated like 
 gems: but the pervading beauty of his work has the 
 character which he too absolutely attributes to all beauty ; 
 it is "like opaline doves'-neck lustres, hovering and 
 evanescent." " There is nothing so wonderful in any par 
 ticular landscape as the necessity of being beautiful 
 under which every landscape lies." This peculiarity 
 makes it difficult to assay and appraise him by quotation ; 
 the water in the vase never seems quite the same as the 
 water in the spring. So far as the charm of his style is 
 communicable, it seems to reside in his instinct for select 
 ing the words which wear the most witching aspect, 
 call up the fairest associations, and most adorn the 
 matter in hand. There could not be a happier instance 
 of " proper words in proper places," than the first two 
 sentences of the address at the Cambridge Divinity 
 School, delivered, be it observed, in June : "In this re 
 fulgent summer it has been a luxury to draw the breath 
 of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow 
 is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers." 
 Any other epithet than refulgent would have been a 
 misfit. What effect, too, is conferred upon a simple 
 
198 LIFE OF 
 
 catalogue of natural phenomena by perfect propriety of 
 diction, every word beautiful, and every word right ! 
 
 " It seems as if the day was not wholly profane in which 
 we have given heed to some natural object. The fall of 
 snowflakes in a still air, preserving to each crystal its 
 perfect form ; the blowing of sleet over a wide sheet of 
 water, and over plains ; the waving ryefield ; the mimic 
 waving of acres of houstonia, whose innumerable florets 
 whiten and ripple before the eye ; the reflections of trees 
 and flowers in glassy lakes; the musical, steaming, 
 odorous south wind, which converts all trees to wind- 
 harps ; the crackling and spurting of hemlock in the 
 flames ; or of pine logs, which yield glory to the walls 
 and faces in the sitting room these are the music and 
 pictures of the most ancient religion." 
 
 The subjective writer who imparts his own being freely 
 to his reader like Burns, or Shelley, or Carlyle, or Emer 
 son has this advantage over even greater writers 
 Homer, Shakespeare, Milton whose themes lie outside 
 themselves, that he can arouse personal affection, and a 
 fond concern for the perpetuity of his fame. " Love," 
 says Emerson, " prays. It makes covenants with 
 Eternal Power in behalf of this dear mate." Through 
 out Emerson's writings there is not a hint of his sub 
 jection to " the last infirmity of noble minds," but it is 
 an infirmity which his lovers and friends must take upon 
 themselves. One reflection occurs immediately : he can 
 never get beyond the English language. He has been 
 excellently translated into German, and even into Italian : 
 
EMERSON. 199 
 
 it is, perhaps, within the resources of French prose to 
 provide a better translation still. But no merely French, 
 or German, or Italian reader will have the least notion of 
 the magic of his diction : hardly even will the foreigner 
 well versed in English enjoy him to the full. As regards 
 the durability of his reputation with the English race, 
 Emerson, like most of the great moderns who have written 
 much and lived long, stands in his own light No more 
 than Goethe, than Wordsworth, than Hugo, has he given 
 us only of his best. The tribunal of letters looks grave, 
 in the persons of Mr. John Morley and of Matthew 
 Arnold. " There are pages," says the former quite truly, 
 " which remain mere abracadabra, incomprehensible and 
 worthless." And even the good is faulty, observes 
 Arnold, with equal truth. Emerson's diction wants " the 
 requisite wholeness of good tissue." Yet even these 
 accusing angels became compurgators, and dismiss 
 Emerson with a passport to posterity. Another kind of 
 immortality, perhaps the only kind which he greatly 
 valued, is his already. He is incorporated with the 
 moral consciousness of his nation. "His essential 
 teaching," says Professor Norton, in a letter to the writer, 
 " has become part of the unconsciously acquired creed 
 of every young American of good and gracious nature." 
 If more is to be claimed for Emerson, as it well may, we 
 should rest the claim, apart from his literary worth, on 
 his impersonation of one of the main tendencies of his 
 time, and his rebuke of another. This is an age of 
 science, and science has found no such literary inter 
 preter as Emerson. Not only, says Professor Tyndall, is 
 Emerson's religious sense entirely undaunted by the dis- 
 
200 LIFE OF EMERSON. 
 
 coveries of science ; but all such discoveries he com 
 prehends and assimilates. "By Emerson scientific 
 conceptions are continually transmuted into the finer 
 forms and warmer hues of an ideal world." While thus 
 in sympathy with his age where it is right, he is against 
 it where it is wrong. It has, as a whole, made the 
 capital mistake of putting happiness before righteousness. 
 Utilitarianism has begotten effeminacy, and effeminacy 
 discontent, and discontent despair. Posterity will see 
 in Emerson one man valiant and manly in a repining 
 age. A lesser man might earn greatness thus. The 
 story is told of shipwrecked mariners on a rock relieved 
 from fear when the lightning-flash revealed a humble tuft 
 of samphire, for the samphire is never covered by sea- 
 water. Welcome in such a plight the obscure weed, 
 much more the brilliant flower. 
 
 THE END. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Alcott, Amos Bronson, 96, 103 
 "American, The Young," Oration 
 
 on, 164 
 
 "Aristocracy," speech on, 185 
 Arnold, Matthew, on Emerson, 
 
 191 
 
 Boston Athenaeum, origin of the, 
 
 23 
 
 Boston, Emerson's school at, 30 ; 
 Emerson minister of Second 
 Church at, 47 
 
 Bowring, Emerson visits, 61 ; 
 introduces Emerson to A. Ire 
 land, 64 
 
 Bradford, Mrs., on Emerson's 
 mother, 18 
 
 Bremer, Frederika, her account of 
 Emerson, 160 
 
 Brook Farm experiment, 103-106 
 
 Brown, Rev. J., on Peter Bulkeley, 
 14 
 
 Brown, Samuel, entertains Emer 
 son, 143 
 
 Browning, Mr., 182 
 Buckminster, eulogium of W. 
 
 Emerson, 23 
 Bulkeley, Elizabeth, ancestor of 
 
 Emerson, 13 
 Bulwer, E. Lytton, born same day 
 
 as Emerson, 12 
 Byron, Emerson on, 179 
 
 C. 
 
 Cabot, Mr. J. Elliot, on Emer 
 son's sermons, 50 ; quoted, 84, 
 171 ; on Emerson's essays, 75 ; 
 his analysis of " Nature," 77 ; 
 on Transcendentalists, 82 ; 
 on Emerson's business faculty, 
 123 ; assists Emerson to prepare 
 "Letters and Social Aims," 
 184 
 
 California, Emerson's trip to, 178 
 
 Cambridge, Divinity School of, 
 36 ; class, lecture to, 89 ; lectures 
 before the University of, 176. 
 
 Carlyle compared with Emerson, 
 49 ; visit of Emerson to, 62-64 I 
 critique on his ' ' Sartor Re- 
 
202 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 sartus," 97 ; on death of Emer 
 son's son, 113 ; Emerson pub 
 lishes his works in America, 
 114 ; writes prefaces to Emer 
 son's Essays, 121, 128 ; Emer 
 son proposes he should visit 
 America, 129 ; second visit to, 
 139; on "English Traits," 147; 
 on the Civil War, 166 ; third 
 visit to, 181 ; Emerson's dying 
 words on, 186 
 
 Carlyle, Mrs., Emerson on, 129 
 Channing, W. E., 22; Emerson 
 studies, 38 ; character of his 
 conversation, 38 ; on Unitarian- 
 ism, 84 ; his influence on Emer 
 son, 190 
 Channing, W. H., his description 
 
 of Emerson, 97 
 Chapman, Dr. J., Emerson's 
 
 English publisher, 143 
 Character, Essay on, 125 
 "Circles," 108, 118 
 Clough, A. H., Emerson visits, 
 145 ; his estimate of Emerson, 
 160 
 
 Coleridge, Emerson visits, 61 
 Combe, George, on Channing, 38 
 Concord, town of, founded by 
 P. Bulkeley, 14 ; Emerson's 
 home in, 70; Emerson's ora 
 tion at, 72 ; Social Club, 108 
 " Conduct of Life," 169 
 Cooke, Mr., on Emerson's interest 
 in politics, 74 ; on contributors 
 to "The Dial," 103 
 Crozier's analysis of Emerson's 
 
 ethics, 193 
 Cuvier, 81 
 
 D. 
 
 Darwin, 12, 59, 81, 186 
 "Days," a poem, 133 
 
 De Quincey, Thomas, 142 
 
 " Dial, The " edited by Margaret 
 
 Fuller, 100 ; Emerson edits, 
 
 102 
 Disraeli, 183 
 
 E. 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, Emerson 
 spiritualized the philosophy of, 
 77, 189 
 
 Emancipation, Emerson on, 165 
 Emerson, Charles, engagement 
 of, 70 ; death of, 74 ; remains 
 of published in "The Dial," 101 
 Emerson, Edward, 25, 40 ; bril 
 liant promise of, 45 ; becomes 
 temporarily insane, 46 ; goes as 
 clerk to West Indies, 46 ; his 
 early death, 69 
 Emerson, Ellen, Emerson's first 
 
 wife, 48 ; early death of, 53 
 Emerson, Lidian, Emerson's 
 
 second wife, 73 
 
 Emerson, Mary Moody, Emer 
 son's aunt, influence of, on 
 him, 26 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, birth of, 
 ii ; childhood of, 25-27 ; in 
 fluence of his aunt, 26 ; reserved 
 character of, 28 ; education of, 
 29-32 ; a school teacher, 32 ; 
 enters Cambridge Divinity 
 School, 35 ; in bad health, 39 ; 
 seeks health in Florida, 42 ; 
 ethics of, 43 ; back at Divinity 
 School, 44 ; becomes minister 
 of Second Church, Boston, 47 ; 
 marries, 48 ; his sermons, 50 ; 
 his wife dies, 53 ; parts from his 
 congregation, 53 ; his farewell, 
 55 ; goes to Europe 56 ; his 
 letters from Europe, 59 ; visits 
 
INDEX. 
 
 203 
 
 Landor, 60 ; interview with 
 Coleridge, 61 ; with Carlyle, 
 62 ; with Mr. Ireland, 64 ; with 
 Wordsworth, 65 ; returns to 
 America, 66 ; on evolution, 69 ; 
 his engagement, 70 ; his home 
 in Concord, 70 ; second mar 
 riage, 73 ; essay on " Nature," 
 72 ', edits " Sartor Resartus," 
 76 ; his lectures on " Philosophy 
 of History," 84 ; founds society 
 of Transcendentalists, 82 ; ora 
 tion before the Phi Beta Kappa 
 Society, 86 ; address to Cam 
 bridge Divinity Class, 89 ; a 
 seer, not a philosopher, 93 ; 
 declines controversy, 93 ; on 
 Margaret Fuller, 95 ; on mira 
 cles, 90 ; compared with Haw 
 thorne, 98; edits "The Dial," 
 102 ; his poems in " The Dial," 
 102 ; his method of work, 108 ; 
 death of his child, 112 ; publishes 
 Carlyle's works in America, 1 14 ; 
 his essays published in England, 
 115 ; his narrow means, 123 ; 
 his poems, 130-135 ; second 
 visit to England, 139 ; re 
 visits Carlyle, 139 ; breakfasts 
 with Rogers, 141 ; visit to Paris, 
 144 ; lectures at Manchester 
 and Liverpool, 141 ; impres 
 sions of Oxford, 145 ; lectures 
 in London, 145 ; returns to 
 America, 147 ; funeral oration 
 on Thoreau, 159 ; his views on 
 politics, 163 ; on abolition, 165 ; 
 on the civil war, 166 ; his 
 Western lectures, 169 ; as a 
 public speaker, 169-170 ; on 
 style, 171 ; his later writings, 
 173 - 175 ; marriage of his 
 
 daughter, 176 ; visitor at West 
 Point Academy, 176 ; on Board 
 of Overseers, 176 ; lectures on 
 " Natural History of Intellect," 
 176 ; course on " Philosophy for 
 the People," 177 ; trip to Cali 
 fornia, 178 ; his house burnt, 
 180 ; third visit to Europe, 181 ; 
 his house rebuilt, 182 ; last 
 years, 185 ; death, 186 ; his 
 Optimism) r^ ; harmonist-* re 
 ligion with science, 195 ; his 
 style, 196 ; general character of, 
 199 
 
 Emerson, Ruth, R. W. Emerson's 
 mother, 12, 17, 18, 25; death 
 of, i7S 
 
 Emerson, Thomas, first settles by 
 the name in America, 13 
 
 Emerson, Waldo, death of, 112 
 
 Emerson, William, n ; settles at 
 Concord, 16 ; marriage, 17 ; re 
 moval to Boston, 19 ; literary 
 work of, 22 ; death of, 23 ; 
 abandons theology, 40 
 
 "English Traits," 147 
 
 Essays, on Nature, 77 ; Art, 
 60 ; Michael Angelo, 74 ; Mil 
 ton, 74 ; English literature, 75 ; 
 "Philosophy of History," 84; 
 " Man Thinking ; or, the 
 American Scholar, "86 ; Human 
 Culture, 88; in "The Dial, 1 ' 
 102 ; Method of Nature, 108 ; 
 on Circles, 108 ; on the Over- 
 Soul, 117 ; on Friendship, 119 ; 
 on Self-reliance and Heroism, 
 120 ; on History and Art, 120 ; 
 on Method of Nature, 124 ; 
 second series of, 125 ; first 
 series published in England, 
 12 r ; on Character, 124 ; on 
 
204 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Experience, 125 ; on Manners, 
 
 126 ; on Poetry, 127 
 Everett, E., his public speaking 
 
 compared with Emerson's, 170 
 Evolution, 59 ; Emerson's views 
 
 on, 69 
 Exeter Hall, Lectures in, 146 
 
 F. 
 Farley, Dr., on Emerson's preach 
 
 ing, 85 
 
 Florida, Emerson visits, 42 
 " Forbearance," Lines on, 184 
 Forbes, J. M., takes Emerson to 
 
 California, 178 
 Fourierism, Emerson on, 104 
 Fox, George, Essay on, 74 
 Free Trade, Effect of, 138 
 " Friendship," Essay on, 119 
 Frothingham on Transcendental 
 
 ism, 82 ; on New England 
 
 Unitarianism, 83 
 Froude, J. A., Emerson on, 145 
 Fuller, Margaret, 94 ; edits "The 
 
 Dial," 100 ; death of, 159 
 
 G. 
 
 Geoffroy St. Hilaire, 81 
 
 George Eliot on Emerson and 
 Carlyle, 128 
 
 Gipsies, Lines on, 132 
 
 Gladstone, Mr., 182 
 
 Goethe on inheritance, 12 ; W. 
 Emerson consults, 40 ; on fixity 
 of type, 81 ; lecture on, 152 ; his 
 writings had but slight influence 
 on Emerson, 190 
 
 H. 
 
 Harvard College, Emerson enters, 
 30 
 
 Haskins, Mr., on Emerson's 
 views, 94 ; on Emerson's habits 
 of literary work, 108 ; on Tho- 
 reau, 156 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, descrip 
 tion of Concord, 71 ; his rela 
 tions with Emerson, 98 
 
 Hedge, Dr., on Transcendenta- 
 lists, 82 
 
 Hegel, System of, 58 
 
 Heine, 59 
 
 Herbert, George, quoted, 80 
 
 "History," Lectures on "Philo 
 sophy of," 84 
 
 Holmes, Mr. J., on Emerson, 40 
 
 Holmes, Dr., on Phi Beta Kappa 
 Society lecture, 86; on Emer 
 son's poetry, 130 ; on his con 
 versation, 140 
 
 Howe, Mrs., on Margaret Fuller, 
 
 95 
 "Human Culture, 1 ' 88 
 
 I. 
 
 Independence, Emerson on De 
 claration of, 189 
 
 Ireland, Mr., entertains Emerson 
 in Edinburgh, 64 ; his copy of 
 " The Dial," 102 ; arranges 
 Emerson's lectures, 137, 141 ; 
 Emerson's visit to, 182 
 
 J- 
 
 Jackson, Andrew, 36 
 
 K. 
 
 Kant, 82 
 Keats, 58 
 
 Landor, Emerson visits, 60 
 Leigh Hunt, Emerson impressed 
 by, 143 
 
INDEX. 
 
 205 
 
 11 Letters and Social Aims," 171, 
 
 183 
 
 Lexington, Poem on the Battle 
 of, 73 ; Emerson preaches at, 
 75 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 12 ; Emerson's 
 oration on the death of, 194 
 
 Literature, Emerson's lectures on 
 English, 75 
 
 London, Lectures in, 145 
 
 Longfellow, Emerson at funeral 
 of, 185 
 
 Lord's Supper, Emerson's views 
 on the, 54 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, on influ 
 ence of Emerson, 86 ; on lecture 
 at Phi Beta Kappa Society, 86 ; 
 his poem comparing Emerson 
 and Carlyle, 129 ; on Thoreau, 
 158 ; on Emerson's elocution, 
 170 
 
 Lowell, F. C, his gift to Emer 
 son, 1 8 1 
 
 Luther, Essay on, 74 
 
 Lyell, Influence of, 59 
 
 M. 
 "Man the Reformer," Essay on, 
 
 102, 163 
 "Man Thinking," Essay on, 86, 
 
 89 
 
 Manners, Essay on, 126 
 Martineau, Miss, Emerson, 107; 
 
 character of, 144 
 Massachusetts Quarterly, 153 ; 
 
 Emerson's only contribution to 
 
 the, 156 
 
 " May Day," 173 
 " Method of Nature," 108, 124 
 Michael Angelo, Essay on, 74 
 Mill, J. S., Emerson visits, 61 
 Milnes on Emerson's Essays, 121 
 
 Milton, Essay on, 74 
 
 Mind and Manners, London lec 
 tures on, 146 
 
 Miracles, Emerson on, 90 
 
 Montaigne studied by Emerson, 
 29 ; lecture on, 152 
 
 Morley, Mr. J. , on Emerson, 199 
 
 Morris, William, 179 
 
 Murat, Achille, Emerson's ac 
 quaintance with, 42 
 
 N. 
 
 Napoleon, Lecture on, 152 
 
 "Natural History of the Intel 
 lect," 176 
 
 Nature, Essay on, 77-80 
 
 Newman, J. H., Emerson's per 
 sonal likeness to, 145 
 
 North American Review, Emer 
 son's essays in the, 74 
 
 Norton, Professor Andrews, on 
 Emerson's Divinity address, 91 
 
 Norton, Professor Charles E., on 
 Emerson's teaching, 199 
 
 O. 
 
 " Over-Soul/' Essay on the, 117 
 Owen, Richard, Emerson on, 144 
 
 P. 
 
 Panoplist journal established, 21 
 
 Pantheism of Emerson, 63, 77, 
 124 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 102, 153 ; lec 
 ture on, 155 ; his review of 
 Emerson, 157 
 
 " Parnassus," 178 
 
 Pascal's Pense"es, 29 
 
 " Past and Present," Emerson's 
 review of, 102 
 
 Patmore, Coventry, quoted, 127 
 
 Perkins, Jacob, 66 
 
206 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Phi Beta Kappa Society, 86 
 
 " Philosophy for the People," 177 
 
 Plato, Lecture on, 151 
 
 Poetry, Essay on, 127 ; analysis 
 
 of Emerson's, 130-35 
 Politics, Essay on, 121 ; Emerson 
 
 on, 162, 193 
 
 Prayer, Emerson's views on, 68 
 "Preacher, The,' 1 173 
 Puffer, Rev. Mr., u 
 
 Q. 
 
 Quakers, influence of, on Emer 
 son, 68 
 
 Quincy, Josiah, on Emerson's 
 college oration, 39 
 
 R. 
 
 Religion, Emerson's lecture on, 
 
 84 
 
 " Representative Men," 135, 151 
 " Rhodora," Lines on, 133 
 Ripley, Rev. E., stepfather of W. 
 Emerson, 16 ; Emerson lives 
 with, 70 
 Ripley, George, meetings at his 
 
 house, 8 1 
 
 Robinson, Henry Crabb, his im 
 pressions of Emerson, and 
 opinion of his lectures, 144 
 Rogers, Breakfast with, 141 
 Rome, Emerson visits, 61 
 Roxbury, Emerson keeps school 
 
 at, 35 
 
 Ruskin, Emerson on, 182 
 Russell, Dr. Le Baron, 76 
 
 S. 
 
 "Saadi/'apoem, 102 
 Sanborn, Mr., on Emerson's home. 
 70 
 
 " Sartor Resartus," 75, 81 ; Emer 
 son edits, 76 
 Science of Emerson, 199 
 Scott, Walter, 58 
 Shakespeare, Emerson's study of, 
 
 31 ; lecture on, 153 
 Slavery, Emerson's attitude to 
 wards, 165 
 Socialism, leaning of Transcen- 
 
 dentalists to, 104 
 "Society and Solitude," 171 
 Socrates, Emerson's essay on, 31 
 " Sovereignty of Ethics," 173 
 " Sphinx," Poem on the, 102 
 Stephenson, G., Emerson's inter 
 view with, 142 
 Sterling, John, on Emerson's 
 
 Essays, 122 
 
 Stonehenge, Expedition to, 147 
 Swedenborg quoted, 67 ; lecture 
 on, 151 
 
 T. 
 
 Temperance, Emerson's views on, 
 
 123 
 
 Tennyson, 179 
 "Terminus," 177 
 Thayer, Mr. , on Californian trip, 
 
 178 
 Thoreau, Henry, 157 ; Emerson's 
 
 funeral oration on, 159 
 "Thought Book," Emerson's, 108 
 "To Eva," a poem, 132 
 Transcendentalism, Lecture on, 
 
 87 ; disciples of, 100 
 "Transcendentalist," Journal, 81 
 Transcendentalists, Emerson's 
 
 discourse on, 102 
 Trollope, Anthony, on Emerson's 
 
 oratory, 170 
 "Two Rivers," allegory of the, 
 
 134 
 
INDEX. 
 
 207 
 
 Tyndall on "Nature," 195; on 
 science of Emerson, 199 
 
 U. 
 
 Unitarians, Influence of, 20 
 Unitarianism, service rendered by 
 
 Emerson to, 37 
 "Uses of Great Men," Lecture 
 
 on, 151 
 
 V. 
 
 Van Buren, President, address to 
 on wrongs of Indians, 91 
 
 Very, Jones, poetical enthusiast, 
 96 
 
 W. 
 
 Walden Pond, lines on, 71 
 
 Waldo family, 15 
 
 Ware, Henry, Emerson his col 
 league, 47 ; on Emerson's 
 Divinity address, 92 
 
 Whitman, Walt, on Emerson, 185 
 
 Wordsworth, 58, 179 ; visit of 
 Emerson to, 65 
 
 Y. 
 
 " Young American,'' discourse on, 
 
 108 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN P. ANDERSON 
 
 (British Museum). 
 
 L WORKS. 
 
 II. SMALLER COLLECTIONS 
 
 III. SINGLE WORKS. 
 
 IV. MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 V. SELECTIONS. 
 
 VI. APPENDIX 
 
 Biography, Criticism, etc. 
 Magazine Articles. 
 
 VII. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST 01 
 
 WORKS. 
 
 I. WORKS. 
 
 The Complete Works of Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson, comprising his 
 essays, lectures, poems, and 
 orations. (Bohn's Standard 
 Library.) 2 vols. London, 
 1866, 8vo. 
 
 The Prose Works of R. W. E. 
 New and revised edition. 2 
 vols. Boston, Cambridge 
 [Mass., printed], 1870, 8vo. 
 
 Works of R. W. E. 5 vols. 
 Boston, Cambridge [Mass., 
 printed], 1882, 8vo. 
 
 Emerson's Complete Works. 
 Riverside edition. [Edited by 
 
 J. E. Cabot.] 11 vols. Lon- 
 
 don, 1883-84, 8vo. 
 Works of R. W. E. London, 1883, 
 
 8vo. 
 The Works of R. W. E. [Edited 
 
 by John Morley.] 6 vols. 
 
 London, Edinburgh [printed], 
 
 1883, 8vo. 
 The introduction by John Morley 
 
 was printed separately in New 
 
 York, 1884. 
 
 II. SMALLER COLLECTIONS. 
 
 Essays, Lectures, and Orations. 
 
 London, 1848, 16mo. 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1851, 8vo. 
 
ii 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Orations, Lectures, and Addresses. 
 London, 1844, 16mo. 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1849, 16mo. 
 
 Essays and Orations. ( Universal 
 Library. Essays, vol. i.) Lon 
 don, 1853, 8vo. 
 
 Orations, Lectures, and Essays. 
 London, Glasgow [printed], 
 1866, 8vo. 
 
 III. SINGLE WORKS. 
 
 An Address delivered before the 
 Senior Class in Divinity College, 
 Cambridge, etc. Boston, Cam 
 bridge [Mass., printed], 1838, 
 8vo. 
 
 An Address delivered in the Court 
 House in Concord, Massa 
 chusetts, 1st Aug. 1844, on the 
 anniversary of the emancipation 
 of the negroes in the British 
 West Indies. Boston, 1844, 
 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. Boston, 
 
 1844, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. The Eman 
 cipation of the Negroes in the 
 British West Indies, etc. 
 (Catholic Series.) London, 1844, 
 12mo. 
 
 Behavior. [From "The Con 
 duct of Life"] Books. [From 
 " Society and Solitude "] 
 (American Prose). Boston, 
 1880, 8vo. 
 
 Books, Art, Eloquence. [From 
 " Society and Solitude."] Bos 
 ton, Cambridge [Mass., printed], 
 1877, 16mo. 
 
 Compensation. (Prose Master 
 pieces, Jrom Modern Essayists, 
 ed. by G. H. P.) London, 1886, 
 8vo. 
 
 Reprinted from " Essays." First 
 Serieg. 
 
 The Conduct of Life. Bostor 
 
 1860, 8vo. 
 Contents : Fate ; Power ; Wealth 
 
 Culture; Behavior; Worship; Cor 
 
 siderations by the Way; Beauty 
 
 Illusions. 
 Another edition. London 
 
 1860, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. London 
 
 1861, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. Boston 
 
 Cambridge [Mass. , printed" 
 1876, 16mo. 
 
 Another edition. London 
 
 1883, 8vo. 
 
 Part of " Bonn's Cheap Series < 
 Standard Works." 
 
 Culture, Behavior, Beauty. [Fror 
 " The Conduct of Life."] Bos 
 ton, Cambridge [Mass., printed" 
 1876, 24mo. 
 
 Part of the " Vest-Pocket Serie 
 of Standard and Popular Authors. 
 
 English Traits. Boston, 1856 
 8vo. 
 
 Contents : First Visit to Enr 
 land; Voyage to England; Land 
 Race; Ability; Manners; Truth 
 Character; Cockayne; Wealth 
 Aristocracy ; Universities ; Reliqion 
 Literature; The "Times;" Stom 
 henge ; Personal ; Result. Speech a 
 Manchester. 
 
 Another edition. London 
 
 1856, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. Boston 
 
 1857, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. London 
 
 1882, 8vo. 
 Essays. First Series. Bostoi 
 
 1841, 12mo. 
 Contents : History ; Self Rt 
 
 liance; Compensation; Spiritua 
 
 Laws; Love; Friendship; Prudence 
 
 Heroism; The Over-Soul; Circles 
 
 Intellect; Art. 
 Another edition. With pre 
 
 lace by Thomas Carlyle. Lon 
 
 don, 1841, 12mo. 
 Another edition. [London 
 
 1843}, 8vo. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 iii 
 
 Essays. Another edition. Lon 
 don, 1849, 16mo. 
 
 Another edition. Twelve 
 
 Essays. London [1852], 16mo. 
 
 Another edition. With pre 
 
 face by Thomas Carlyle. (Chap 
 man's Library for the People^ 
 No. 7.) London, 1853, 12mo. 
 
 Revised copyright edition. 
 
 Boston, 1885, 8vo. 
 
 Essays. Second Series. Boston, 
 
 1844, 12mo. 
 
 Contents '.The Poet ; Experience ; 
 Character ; Manners; Gifts ; 
 Nature; Politics; Nominalist and 
 Realist ; New England Reformers. 
 
 Another edition. (Catholic 
 
 Series.) London, 1844, 12mo. 
 Another edition. Boston, 
 
 1845, 8vo. 
 
 Part of the "Boston Library of 
 American and Foreign Literature." 
 
 Another edition. Eight 
 
 Essays. London, 1850, 16mo. 
 
 Another edition. London 
 
 [1852], 16mo. 
 
 First (second) Series. New 
 
 and revised edition. 2 parts. 
 Boston, Cambridge [Mass., 
 printed], 1876, 16mo. 
 
 Fortune of the Republic. Lecture, 
 etc. Boston, Cambridge ; 
 [Mass., printed], 1879, 8vo, 
 
 Historical Discourse delivered be 
 fore the Citizens of Concord, 
 12th September 1835, on the 
 Second Centennial Anniversary 
 of the Incorporation of the 
 Town. Concord^ 1835, 8vo. 
 
 Letters and Social Aims. Boston 
 1876, 8vo. 
 
 Contents : Poetry and Imagin 
 ation. Social Aims. Eloquence. 
 Resources. The Comic. Quotation* 
 and Originality, Progress of Cul 
 ture. Persian Poetry. Inspiration. 
 Greatness. Immoi tality. 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 Cambridge [Mass., printed], 
 1876, 8vo. 
 
 Love, Friendship, Domestic Life. 
 [Love and Friendship from 
 "Essays," First Series ; Domes- 
 lie Life from " Society and Soli 
 tude."] Boston, Cambridge 
 [Mass., printed], 1877, 16mo. 
 
 Man the Reformer. A Lecture. 
 London, Bolton printed [1844 ?], 
 16mo. 
 
 May - Day and other Pieces. 
 [Poems.] Boston, Cambridge 
 [Mass., printed], 1867, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1867, 8vo. 
 
 The Method of Nature: An 
 oration delivered before the 
 Society of the Adelphi, in 
 Waterville College, in Maine, 
 August 11, 1841. Boston, 
 1841, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1844, 12mo. 
 
 Miscellanies ; embracing Nature, 
 Addresses, and Lectures. Bos 
 ton, 1849, 16mo. 
 
 New and revised edition. 
 
 Boston, Cambridge [Mass., 
 printed], 1876, 16mo. 
 
 Nature. Boston, 1836, 16mo. 
 
 Contents '.Introduction ; Nature ; 
 Commodity ; Beauty ; Language ; 
 Discipline; Idealism; Spirit; 
 Prospects. 
 
 Nature, an Essay ; and Lec 
 tures on the Times. London, 
 1844, 16mo. 
 
 Another edition. Nature, 
 
 an Essay. To which are added 
 Orations, Lectures, and Ad 
 dresses. London, 1852, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. Boston, 
 
 Cambridge [Mass.], printed, 
 1876, 16mo. 
 
 An Oraticn [Literary Ethics] 
 delivered before the literary 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 societies of Dartmouth College, 
 etc. Boston, Cambridge [Mass., 
 printed], 1838, 8vo. 
 
 An Oration delivered before the 
 Phi Beta Kappa Society, Cam 
 bridge, August 31, 1837. Boston, 
 Cambridge [Mass., printed], 
 1838, 8vo. 
 
 Man Thinking. An Oration. 
 
 London, 1844, 12mo. 
 
 Reprinted from the preceding. 
 This oration is also entitled " The 
 American Scholar." 
 
 Parnassus. Selections from various 
 Poets. Edited by R. W. E. 
 Boston, 1875, 8vo. 
 
 Poems. Boston, 1847, 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1847, 12mo. 
 
 Another edition. Boston, 
 
 Cambridge [Mass., printed], 
 1865, 16mo. 
 
 Another edition. Boston, 
 
 1876, 8vo. 
 
 This edition, besides most of the 
 poems previously published, con 
 tains some never before printed. 
 
 Another edition. (American 
 
 Poems.) London [1881], 8vo. 
 
 Household edition. Edited 
 
 by J. E. Cabot. Boston, Cam 
 bridge [Mass., printed], 1884, 
 8vo. 
 
 Another edition. With prefa 
 tory notice by W. Lewin. 
 London ; Newcastle - on Tyne 
 printed, 1886, 16mo. 
 Part of " The Canterbury Poets." 
 
 Power, Wealth, Illusions. [From 
 ' The Conduct of Life."] Bos 
 ton, Cambridge [Mass., printed], 
 1876, 24mo. 
 
 One of a series, entitled Vest- 
 Pocket Series of Standard and 
 Popular Authors." 
 
 The Preacher. Reprinted from 
 The Unitarian Review. Boston, 
 1880, 8vo. 
 
 Representative Men. Boston, 
 
 1850, 12mo. 
 Contents -.Uses of Great Men. 
 
 Plato; or, The Philosopher-Plato; 
 
 New Readings. Swedenborg ; or, The 
 
 Mystic. Montaigne ; or, The Sceptic. 
 
 Shakespeare; or, The Poet. Napoleon; 
 
 or, The Man of the World. Goethe ; 
 
 or, The Writer. 
 Another edition. (Catholic 
 
 Series.) London, 1850, 12mo. 
 Another edition. (Bohn's 
 
 Shitting Series.) London, 1850, 
 
 8vo. 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1850, 8vo. 
 Another edition. (Chapman's 
 
 Library for the People, No. 3. ) 
 
 London, 1851, 12mo. 
 New and revised edition. 
 
 Boston, 1876, 16mo. 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1882, 8vo. 
 
 Representative Men and Eng 
 lish Traits. (Ward, Lock, & 
 Co.'s Popular Library of Liter 
 ary Treasures.) London, 1886, 
 8vo. 
 
 Right Hand of Fellowship to 
 Reverend H. B. Goodwin. Con 
 cord, 1830. 
 
 Society and Solitude. Boston, 
 1870, 16mo. 
 
 Contents -.Society and Solitude. 
 Civilisation. Art. Eloquence. Do 
 mestic Life. Farming. Work and 
 Days. Books. Clubs. Courage. 
 Success. Old Age, 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 Edinburgh [printed], 1870, 
 16mo. 
 
 One of " Law's Copyright cheap 
 editions of American Books." 
 
 Another edition. Boston, 
 
 Cambridge [Mass., printed], 
 1876, 16mo. 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 
 1883, 8vo. 
 
 Success, Greatness, Immortality. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Boston, Cambridge [Mass., 
 printed], 1877, 16mo. 
 
 Success appeared originally in 
 "Society and Solitude," Greatness 
 and Immortality in "Letters and 
 Social Aims." 
 
 The Young American : a Lecture. 
 London, 1844, 8vo. 
 
 IV. MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Biographical Sketch [of Henry D. 
 Thoreau]. (Excursions, etc., by 
 H. D. Thoreau.) Boston, 
 1863, 8vo. 
 
 The Correspondence of T. Carlyle 
 and R. W. Emerson, 1834-1872. 
 [Edited by C. E. Norton.] 2 
 vols. London, 1883, 8vo. 
 
 Revised edition. 2 vols. Bos 
 ton, 1886, 8vo. 
 
 The Dial. [Edited by S. M. 
 Fuller, R. W. Emerson, and G. 
 Ripley.] Vol. 1-4. Boston 
 [printed], London, 1841-1844. 
 Vols. iiL and iv. were edited by 
 Emerson. 
 
 Echoes of Harper's Ferry. By 
 James Redpath. Boston, 
 1860, 8vo. 
 
 Speech delivered at Tremont 
 Temple by R. W. Emerson, pp. 67- 
 71 ; Speech delivered at Salem, pp. 
 119-122. 
 
 The Gulistan, or Rose Garden. 
 Translated by F. Gladwin. 
 With an Essay on Saadi's Life 
 and Genius, by J. Ross, and a 
 Preface by R. W. Emerson. 
 Boston, 1865, 8vo. 
 
 The Hundred Greatest Men. Por 
 traits of the one hundred great 
 est men of history, reproduced 
 from steel engravings. [With 
 a general introduction to the 
 work by R. W. Emerson, etc.] 
 London, 1879, 4to. 
 
 Another edition. London, 
 1885, 8vo. 
 
 The Massachusetts Quarterly Re 
 view. [Edited by R. W. Emer 
 son, Theodore Parker, and J. 
 E. Cabot] 3 vols. Boston, 
 1847-50, 8vo. 
 
 Emerson only wrote the Editors' 
 Address. 
 
 Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 
 [Consisting of her autobiography, 
 and notices of her life by J. F. 
 Clarke, R. W. Emerson, and W. 
 H. Channing.] 3 vols. Bos 
 ton, 1852, 8vo. 
 
 Emerson wrote the chapters on 
 Concord and on Boston in voL i. 
 
 Plutarch's Morals. Translated 
 from the Greek by several 
 hands. Corrected and revised 
 by William W. Goodwin, with 
 an introduction by Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson. 5 vols. London, 
 
 1870, 8vo. 
 
 Sartor Resartus, by Thomas Car 
 lyle. (Preface by R. W. Emer 
 son.) Boston, 1836, 12mo. 
 
 Summer on the Lakes. By Sarah 
 Margaret Fuller. With auto 
 biography and memoir by R. W. 
 Emerson, W. H. Channing, 
 and others. London, 1861, 8vo. 
 
 Thoreau : the poet -naturalist. 
 With memorial verses. By 
 William Ellery Channing. Bos 
 ton [1873], 8vo. 
 
 Contains verses at pp. 161, 167, 
 and 183, which were never printed 
 by Emerson. 
 
 The Wanderer. A colloquial 
 poem, by William Ellery Chan 
 ning. [Edited by R. W. E. 
 i.e., R. W. Emerson.] Boston 
 
 1871, 12mo. 
 
 War. (Elizabeth P. Peabody's 
 ^Esthetic Papers, pp. 36-50.) 
 Boston, 1849, 8vo. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 V. SELECTIONS. 
 
 The Emerson Birthday Book. 
 [Containing selections from the 
 writings of R. W. E. Arranged 
 for every day of the year.] 
 Boston, 1881, 8vo. 
 
 Essay Gems of Emerson. With 
 an introduction by H. R. Haweis. 
 (Eoutledge's World Library, 
 No. 27.) London, 1886, 16mo. 
 
 Select Writings of Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson. With an introduc 
 tion by Percival Chubb. (Camelot 
 Series.) London, 1888, 8vo. 
 
 Thoughts from Emerson. Edin 
 burgh, 1883, 32mo. 
 
 VI. APPENDIX. 
 BIOGRAPHY, CRITICISM, ETC. 
 
 Alcott, A. Bronson. Emerson. 
 Cambridge [Mass.], 1865, 8vo. 
 Privately printed. 
 
 Concord Days. Boston, 
 
 1872, 8vo. 
 Emerson, pp. 25-40. 
 
 R. W. Emerson : an estimate 
 
 of his character and genius in 
 prose and verse. Boston, 
 1882, 8vo. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew. Discourses on 
 America. London, 18S5, 8vo. 
 
 Emerson, pp. 138-207. 
 Bartlett, George B. The Concord 
 Guide Book. Edited by G. B. 
 B. Boston, 1881, 8vo. 
 
 Contains an account of Emerson's 
 House. 
 
 Bartol, C. A. Radical Problems. 
 Boston, 1872, 8vo. 
 
 Transcendentalism, pp. 61-97. 
 Birrell, Augustine. Obiter Dicta. 
 Second series. London, 1887, 
 8vo. 
 Emerson, pp. 236-253. 
 
 Bremer, Frederika. The Homes 
 
 of the New World ; impressions 
 
 of America. Translated by 
 
 Mary Howitt. 3 vols. London, 
 
 1853, 8vo. 
 
 Numerous references to Emerson. 
 Bungay, George W. Crayon 
 
 Sketches and Off-hand Takings 
 
 of distinguished American 
 
 Statesmen, etc. Boston, 1852, 
 
 8vo. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 24-28. 
 Off-hand takings ; or, Crayon 
 
 Sketches of the noticeable men 
 
 of our age. New York [1860], 
 
 8vo. 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 119- 
 
 126. 
 Traits of Representative Men. 
 
 New York [1883], 8vo. 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 154- 
 
 172. 
 Burroughs, John. Emerson and 
 
 the Superlative. (Essays from 
 
 "The Critic," pp. 81-87). 
 
 Boston, 1882, 8vo. 
 Birds and Poets, with other 
 
 papers. Edinburgh, 1884, 
 
 12rno. 
 
 Emerson, pp. 211-242. 
 Bush, George. Professor Bush's 
 
 Reply to R. W. Emerson on 
 
 Swedenborg. A lecture delivered 
 
 at the Odeon, Boston. New 
 
 York, 1846, 8vo. 
 Cabot, James Elliot. A memoir 
 
 of Ralph Wai do Emerson. 2vols. 
 
 Boston, 1887, 8vo. 
 Another edition. 2 vols. 
 
 London, 1887, 8vo. 
 Con way, Moncure Daniel. 
 
 Emerson at home and abroad. 
 
 Boston, 1882, 8vo. 
 Another edition. (English 
 
 and Foreign Philosophical 
 
 Library, vol. xix.) London, 
 
 1883, 8vo. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 vii 
 
 Cook, Joseph. Twelve Monday 
 Lectures in Treraont Temple, 
 Boston, U.S., etc. London, 
 1877, 8vo. 
 
 Emerson's Views of Immortality, 
 pp. 1-10. 
 
 Cooke, George Willis. Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson : his life, writ 
 ings, and philosophy. London, 
 1882, 8vo. 
 
 Fourth edition. Boston, 
 
 1882, 8vo. 
 
 Crozier, John Beattie. The Re 
 ligion of the Future. London, 
 1880, 8vo. 
 Emerson, pp. 105-156. 
 
 Dana, William F. The Optimism 
 of Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 Boston, 1886, 12mo. 
 
 Duyckinck, Evert. Cyclopaedia 
 of American Literature, etc. 
 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1877, 
 8vo. 
 
 R. W. Emerson, vol. ii., pp. 182- 
 192. 
 
 Emersom, Ralph Waldo. Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson, Man and 
 Teacher. (The Round Table 
 Series.) Edinburgh, 1884, 8vo. 
 
 Friswell, J. Hain.-Modern Men 
 of Letters honestly criticised. 
 London, 1870, 8vo. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 333- 
 342. 
 
 Frothingham, 0. B. Theodore 
 Parker : a biography. Boston, 
 1874, 8vo. 
 Numerous references to Emerson. 
 
 Transcendentalism in New 
 
 England. New York, 1876, 
 8vo. 
 
 Emerson, pp. 218-249. 
 
 Memoir of William Henry 
 
 Channing. London, 1887, 8vo. 
 Numerous references to Emerson. 
 
 Froude, James Anthony. Short 
 Studies on Great Subjects. 
 2 vols. London, 1867, 8vo. 
 
 Representative Men, vol. ii., pp. 
 230-254. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle, a history of 
 
 the first forty years of his life, 
 1795-1835. 2 vols. London, 
 1882, 8vo. 
 References to Emerson. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle, a history of 
 
 his life in London, 1834-1881. 
 2 vols. London, 1884, 8vo. 
 
 Numerous references to Emerson. 
 
 Fuller, Margaret. Life without 
 
 and life within ; or, reviews, 
 
 narratives, etc. Boston, 1874, 
 
 8vo. 
 
 Emerson's Essays, pp. 191-198. 
 Garnett, Richard. Life of Thomas 
 Carlyle. ("Great Writers" 
 Series.) London, 1887, 8vo. 
 
 Numerous references to Emerson. 
 Gilfillan, George. A Gallery of 
 Literary Portraits. Edinburgh, 
 1845, 8vo. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 288- 
 306. 
 
 A Second Gallery of Literary 
 
 Portraits. Edinburgh, 1850, 
 8vo. 
 
 R. W. Emerson, pp. 174-196. 
 
 A Third Gallery of Portraits. 
 
 Edinburgh, 1854, 8vo. 
 Emerson, pp. 328-336. 
 
 Gilman, Arthur. Poets' Homes. 
 Pen and Pencil Sketches of 
 American poets and their 
 homes. Second series. Boston, 
 1880, 4to. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 140- 
 171. 
 
 Grimm, Herman. Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson iiber Goethe und 
 Shakespeare. Aus dem Eng- 
 lischen nebst einer Critik der 
 Schriften Emerson's von H. G* 
 Hannover, 1857, 8vo. 
 
viii 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Grimm, Herman. Neue Essays 
 iiber Kunst und Literatur. 
 Berlin, 1865, 8vo. 
 
 E. W. Emerson, pp. 1-23. 
 
 Literature. Boston, 1886, 
 
 8vo. 
 
 Ralph Emerson, pp. 1-43. 
 Griswold, Hattie Tyng. Home 
 Life of Great Authors. Chicago, 
 1887, 8vo, 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 133- 
 
 Guernsey, Alfred H. R. W. 
 Emerson : philosopher and 
 poet New York, 1881, 8vo. 
 
 Hague, William. Ralph W. 
 Emerson (Life and Philosophy). 
 A paper read Dec. 14, 1883, etc. 
 New York, 1884, 8vo. 
 
 Haskins, David Greene. Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson, his maternal 
 ancestors, with some reminis 
 cences of him. [Illustrated.] 
 London [1887], 8vo. 
 
 Hawthorne, Julian. Confessions 
 and Criticisms. Boston, 1887, 
 8vo. 
 
 Emerson as an American, pp. 
 186-217. 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Passages 
 from the American Note-Books. 
 2 vols. Boston, 1868, 8vo. 
 References to Emerson. 
 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell. 
 American Men of Letters. 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. Boston, 
 1885, 8vo. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson. [A 
 
 biography.] London, 1885, 
 8vo. 
 
 Ireland, Alexander. In Memor- 
 iam. R. W. Emerson ; recol 
 lections of his visits to England 
 in 1833, 1847-8, 1872-3, and 
 extracts from unpublished 
 letters. [Reprinted, with con 
 siderable additions, from the 
 
 "Manchester Examiner."] Lon 
 don, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, his 
 
 life, genius, and writings : 
 a biographical sketch. Second 
 edition, largely augmented, etc. 
 London, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 James, Henry. The Literary 
 Remains of the late H. J. 
 Boston, 1885, 8vo. 
 Mr. Emerson, pp. 293-302. 
 
 Landor, Walter Savage. Letter 
 from W. S. Landor to R. W. 
 Emerson [occasioned by the 
 publication of his " English 
 Traits."] Bath [1860], 12mo. 
 
 Landreth, P. Studies and 
 Sketches in Modern Literature. 
 Edinburgh, 1861, 8vo. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 298- 
 323. 
 
 Lemoinne, John. Nouvelles 
 
 Etudes critiques et biograph- 
 iques. Paris, 1863, 8vo. 
 
 Esquisses du Caractere Anglais, 
 par R. W. Emerson, pp. 144-176. 
 Lowell, James Russell. My Study 
 Windows. Second edition. Lon 
 don, 1871, 8vo. 
 
 Emerson, the Lecturer, pp. 274- 
 281. 
 
 The Poetical Works of J. R. L. 
 
 New revised edition. Boston, 
 1882, 8vo. 
 
 Emerson and Carl vie in "A Fable 
 for Critics." 
 
 Manning, J. M. Half Truths and 
 the Truth. Lectures, etc. 
 London, 1872, 8vo. 
 
 Lecture vii., pp. 268-316, on 
 Emerson. 
 
 Massachusetts Historical Society. 
 Proceedings of the Massachu 
 setts Historical Society, 1881- 
 1882. Boston, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 Tribute to Ralph W. Emerson, 
 vol. xix., pp. 298-312. Addresses by 
 Dr. Ellis, Dr. Oliver WendeU 
 Holmes, etc. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Nichol, John. American Litera 
 ture, an historical sketch, 1620- 
 1880. Edinburgh, 1882, 8vo. 
 
 The Transcendental Movement, 
 pp. 254-286 ; Emerson and Thoreau, 
 pp. 287-321. 
 
 Parton, James. Some noted 
 Princes, Authors, and States 
 men of our time. Edited by 
 J. P. New York [1886], 8vo. 
 
 Reminiscences of Ralph Waldo 
 Emerson, by Louisa M. Alcott, 
 pp. 284-288. 
 
 Peabody, Elizabeth Palmer. Re 
 miniscences of Rev. "Wm. Ellery 
 Channing. Boston, 1880, 8vo. 
 R. W. Emerson, pp. 273, 350, 
 364-67, 371-74, 377-81, 393, 402, 407, 
 435, 436. 
 
 Perussia, Leon Auguste. II 
 Carattere e La Vita Umana. 
 Saggi di Filosofia Americana di 
 Ralph Emerson. Prima ver- 
 sione Italiana con Introduzione 
 sulla Vita e sulle Opere dell' 
 Autore a cura di L. A. P. 
 Alilano, 1886, 8vo. 
 
 Powell, Thomas. The Living 
 Authors of America. First 
 series. New York, 1850, 8vo. 
 R. W. Emerson, pp. 49-77. 
 
 Richardson, Charles F. American 
 Literature, 1607-1885. New 
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 Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. i., 
 pp. 330-370. 
 
 Robinson, William S. " Warring- 
 ton "Pen-Portraits, etc. Boston, 
 1877, 8vo. 
 References to Emerson. 
 
 Sanborn, Frank B. Henry D. 
 Thoreau. (American Men of 
 Letters.) Boston, 1882, 8vo. 
 Numerous references to Emerson. 
 
 - The Genius and Character of 
 Emerson. Lectures [by several 
 authors] at the Concord School 
 of Philosophy, edited by F. B. S. 
 Boston, 1885, 8vo. 
 
 Scudder, Horace E. Men and 
 Letters ; essays in characteriza 
 tion and criticism. Boston, 
 1887, 8vo. 
 Emerson's Self, pp. 147-170. 
 
 Searle, January, i.e., George S. 
 Phillips. Emerson, his Life 
 and Writings. London, 1855, 
 12mo. 
 
 Shepard, William. Pen Pictures 
 of Modern Authors. New York, 
 1882, 12mo. 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 86-97. 
 
 Stedman, Edmund C. Poets of 
 America. Boston, 1885, 8vo. 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson, pp. 133-179. 
 
 Thayer, James Bradley. A West 
 ern Journey with Mr. Emerson. 
 Boston, 1884, 8vo. 
 
 Welsh, Alfred H. Development 
 of English Literature and 
 Language. 2 vols. Chicago, 
 1882, 8vo. 
 Emerson, vol.ii., pp. 523-642. 
 
 Whipple, Edwin Percy. Recol 
 lections of Eminent Men, etc. 
 Boston, 1887, 8vo. 
 
 Some Recollections of Ralph 
 Waldo Emerson, pp. 119-154. 
 
 American Literature and 
 
 other Papers. Boston, 1887, 8vo. 
 Emerson and Carlyle, pp. 234-258 ; 
 Emerson as a Poet, pp. 259-298. 
 
 Willis, N. Parker. Hurry- 
 Graphs ; or, sketches of scenery, 
 celebrities, etc. London, 1851, 
 8vo. 
 
 Emerson, pp. 107-111 ; Second look 
 at Emerson, pp. 111-113. 
 
 Wilson, James G., and Fiske, 
 John. Appleton's Cyclopaedia 
 of American Biography. New 
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 Emerson, vol. ii., pp. 343-348. 
 
 Wolff, H. Profeten van den 
 Nieuweren Tijd. 'S-Hertogen- 
 bosch, 1871, 8vo. 
 
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 Wolff, pp. 325-365. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 MAGAZINE ARTICLES. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo. West- 
 minster Review, vol. 33, 1840, 
 pp. 345-372. La Revue Inde- 
 pendante, by Daniel Stern, 
 (Countess D'Agoult), torn. 4, 
 1846, pp. 195-209. Revue des 
 Deux Mondes, by R. Turnbull 
 vol. 122, 1882, by Emile Monte"- 
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 torn. 7, 1850, pp. 722-737. 
 Blackwood's Edinburgh Maga 
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 643-657 ; same article, Littell's 
 Living Age, vol. 16, pp. 
 97.107. Tait's Edinburgh 
 Magazine, by George Gilfillan, 
 vol. 15 N.S., 1848, pp. 17-23 ; 
 same article, Littell's Living 
 Age, vol. 17, pp. 97-103. 
 Dublin Review, vol. 26, 1849, 
 pp. 152-179. Littell's Living 
 Age, by N. P. Willis, vol. 24, 
 1850, pp. 457-458. Continental 
 Monthly, by D. M. Colton, vol. 
 1, 1862, pp. 49-62. North 
 British Review, vol. 47, 1867, 
 pp. 319-358. Broadway, by 
 Robert Buchanan, vol. 2 N.S., 
 1869, pp. 223-226. Methodist 
 Quarterly Review, by G, 
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 357-374. Galaxy, by J. Bur 
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 etc., 543, etc. Harper's New 
 Monthly Magazine, by E. P. 
 Whipple, vol. 52, 1875, pp. 
 417-419. Catholic World, by 
 J. O'Connor, vol. 27, 1878, pp. 
 90-97. North American Re 
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 vol. 130, 1880, pp. 479-498. 
 Fortnightly Review, by Moncure 
 D. Con way, vol. 31 N.S., 1882, 
 
 Ep. 747-770. Atlantic Monthly, 
 y W. T. Harris, vol. 50, 1882, 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 
 pp. 238-252. Harper's New 
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 Hawthorne, vol. 65, 1882, pp. 
 278-281. Modern Review 
 (Letter), by W. H. Channing, 
 vol. 3, 1882, pp. 850-854. 
 New Monthly Magazine, by W. 
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 B. Herford, vol. 2, 1882, pp. 
 114-115. Fortnightly Review, 
 by Henry Norman, vol. 34 N.S., 
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 by J, M. Wheeler vol. 1, 1883, 
 pp. 117-120. Century Maga 
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 vol. 50, 1884, pp. 1-13. Temple 
 Bar, by C. A. Ward, vol. 72, 
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 Review, by W. L. Courtney, 
 vol. 38 N.S., 1885, pp. 319-331. 
 Good Words, by Augustine 
 Birrell, 1885, pp. 359-363. 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, by 
 Th. Bentzon, torn. 75, 1886, pp. 
 95-98. Westminster Review, 
 Nov. 1887, pp. 985-997. Good 
 Words, by F.H. Underwood, Dec. 
 1887, pp. 807-816. Quarterly 
 Review, Jan. 1888, pp. 130-159. 
 New Princeton Review, by G. 
 Bradford, vol. 5, 1888, pp. 
 145-163. 
 
 Address, July 1838. Boston 
 
 Quarterly Review, vol. 1, 1838, 
 
 pp. 500-514. 
 Address on Forefathers' Day, 
 
 1870. New Englander, by I. N. 
 
 Tarbox, vol. 30, 1871, pp. 175- 
 
 202. 
 and Carlyle. Revue des Deux 
 
 Mondes, by Emile Montegut, 
 
 torn. 7, 1850, pp. 722-737. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 
 
 and Carlyle, Matthew Arnold 
 
 on. Century Magazine, by John 
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 and Carlyle, Correspondence 
 
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 and his Friends. Literary 
 
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 and his Visit to Scotland. 
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 and his Writings. Howitt's 
 
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 " and Occultism. Lucifer, by 
 
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 and Spencer and Martineau. 
 
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 Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 
 
 and the "Dial." Literary 
 
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 Curtis, May 22, 1880, p. 178. 
 and the Pantheists. New 
 
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 and the Philosophy of Evolu 
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 and Transcendentalism. 
 
 American Review, vol. 1, 1845, 
 
 pp. 233-243. 
 As a Poet. North American 
 
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 135, 1882, pp, 1-26. 
 as a Writer and Teacher. 
 
 Month, by Thomas Slater, vol. 
 
 53, 1885, pp. 374-386. 
 as the Founder of a Literature. 
 
 Literary World (Boston), by T. 
 
 W. Higginson, May 22, 1880, 
 
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 Boyhoodof. Atlantic Monthly, 
 
 by J. E. Cabot, May 1887, pp. 
 
 650-667. 
 Burial Day. Critic (New 
 
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 Cabot's Life of. Macmillan's 
 
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 Dec. 1887, pp. 86-98. Satur 
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 208. Congregational Review, 
 
 March 1888, pp. 221-227. 
 College Days of. Literary 
 
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 Conduct of Life. Christian 
 
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xii 
 
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 Dial. Dial (Chicago), by Nor 
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 An English Ancestor of (Rev. 
 
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 English Traits. Westmin 
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 Dublin University Magazine, 
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 West of Scotland Magazine, 
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BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 xiii 
 
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 aminer, by C. A. Bartol, vol. 
 42, 1847, pp. 255-262. Christ 
 ian Remembrancer, vol. 15, 
 1848, pp. 300-352. Nation, by 
 C. E. Norton, vol. 4, 1867, pp. 
 430, 431. 
 
 Prose Works. Catholic 
 
 World, vol. 11, 1870, pp, 202- 
 211. 
 
 Recollections of. Harper's New 
 
 Monthly Magazine, by E. P. 
 Whipple, vol. 65, 1882, pp. 
 576-587. 
 
 Reminiscences of. Critic 
 
 (New York), by F. B. Sanborn, 
 vol. 2, 1882, pp. 123, 124. 
 
 Representative Men. British 
 
 Quarterly Review, vol. 11, 1850, 
 pp. 281-315 ; same article, Lit 
 tell's Living Age, vol. 26, pp. 
 1-16. Christian Examiner, by 
 C. A. Bartol, vol. 48, 1850, pp. 
 314-318. Palladium, vol. 1, 
 1850, pp. 44-55. North Ameri 
 can, by C. E. Norton, vol. 70, 
 1850, pp. 520-524. New Eng- 
 lander, by D. March, vol. 8, 
 1850, pp. 186-196. Eclectic 
 Review, vol. 3, N.S., 1852, pp. 
 568-582. 
 
 Society and Solitude. Fraser's 
 
 Magazine, vol. 2, N.S., 1870, 
 pp. 1-18. Littell's Living Age 
 
XIV 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 
 
 from the Spectator), vol. 105, 
 1870, pp. 161-163. 
 
 The, Thinker. Scottish Re 
 view, by George Stewart, April 
 1888. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 
 
 Writings of. Christian Ex 
 aminer, by F. H. Hedge, vol. 
 38, 1845, pp. 87-106. Prince 
 ton Review, vol. 13, 1841. p. 
 87, etc. 
 
 VII. CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS. 
 
 Nature . . . .1836 
 
 Essays (First Series) . . 1841 
 
 D\*\ (Edited) . . 1841-44 
 
 Essays (Second Series) . 1844 
 Poems .... 1847 
 
 Miscellanies . . . 1849 
 
 Representative Men . . 1850 
 
 English Traits . . 1856 
 
 Conduct of Life . 1860 
 
 May-Day and other pieces . 1867 
 
 Society and Solitude . . 1870 
 The Wanderer, by Channing 
 
 (Edited) . . 1871 
 
 Parnassus (Edited) . . 1875 
 
 Letters and Social Aims . 1876 
 Correspondence of Thomas 
 
 Carlyle and R. W. 
 
 Emerson . . . 1888 
 
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