. CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE PS 1631.A35"l889 """ """^ Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022107662 RALPH WALDO EMERSON AJi/ ESTIMATE OF ms CHARACTER AND GENIUS 3n ^ro0c an& (Peree A. BRONSON ALCOTT ILLUSTRATED LONDON ELI,K)T STOCK, 62 PATERNOSTER ROW, E. C "JZofTTE^ Y&g ol id nEip&VTa dgi/u/ima dalkdv ^ rtva xagnov nQooslovieg Hyovat, oi e/iol Xdyovg oBtco nqo- islvcov ev ^i§i.toig Tjiv te 'Atxixtiv of his faculties, and kept him a prisoner in his room ever afterward. It was a work occupying several months, as the octogenarian's visits to Boston were somewhat infrequent, and often including other busi- ness. Such moments as he could give were, of course, valuable ; and the publishers, at whose suggestion the work was undertaken, would meet him, now in the topmost story of some lofty building, and now in some dim-lighted basement, where together they would go over the unfinished sheets, — time gliding by for the nonce, all unheeded. So anxious was Mr. Alcott that his work on Emer- son should some day be given to the world, that after his paralytic shock, when his memory had lost its grasp of many things, and among others, of his recent " labors on his newly published book, — a copy of which he had not seen, — he still remembered his former earnest wish that it should be made public. And to one of his friends, who spent several hours with him each week, he remarked with much excitement, on two or three occasions, that his essay must be brought out at once ; insisting that it should be published in the philosophical magazine which his friend edited. Finally a copy of the book was brought to him, greatly to his astonishment and delight. This is all the more touching an incident of his friendship for the great IX Emerson, when it is remembered that the latter more than once said that " it would be a pity if Alcott survived him, since he alone possessed the means of showing to the world what Alcott really was." — (Cabot's Memoir of Emerson, vol. i. p. 281.) The book also contains Alcott's " Ion : a Monody," — read by him at the Concord School of Philosophy, and to which Mr. John Albee, in " The New- York Tri- bune," paid the following high praise : " It continues for us that tender strain bequeathed by Moschus's ' Lament for Bion,' Milton's ' Lycidas,' and Shelley's ' Adonais ; ' but it has a pathos and. beauty all its own, . . . faultless in tone and in art." Mr. Sanborn's ode to Emerson, " The Poet's Coun- tersign," also read at the Concord School, completes the volume, arid makes a worthy addition to that lofty form of verse that has enriched the literatures of all ages, from Pindar to Tennyson. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson ) V . . . Frontispieces Portrait of A. Bronson Alcott ) Emerson's House at Concord i Emerson's Summer House 56 The Summer School of Philosophy 59 Mr. Alcott's Study 67 Bridge at Concord 8i CONTENTS. Page. I Essay Monody ■'^ Odk . . . ^' Misfortune to have lived not knowing thee ! 'T were not high living, nor to noblest end, Who, dwelling near, learned not sincerity, Rich friendship's ornament that still doth lend To life its consequence and propriety. Thy fellowship was my culture, noble friend ! By the hand thou took'st me, and did'st condescend To bring me straightway into thy fair guild ; And life-long hath it been high compliment By that to have been known, and thy friend styled. Given to rare thought and to good learning bentj Whilst in my straits an angel on me smiled. Permit me then, thus honored, still to be A scholar in thy university. iiWEKMJN's HiilsE surprise and delight. And all good epic poets were thought to compose, not by choice, but by inspiration ; and so, too, the good lyric poets drew, they tell us, " from fountains flowing with nectar, and gathered flowers from the gardens and glades of the Muses; they, like bees, being ever on the wing. For the poet was a thing light-winged and sacred, unable to com- pose until he became inspired, and the imagination was no longer under his con- trol. For as long as he was in com- plete possession of it, he was unable to compose verses or to speak oracularly." And hence all noble numbers were credited by them, not to the poet whom they knew, but to the Power working in and through 3 him, and making him the most delighted of auditors whenever he chanted his verses, because he did not conceive them to be his. He was the Voice, the favored of the Nine. Hence the value they set upon discipline as the means of poetic divination. The poet, they conceived, must be most virtuous. It was essential to his accomplishment that he be chaste, that he be gentle, that he be noble in his generation, that his endowment be older than himself; that he descend from a race of pure souls, — bring centuries of culture in his descent among men, ideas of ages in his brain, — enabling him to conceive by instinct, and speak his experiences unconsciously, as a child 4 opens his lips, in his most rapturous accents. Therefore, any pretence of own- ership in the gift was esteemed an im- piety. For a prayer, a song, a tender tone, a glance of the eye, all those magnetic attractions known to friendship, had a like ancestry; were ours perspiially, primarily, as we became worthy pf being their organs. Is it an egotism in us to claim for Nfw England and for a contemporary of purs parts and antecedents like these ? or shall such endowments, admirable always, and . awakening enthusiasm, be the less prized when represented in a countryman of purs, and when we have so frequently partaken of the pleasure which his books, his 5 lectures especially, excite? I allude, of course, to Emerson. A rhapsodist by genius, and the chief of his class, his utterances are ever a surprise as they are a delight to his audiences ; select though these are, and not all unworthy of him. Hear how Goethe describes him, where in his letters to Schiller, he calls the rhapsodist — "A wise man, who, in calm thought- fulness, shows what has happened ; his discourse aiming less to excite than to calm his auditors, in order that they shall listen to him with contentment and long. He apportions the interest equally, be- cause it is not in his power to balance a too lively impression. He grasps back- 6 wards and forwards at pleasure. He is followed, because he has only to do with the imagination, which of itself produces images, and up to a certain degree, it is indifferent what kind he calls up. He does not appear to his auditors, but re- cites, as it were behind a curtain ; so there is a total abstraction from himself, and it seems to them as though they heard only the voice of the Muses." See our Ion standing there, — his au- dience, his manuscript, before him, — himself an auditor, as he reads, of the Genius sitting behind him, and to whom he defers, eagerly catching the words, — the words, — as if the accents were first reaching his ears too, and entrancing 7 alike oracle and auditor. We admire the stately sense, the splendor of diction, and are surprised as we listen. Even his hesitancy between the delivery of his periods, his perilous passages from para- graph to paragraph of manuscript, we have almost learned to like, as if he were but sorting his keys meanwhile for open- ing his cabinets; the spring of locks fol- lowing, himself seeming as eager as any of us to get sight of his specimens, as they come forth from their proper draw- ers ; and we wait willingly till his gem is out glittering; admire the setting, too, scarcely less than the jewel itself. The magic minstrel and speaker ! whose rhet- oric, voiced as by organ-stops, delivers 8 the sentiment from his breast in ca- dences peculiar to himself; now hurl- ing it forth on the ear, echoing; then, as his mood and matter invite it, dying like " Music of mild lutes Or silver coated flutes. Or the concealing winds that can convey Never their tone to the rude ear of day." He works his miracles with it, as Hermes did, his voice conducting the sense alike to eye and ear by its lyrical movement and refraining melody. So his compositions affect us, not as logic linked in syllogisms, but as voluntaries rather, or preludes, in which one is not tied to any design of air, but may vary his key or note at pleasure, as if improvised with- out any particular scope of argument ; each period, each paragraph, being a perfect note in itself, however it may chance chime with its accompaniments in the piece; as a waltz of wandering stars, a dance of Hesperus with Orion. His rhet- oric dazzles by circuits, contrasts, an- titheses ; Imagination, as in all sprightly minds, being his wand of power. He comes along his own paths, too, and al- ways in his own fashion. What though he build his piers downwards from the firmament to the tumbling tides, and so throw his radiant span across the fissures of his argument, and himself pass over the frolic arches, — Ariel-wise, — is the skill less admirable, the masonry less secure lO for its singularity? So his books are best read as irregular writings, in which the sentiment is, by his enthusiasm, trans- fused throughout the piece, telling on the mind in cadences of a current under-song, and giving the impression of a connected whole — which it seldom is, — such is the rhapsodist's cunning in its structure and delivery. The highest compliment we can pay to the scholar is that of having edified and instructed us, we know not how, unless by the pleasure his words have given us. Conceive how much the Lyceum owes to his presence and teachings ; how great the debt of many to him for their hour's II entertainment. His, if any one's, let the'' institution pass into history, — since his art, more than another's, has clothed it with beauty, and made it the place of popular resort, our purest organ of intellectual entertainment for New England and the Western cities. And, besides this, its im^j mediate value to his auditors everywhere, it has been serviceable in ways they least suspect; most of his works, having had their first readings on its platform, were here fashioned and polished in good part, like Plutarch's Morals, to become the more acceptable to readers of his published books. And is not the omen auspicious, that just now, during these winter evenings, at 12 the opening of this victorious year, Ms Sundays have come round again ; the me- tropoHs, eager, as of old, to hear his words. Does it matter what topic he touches ? He adorns all with a severe sententious beauty, a freshness and sanc- tion next to that of godliness, if not that in spirit and effect. " The princely mind, that can Teach man to keep a God in man ; And when wise poets would search out to see Good men, behold them all in thee." 'Tis near thirty years since his first book, entitled " Nature," was printed. Then fol- lowed volumes of Essays, Poems, Orations, Addresses ■ and during all the intervening period down to the present, he has read 13 briefs of his lectures through a wide range, from Canada to the Capitol ; in most of the Free States ; in the large cities, East and West, before large audiences ; in the smallest towns and to the humblest com- panies. Such has been his appeal to the mind of his countrymen, such his accept- ance by them. He has read lectures in the principal cities of England also. A poet, speaking to individuals as few others can speak, and to persons in their privi- leged moments, he must be heard as none others are . The more personal he is, the more prevailing, if not the more popular. Because the poet, accosting the heart of man, speaks to him personally, he is one with all mankind. And if he speak 14 eloquent words, these words must be cher- ished by mankind, — belonging as they do to the essence of man's personality, and, partaking of the qualities of his Creator, they are of spiritual significance. While, in so far as he is individual only, — unlike any other man, — his verses address special aptitudes in separate persons ; and he will belong, not to all times, but to one time only, and will pass away, — except to those who delight in that special mani- festation of his gifts. Now were Emerson less individual, ac- cording to our distinction, that is, more personal and national, — as American as America, — then were his influence so much the more diffusive, and he the Priest 15 of the Faith earnest hearts are seekincr. Not that reUgion is wanting here in New England ; but that its seekers are, for the most part, too exclusive to seek it inde- pendent of some human leader, — religion being a personal oneness with the Person of Persons ; a partaking of Him by put- ting off the individualism which distracts and separates man from man. Hence differing sects, persuasions, creeds, bibles, for separate peoples, prevail all over the earth ; religions, being still many, not one and universal, not personal ; similar only f' as yet in their differences. Still the re- ligious sentiment, in binding all souls to the Personal One, makes the many par- take of him in degrees lesser or greater. i6 Thus far, the poets in largest measure ; mankind receiving through them its purest revelations, they having been its inspired oracles and teachers from the beginning till now. The Sacred Books, — are not these Poems in spirit, if not in form ? their authors inspired bards of divinity? Meant for all men in all ages and states, they appeal forever to the springing faiths of every age, and so are permanent and perennial, as the heart itself and its ever- lasting hopes. See how the Christian Theism, for in- stance, has held itself high above most men's heads till now ; its tender truths above all cavil and debate by their tran- scendent purity and ideal beauty ! how 17 these truths still survive in all their freshness, keeping verdant the Founder's memory ! and shall to distant generations ; churches, peoples, persons, a widening Christendom, flourishing or fading as they spring forth, or fall away from this living stem. "The Son of Man, at last the son of woman, Brother of all men, and the Prince of Peace, Grafts, on the solemn valor of the Roman, Fresh Saxon service, and the wit of Greece." Now, am I saying that our poet is in- spiring this fresher Faith ? Certainly I mean to be so understood ; he, the chief- est of its bards and heralds. Not spoken always, 'tis implied, nevertheless, in his teachings ; defective, it is admitted, as col- ored by his temperament, which trenches on Personal Theism not a Httle by the stress he lays on Nature, on Fate ; yet more nearly complementing the New England Puritanism than aught we have, and com- ing nearest to satisfying the aspirations of our time. But it were the last thought of his, this conceiving himself the oracle of any Faith, the leader of any school, any sect of religionists. His genius is ethical, literary ; he speaks to the moral senti- ments through the imagination, insinua- - ting the virtues so, as poets and moralists of his class are wont. The Sacred Class, the Priests, differ in this, — they address the moral sentiment directly, thus en- 19 forcing the sanctions of personal right- eousness, and celebrating moral excellence in prophetic strain. 'Tis everything to have a true believer; in the world, dealing with men -and mat- ters as if they were divine in idea and real in fact ; meeting persons and events at a glance directly, not at a million re- moves, and so passing fair and fresh into life and literature, the delight and orna- . ment of the race. Pure literatures are personal inspira- tions, springing fresh from the Genius of a people. They are original ; their first fruits being verses, essays, tales, biogra- phies — productions as often of obscure as of il ustrious persons. And such, so far as 20 we have a literature, is ours. Of the rest, how much is foreign both in substance and style, and might have been produced elsewhere ! His, I consider original and American ; the earliest, purest our coun- try has produced, — best answering the needs of the American mind. Consider how largely our letters have been enriched by his contributions. Consider, too, the change his views have wrought in our methods of thinking ; how he has won over the bigot, the unbeliever, at least to tolerance and moderation, if not to ac- knowledgment, by his circumspection and candor of statement. " His shining armor « A perfect cliarmer; 21 "Even the homes of divinity Allow him a brief space, And Ill's thought has a place Upon the well-bound library's chaste shelves, Where man of vaiious wisdom rarely delves." Am I extravagant in believing that our people are more indebted to his teach- ings than to any other person who has spoken or written on his themes during the last twenty years, — are more indebted than they know, becoming still more so ? and that, as his thoughts pass into the brain of the coming generation, it will be seen that we have had at least one mind of home growth, if not independent of the old country ? I consider his genius the measure and present expansion of the American mind. And it is plain that he. 22 is to be read and prized for years to come. Poet and moralist, he has beauty and truth for all men's edification and de- light. His works are studies. And any youth of free senses and fresh affections shall be spared years of tedious toil, — in which wisdom and fair learning are, for the most part, held at arm's length, planet's width, from his grasp, — by grad- uating from this college. His books are surcharged with vigorous thoughts, a sprightly wit. They abound in strong sense, happy humor, keen criticisms, sub- tile insights, noble morals, clothed in a chaste and manly diction, and fresh with the breath of health and progress. We characterize and class him with the 2?> moralists who surprise us with an acci- dental wisdom, strokes of wit, felicities of phrase, — as Plutarch, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Antoninus, Saadi, Montaigne, Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Goethe, Cole- ridge, — with whose delightful essays, not- withstanding all the pleasure they give us, we still plead our disappointment at not having been admitted to the closer intimacy which these loyal leaves had with their owner's mind before torn from his notebook; jealous, even, at ^t having been taken into his confidence in the editing itself. We read, never as if he were vthe dog- matist, but a fair-speaking mind, frankly declaring his convictions, and committing 24 these to our consideration, hoping we may have thought like things ourselves ; often- est, indeed, taking this for granted as he wrote. There is nothing of the spirit of proselyting, but the delightful deference ever to our free sense and right of opin- ion. He might take for his motto the sentiment of Henry More, where, speak- ing of himself, he says: "Exquisite dis- quisition begets diffidence ; diffidence m knowledge, humility; humility,. good man- ners and meek conversation. For my part, I desire no man to take anything I write or speak upon trust without can- vassing, and would be thought rather to propound than to assert what I have here or elsewhere written or spoken. But 25 continually to have expressed my diffi- dence in the very tractates and colloquies themselves, had been languid and ridicu- lous." Then he has chosen a proper time and manner for saying his good things ; has spoken to almost every great interest as it rose. Nor has he let the good oppor- tunities pass unheeded, or failed to make them for himself. He has taken discre- tion along as his constant attendant and ally ; has shown how the gentlest temper ever deals the surest blows. His method is that of the sun against his rival for the cloak, and so he is free from any madness of those, who, forgetting the strength of the solar ray, go blustering against men's 26 prejudices, as if the wearers would run at once against these winds of opposition into their arms for shelter. What higher praise can we bestow on any one than to say of him, that he harbors another's prejudices with a hospitality so cordial as to give him, for the time, the sympathy next best to, if, indeed, it be not edifica- tion in, charity itself? For what disturbs and distracts mankind rnore than the un- civil manners that cleave man from man? Yet for his amendment letters, love, Chris- tianity, were all given ! How different is he in temper and man- ners from Carlyle, with whom he is popu- larly associated! but who, for the most part, is the polemic, the sophist, the 27 scorner: whose books, opened anywhere, show him berating the wrong he sees, but seeing, shows never the means of removing. Ever the same melancholy advocacy of work to be done under the dread master; force of stroke, the right to rule and be ruled, ever the dismal burden. Doomsday books are all save his earliest — Rhadamanthus sitting and the arbiter. He rides his Leviathan as fiercely as did his countryman, Hobbes, and can be as truculent and abusive; the British Taurus, and a mad one. Were he not thus possessed and fearfully in earnest, we should take him for the har- lequin he seems, nor see the sorrowing sadness playing off its load in this gro- 28 tesque mirth, this scornful irony of his; he painting in spite of himself his por- traits in the warmth of admiration, the fire of wrath, and giving mythology for history; all the while distorting the facts into grimace in his grim moods. Yet, what breadth of perspective, strength of outline! the realism how appalling, the egotism how enormous, — all history show- ing in the background of the one figure, Carlyle. Burns, Goethe, Richter, Mira- beau, Luther, Cromwell, Frederick, — all dashed from his flashing pen, heads of himself, alike in their unlikeness, pro- digiously individual, willful, some of them monstrous ; all Englishmen with their egregious prejudices and pride ; no pa- 29 tience, no repose in any. He still bran- dishes his truncheon through his pages with an adroitness that renders it unsafe for any, save the few that wield weapons of celestial temper, to do battle against this Abaddon. Silenced he will not be ; talking terribly against all talking but his own ; agreeing, disagreeing, all the same ; he, the Jove, permitting none, none to mount Olympus, till the god deigns si- lence and invites. Curious to see him, his chin aloft, the pent thunders rolling, lightnings darting from under the bold brows, words that tell of the wail within, accents not meant for music, yet made lyrical in the cadences of his Caledonian refrain ; his mirth mad as Lear's, his hu- 30 mor as willful as the wind's. Not himself is approachable by himself even. And Emerson is the one only American de- serving a moment's consideration in his eyes. Him he honors and owns the bet- ter, giving him the precedence and the manners : "Had wolves and lions seen but thee, They must have paused to learn civility." Of Emerson's books I am not here designing to speak critically, but of his genius and personal influence rather. Yet, in passing, I may say, that his book of "Traits" deserves to be honored as one in which England, Old and New, may take honest pride, as being the live- 31 liest portraiture of British genius and accomplishments, — a book, like Tacitus, to be quoted as a masterpiece of histor- ical painting, and perpetuating the New Englander's fame with that of his race. 'Tis a victory of eyes over hands, a triumph of ideas. Nor, in my judgment, has there been for some time any criti- cism of a people so characteristic and complete. It remains for him to do like justice to New England. Not a metaphy- sician, and rightly discarding any claims to systematic thinking; a poet in spirit, if not always in form ; the consistent ideal- ist, yet the realist none the less, he has illustrated the learning and thought of former times on the noblest themes, and 32 come nearest of any to emancipating the mind of his own time from the errors and dreams of past ages. Why nibble longer there, Where nothing fresh ye find, Upon those rocks? Lo ! meadows green and fair ; Come pasture here your mind, Ye bleating flocks. There is a virtuous curiosity felt by readers of remarkable books to learn something more of their author's literary tastes, habits and dispositions than these ordinarily furnish. Yet, to gratify this is a task as difficult as delicate, requiring a diflfidency akin to that with which one 33 would accost the author himself, and with- out which graceful armor it were imperti- nent for a friend even to undertake it. We may venture but a stroke or two here. All men love the country who love mankind with a wholesome love, and have poetry and company in them. Our essay- ist makes good this preference. If city bred, he has been for the best part of his life a villager and countryman. Only a traveller at times professionally, he prefers home-keeping ; is a student of the land- scape; is no recluse misanthrope, but a lover of his neighborhood, of mankind, of rugged strength wherever found ; liking plain persons, plain ways, plain clothes ; 34 prefers earnest people, hates egotists, shuns publicity, likes solitude, and knows its uses. He courts society as a specta- cle not less than a pleasure, and so carries off the spoils. Delighting in the broadest views of men and things, he seeks all accessible displays of both for draping his thoughts and works. And how is his page produced ? Is it im- aginable that he conceives his piece as a whole, and then sits down to execute his task at a heat ? Is not this imagin- able rather, and the key to the compre- hension of his works ? Living for com- position as few authors can, and holding company, studies, sleep, exercise, affairs, subservient to thought, his products are 35 gathered as they ripen, and stored in his commonplaces ; the contents transcribed at intervals, and classified. The order of ideas, of imagination, is observed in the arrangement, not that of logical se- quence. You may begin at the last para- graph and read backwards. 'Tis Iris-built. Each period is self-poised; there may be a chasm of years between the opening passage and the last written, and there is endless time in the composition. Jewels all ! separate stars. You maj' have them in a galaxy, if you like, or view them separate and apart. But every one knows that, if he take an essay or verses, however the writer may have pleased himself with the cunning work- 36 manship, 'tis all cloud- fashioned, and there is no pathway for any one else. Cross as you can, or not cross, it mat- ters not ; you may climb or leap, move in circles, turn somersaults ; " In sympathetic sorrow sweep the ground," like his swallow in Merlin. Dissolving views, projects, vistas open wide and far, — yet earth, sky, realities all, not illu- sions. Here is substance, sod, sun ; much fair weather in the seer as in his leaves. The whole quarternion of the seasons, the sidereal year, has been poured into these periods. Afternoon walks furnished the perspectives, rounded and melodized them. These good things have all been 37 talked and slept over, meditated standing and sitting, read and polished in the ut- terance, submitted to all various tests, and, so accepted, they pass into print. Light fancies, dreams, moods, refrains, were set on foot,- and sent jaunting about the fields, along wood-paths, by Walden shores, by hill and brook-sides, — to come home and claim their rank and honors too in his pages. Composed of surrounding matters, populous with thoughts, brisk with images, these books are wholesome, homelike, and could have been written only in New England, in Concord, and by our poet. "Because I was content with these poor fields, Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams, 38 And found a home in haunts which others scorned. The partial wood-gods overpaid my love, And granted me the freedom of their state ; And in their secret senate have prevailed With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life, Made moon and planets parties to their bond, And through my rock-like, solitary wont Shot million rays of thought and tenderness. For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the spring. Visits the valley; — break away the clouds, — I bathe in the morn's soft and silvered air, And loiter willing by yon loitering stream. Sparrows far off, and nearer, April's bird, Blue-coated, flying before from tree to tree. Courageous, sing a delicate overture To lead the tardy concert of the year. Onward and nearer rides the sun of May ; And wide around, the marriage of the plants Is sweetly solemnized. Then flows amain The surge of summer's beauty; dell and crag, 39 Hollow and lake, hillside, and pine arcade, .\re touched with Genius. Yonder ragged cliff Has thousand faces in a thousand hours. The gentle deities Showed me the lore of colors and of sounds, The innumerable tenements of beauty, The miracle of generative force, Far-reaching concords of astronomy Felt in the plants and in the punctual birds ; Better, the linked purpose of the whole. And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty In the glad home plain-dealing nature gave. The polite found me impolite ; the great Would mortify me, but in vain ; for still I am a willow of the wilderness. Loving the wind that bent me. All my hurts My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk, A quest of river-grapesj a mocking thrush, A wild- rose, or rock-loving columbine. Salve my worst wounds. 4° For thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear : ' Dost love our mamiers ? Canst thou silent lie ? Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like nature pass Into the winter night's extinguished rnood? Canst thou shine now, then darkle, And being latent feel thyself no less? As, when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye, The river, hill, stems, foliage, are obscure; Yet envies none, none are unenviable.' " I know of but one subtraction from the pleasure the reading of his books — shall I say his conversation ? — gives me, his pains to be impersonal or discrete, as if he feared any the least intrusion of him- self were an offence offered to self-respect the courtesy due to intercourse and au- thorship ; thus depriving his page, his company, of attractions the great masters 41 of both knew how to insinuate into their text and talk, without overstepping the bounds of social or literary decorum. What is more delightful than personal magnetism? 'Tis the charm of good fel- lowship as of good writing. To get and to give the largest measures of satisfac- tion, to fill ourselves with the nectar of select experiences, not without some in- tertinctures of egotism so charming in a companion, is what we seek in books of the class of his, as in their authors. We associate diffidence properly with learning, frankness with fellowship, and owe a cer- tain blushing reverence to both. For though our companion be a bashful man, — and he is the worse if wanting this 42 grace, — we yet wish him to be an enthu- siast behind all reserves, and capable of abandonment sometimes in his books. I know how rare this genial humor is, this frankness of the blood, and how surpas- sing is the gift of good spirits, es- pecially here in cold New England, where, for the most part, " Our virtues grow Beneath our humors, and at seasons show." And yet, under our east winds of re- serve, there hides an obscure courtesy in the best natures, which neither tempera- ment nor breeding can spoil. Sometimes manners the most distant are friendly foils for holding eager dispositions subject to 43 the measure of right behavior. 'T is not every New Englander that dares venture upon the frankness, the plain speaking, commended by the Greek poet. " Caress me not with words, while far away Thy heart is absent, and thy feelings stray ; But if thou love me with a faithful breast, Be that pure love with zeal sincere exprest ; And if thou hate, the bold aversion show With open face avowed, and known my foe." Fortunate the visitor who is admitted of a morning for the high discourse, or permitted to join the poet in his after- noon walks to Walden, the Cliffs, or else- where, — hours likely to be remembered, as unlike any others in his calendar of experiences. I may say, for me they have 44 made ideas possible, by hospitalities given to a fellowship so enjoyable. Shall I de- scribe them as sallies oftenest into the cloud-lands, into scenes and intimacies ever new ? none the less novel nor remote than when first experienced ; colloquies, in favored moments, on themes, perchance " Of fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute ; " nor yet " In wand'ring mazes lost," as in Milton's page ; But pathways plain through starry alcoves high, Or thence descending to the level plains. Interviews, however, bringing their trail of perplexing thoughts, costing 45 some days' duties, several nights' sleep oftentimes, to restore one to his place and poise for customary employment ; half a dozen annually being full as many as the stoutest heads may well undertake without detriment. Certainly safer not to venture without the sure credentials, unless one will have his pretensions pricked, his conceits re- duced in their vague dimensions. "Fools have no means to meet But by their feet." But to the modest, the ingenuous, the gifted, welcome ! Nor can any bearing be more poetic and polite than his to all such, to youth and accomplished women 46 especially. I may not intrude farther than to say, that, beyond any I have known, his is a faith approaching to superstition concerning admirable persons; the divinity of friendship come down from childhood, and surviving yet in memory if not in expectation ; the rumor of excellence of any sort, being like the arrival of a new gift to mankind, and he the first to proffer his recognition and hope. His affection for conversation, for clubs, is a lively in- timation of the religion of fellowship. He, shall we say? if any, must have taken the census of the admirable people of his time, numbering as many among his friends, perhaps, as most living Ameri- cans; while he is already recognized as 47 the representative mind of his country, to whom distinguished foreigners are especially commended on visiting us. Extraordinary persons may be forgiven some querulousness about their company, when we remember that ordinary people often complain of theirs. Impossible for such to comprehend the scholar's code of civilities, — disposed as men are to hold all persons to their special standard. Yet dedicated to high labors, so much the more strict is the scholar with himself, as his hindrances are the less appreciable, and he has, besides, his own moods to humor. " Askest how long thou shalt stay, Devastator of the day?" 48 " Heartily know. When half-gods go, The Gods arrive." .Companionableness comes, by., nature. We meet magically, and pass with sound- ing manners ; else we encounter repulses, strokes of fate ; temperament telling against temperament, precipitating us into vortices from which the nimblest finds no escape. We pity the person who shows himself unequal to such occasions; the scholar, for example, whose intellect is so exacting, so precise, that he cannot meet his company otherwise than criti- cally ; cannot descend through the senses or the sentiments to that common level where intercourse is possible with men ; 49 but we pity him the more, who, from caprice or confusion, can meet through these only. Still worse the case of him who can meet men neither as sentimen- talist nor idealist, or, rather not at all in a human way. Intellect interblends with sentiment in the companionable mind, and wit with humor. We detain the flowing tide at the cost of lapsing out of perception into memory, into the limbo of fools. Excellent people wonder why they cannot meet and converse. They cannot, — no — their wits have ebbed away, and left them helpless. Why, but because of hostile temperaments, differ- ent states of animation ? The personal magnetism finds no conductor, when one 50 is individual, and the other individual no less. IiTdividuals repel; persons meet; and only as one's personality is suffi- ciently overpowering to dissolve the other's- individualism, can the parties flow together and become one. But individ- uals have no power of this sort. They are two, not one, perhaps many. Pris- oned within themselves by reason of their egotism, like animals, they stand aloof; are separate even when they touch ; are solitary in any company, hav- ing no company in themselves. But the free personal mind meets all, is appre- hended by all ; by the least cultivated, the most gifted ; magnetizes all ; is the spell-binder, the liberator of every one. 51 We speak of sympathies, antipathies, fascinations, fates, for this reason. Here we have the key to Hterary com- position, to eloquence, to fellowship. Let us apply it, for the moment, to Emerson's genius. We forbear entering into the precincts of genesis, and complexions, wherein sleep the secrets of character and manners. Eloquent in trope and utter- ance when his vaulting intelligence frees itself for the instant, yet see his loaded eye, his volleyed period ; jets of wit, sallies of sense, breaks, inconsequences, all be- traying the pent personality from which his rare accomplishments have not yet liberated his gifts, nor given him unre- servedly to the Muse and mankind. 52 Take his own account of the matter. " When I was born, From all the seas of strength Fate filled a chalice, Saying : ' This be thy portion, child : this chalice, Less than a lily's, thou shalt daily draw From my great art eries, — not less nor more.' All substances the cunning chemist, Time, Melts down into the liquor of my life, — Friends, foes, joys, fortunes, beauty and disgust ; And whether I am angry or content, Indebted or insulted, loved or hurt, All he distils into sidereal wine, And brims my little cup, heedless, alas ! Of all he sheds, how little it will hold, How much runs over on the desert sands. If a new Muse draw me with splendid ray, And I uplift myself into its heaven, The needs of the first sight absorb my blood ; And all the following hours of the day Drag a ridiculous age. To-day, when friends approach, and every hour 53 Brings book, or star-bright scroll of Genius, The little cup will hold not a bead more, And all the costly liquor runs to waste ; Nor gives the jealous lord one diamond drop So to be husbanded for poorer days. Why need I volumes, if one word suffice ? Why need I galleries, when a pupil's draught, After the master's sketch, fills and o'erfiUs My apprehension ? Why seek Italy, Who cannot circumnavigate the sea Of thoughts and things at home, but still adjourn The nearest matter for a thousand days ? " Plutarch tells us that of old they were wont to call men ^ara, which imports light, not only for the vehement desire man has to know, but to communicate also. And the Platonists fancied that the gods, being above men, had some- thing whereof man did not partake, pure 54 intellect and knowledge, and thus kept on their way quietly. The beasts, being below men, had something whereof man had less, sense and growth, so they lived quietly in their way. While man had something in him whereof neither gods nor beasts had any trace, which gave him all the trouble, and made all the confusion in the world, — and that was egotism and opinion. A finer discrimination of gifts might show that Genius ranges through this threefold dominion, partaking in turn of each essence and degree. Was our poet planted so fast in intel- lect, so firmly rooted in the mind, so dazzled with light, yet so cleft withal by 55 duplicity of gifts, that, thus forced to traverse the mid-world of contrast and contrariety, he was ever glancing forth from his coverts at life as reflected through his dividing prism, — resident never long in the tracts he surveyed, yet their persistent Muse nevertheless ? And so, housed in the Mind, and thence sallying forth in quest of his game, whether of persons or things, he was the Mercury, the merchantman of ideas to his century. Nor was he left alone in life and thinking. Beside him stood his townsman,* whose sylvan intelligence, fast rooted in sense and Nature, was yet armed with a .sagac- ity, a subtlety and strength, that pene- * Thoreau. 56 trated while divining the essences of the creatures and things he studied, and of which he seemed both Atlas and Head. Forcible protestants against the ma- terialism of their own, as of ..preceding times, these masterly Idealists" substan- tiated beyond all question their right to the empires they swayed, — the rich estates of an original genius. Emerson's Summer House. 'J'he Si'mmek Sci-totjL OF Philos