RALPH WALDO EMERSON Philosopher and Seer AN ESTIMATE OF HIS CHARACTER AND GENIUS In Prose…

Ὤσπερ γὰρ οἱ τὰ πεινῶντα θρέμματα θαλλὸν ἤ τινα καρπὸν προσείοντες ἄγουσι, οὺ ἐμοὶ λόγους οὔτω προτείνων ἐν βιβλίοις τήν τε Ἀττικὴν φαίνει περιάξειν ἅπασαν καὶ ὅποι ἂν ἄλλοσε βούλῃ.

“For as men lead hungry creatures by holding out a green bough or an apple, so you, it would seem, might lead me about all Attica and wherever else you please, by holding toward me discourses out of your books.”

RALPH WALDO EMERSON TO MARY E. STEARNS.

The gift of the birthday was truly a “surprise.” There lay a more beautiful book than Aldus or Elzevir ever made, slipped into the house as carelessly as a roseleaf or a dandelion-down blown in at the window. Mr. Alcott’s note indicated a “friend,” without naming him or her. And when I came to read the text, that, too, was such a Persian superlative on the poor merits of the subject, that I had to shade my eyes as if to accept only a part of the meaning. I may shake your belief in my good sense, if I say I don’t know but I suffered more than I enjoyed; but I soon came to admire the lyrical tone of all this remarkable writing, inspired by the most generous sentiment, fortified, too, by the wish to convey the good-will of other friends who made him their spokesman. So I made a covenant with myself to join these friends in ignoring the infirm actuality, stoutly holding up the ideal outline of vithe poor man we were talking of. And now I have learned to look at the book with courage, and at least to thank the friends who jointly completed it, very

heartily, for this rare and exquisite work of kindness. I have been twice tempted to send you some verses on this occasion, as they would be really more fit carriers of what I have to say; and perhaps I yet shall, though the rhyming fit seldom comes to me.

Mrs. Mary E. Stearns.

PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE.

The publishers have here presented a book about Emerson, written by the one man who stood nearest to him of all men; one from whom he drew inspiration in generous measure, and to whom, in return, he discovered without reserve his inmost self. Such a book cannot fail to be an original and vital contribution to Emersoniana. Not to read it, is to miss a clear and searching exegesis of one whose name has been called the greatest in American literature. It is like a portrait of one of the old masters, painted by his own brush.

The introductory sonnet to Emerson is pitched in a lofty key, and condenses into fourteen pithy lines a statement of the author’s life-long debt of friendship—material and spiritual. The essay itself was written twenty-odd years ago, while Mr. Alcott was still in the full vigor of his intellect. It was privately printed, and presented to Emerson on his birthday. A limited edition was published for the first time in 1882, and readily sold. The revision and reading of the proof-sheets of this edition was the last literary viiiwork which Mr. Alcott did, previous to the stroke of paralysis which deprived him of the perfect control 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 business. 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 Emerson 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 ixEmerson, 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 Tribune,” 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 Countersign,” also read at the Concord School, completes the volume, and makes a worthy addition to that lofty form of verse that has enriched the literatures of all ages, from Pindar to Tennyson.

CONTENTS.

Emerson’s House.

ESSAY.

The ancients entertained noble notions of the poet. He was an enthusiast and a rhapsodist. His work was done in 2surprise 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 compose until he became inspired, and the imagination was no longer under his control. For as long as he was in complete 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 3him, 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 4opens his lips, in his most rapturous accents. Therefore, any pretence of ownership in the gift was esteemed an impiety. 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 personally, primarily, as we became worthy of being their organs.

Is it an egotism in us to claim for New England and for a contemporary of ours parts and antecedents like these? or shall such endowments, admirable always, and awakening enthusiasm, be the less prized when represented in a countryman of ours, and when we have so frequently partaken of the pleasure which his books, his 5lectures 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 thoughtfulness, 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, because it is not in his power to balance a too lively impression. He grasps backwards 6and 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 recites, 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 audience, 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 7alike 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 paragraph to paragraph of manuscript, we have almost learned to like, as if he were but sorting his keys meanwhile for opening his cabinets; the spring of locks following, himself seeming as eager as any of us to get sight of his specimens, as they come forth from their proper drawers; 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 rhetoric, voiced as by organ-stops, delivers 8the sentiment from his breast in cadences peculiar to himself; now hurling it forth on the ear, echoing; then,

as his mood and matter invite it, dying like

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 without 9any 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 rhetoric dazzles by circuits, contrasts, antitheses; Imagination, as in all sprightly minds, being his wand of power. He comes along his own paths, too, and always 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 10for its singularity? So his books are

best read as irregular writings, in which the sentiment is, by his enthusiasm, transfused 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 11entertainment. 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 immediate 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 12the opening of this victorious year, his Sundays have come round again; the metropolis, 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 sanction next to that of godliness, if not that in spirit and effect.

’Tis near thirty years since his first book, entitled “Nature,” was printed. Then followed volumes of Essays, Poems, Orations, Addresses and during all the intervening period down to the present, he has read 13briefs 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 companies. Such has been his appeal to the mind of his countrymen, such his acceptance 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 privileged 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 14eloquent words, these words must be cherished 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 manifestation of his gifts.

Now were Emerson less individual, according 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 15of the Faith earnest hearts are seeking. Not that religion is wanting here in New England; but that its seekers are, for the most part, too exclusive to seek it independent of some human leader,—religion being a personal oneness with the Person of Persons; a partaking of Him by putting 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 as yet in their differences. Still the religious sentiment, in binding all souls to the Personal One, makes the many partake of him in degrees lesser or greater. 16Thus 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 everlasting hopes.

See how the Christian Theism, for instance, has held itself high above most men’s heads till now; its tender truths above all cavil and debate by their transcendent purity and ideal beauty! how 17these 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.

Now, am I saying that our poet is inspiring this fresher Faith? Certainly I mean to be so understood; he, the chiefest of its bards and heralds. Not spoken always, ’tis implied, nevertheless, in his teachings; defective, it is admitted, as colored 18by his temperament, which trenches on Personal Theism not a little by the stress he lays on Nature, on Fate; yet more nearly complementing the New England Puritanism than aught we have, and coming 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 sentiments through the imagination, insinuating 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 enforcing 19the sanctions of personal righteousness, and celebrating moral excellence in prophetic strain.

’Tis everything to have a true believer in the world, dealing with men and matters as if they were divine in idea and real in fact; meeting persons and events at a glance directly, not at a million removes, and so passing fair and fresh into life and literature, the delight and ornament of the race.

Pure literatures are personal inspirations, springing fresh from the Genius of a people. They are original; their first fruits being verses, essays, tales, biographies—productions as often of obscure as of illustrious persons. And such, so far as 20we 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 country 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 acknowledgment, by his circumspection and candor of statement.

Am I extravagant in believing that our people are more indebted to his teachings 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 22is to be read and prized for years to come. Poet and moralist, he has beauty and truth for all men’s edification and delight. 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 graduating from this college. His books are surcharged with vigorous thoughts, a sprightly wit. They abound in strong sense, happy humor, keen criticisms, subtile 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 23moralists who surprise us with an accidental wisdom, strokes of wit, felicities of phrase,—as Plutarch, Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Antoninus, Saadi, Montaigne, Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne, Goethe, Coleridge,—with whose delightful essays, notwithstanding 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 not having been taken into his confidence in the editing itself.