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RALPH WALDO EMERSON
HIS
LIFE, GENIUS, AND WRITINGS A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
TO WHICH ARE ADDED
PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF HIS VISITS TO ENGLAND
EXTRACTS FROM UNPUBLISHED LETTERS
AND MISCELLANEOUS CHARACTERISTIC RECORDS
ALEXANDER IRELAND
Sccont) Edition, largely Hugmcntc6
THREE AUTOTYPE PORTRAITS
LONDON : SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. 1882
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
9
ps
Plutarch says that when Cicero, as a young man, visited the oracle at Delphi, the advice given him was to make his own genius, not the opinions of others, the guide of his life.
One who of such a height hath built his mind, And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong, As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame Of his resoIvM powers,
nor pierce to wrong
His settled peace, nor to disturb the same ;
Which makes, that whatsoever here befalls. He in the region of himself remains.
Samuel Daniel (1562-1619).
PREFACE.
The rapid sale (within twelve weeks) of the first edition of this work has encouraged its author to prepare a second, augmented to considerably more than double its former size by the addition of matter which cannot fail to be interesting to admirers of Emerson. The "Biographical Sketch" has been increased from forty- seven to one hundred and twenty-nine pages, — the "Recollections of his three Visits to England," from twenty-five to forty-one pages, — and the "Miscellaneous Characteristic Records," from thirty-four to ninety-two pages. An important addition has been made in the shape of twenty-eight pages of Tributes to Emerson's life and genius, delivered at a special meeting of the Massachu- setts Historical Society, in Boston, in May last, by Dr. Ellis, Judge Hoar, and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the well- known author of "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," "Elsie Venner," "The Guardian Angel," and other works. For the beautiful memorial volume containing these addresses the author is indebted to the kindness of Dr. Holmes. The volume is unknown in England, no notice of it even having appeared on this side of the Atlantic. Dr. Holmes's eloge, coming as it does from the heart of one of Emerson's most intimate and cherished friends —
viii PREFACE.
himself a man of rare genius — possesses a deep interest not only on account of the spirit which pervades it, but also for its consummate literary expres^on.
The reader of the following pages will find in them many illustrative passages in connection with Emerson, without which any account of his life and work, however brief, would be inadequate. Among them may be named — his friendly relations with Margaret Fuller, per- haps the most remarkable woman of culture of her time ; exercising, during her unfortunately brief life, an acknow- ledged influence on the best thought of New England, — his connection with "The Dial," the most remarkable organ of high thought published in our time, — an account of that singular social experiment, " The Brook Farm Community," idealized by the weird genius of Hawthorne in that saddest of fictions, "The Blithedale Romance," — the resignation of his pastoral charge in 1832, and his sermon and farewell letter in connection therewith, — his addresses on Robert Burns and Walter Scott, — and his notable speech in Manchester in 1847, in which he gave utterance to his confidence in, and admiration of, England. Among the " Miscellaneous Characteristic Records " and "Anecdotes" will be found some impressions and glimpses that enable us, by a side-light, as it were, to see Emerson almost face to face.
In the " Biographical Sketch," the author has endeavoured to bring out in fuller detail some of Emerson's characteristics as a thinker, writer, and public lecturer, as well as his personal bearing in the family and social circle. This has been done by freely using what
PREFACE. ix
has been written about him by others — chiefly those who knew him well, and enjoyed his intimate friendship. Wherever he has found a vivid presentment of Emerson, the author has not hesitated to make use of it, and to incorporate it in his sketch, in order to add to the com- pleteness of the picture. In this respect he has been but "a gatherer and disposer of other men's stuff." His object throughout has been to present a likeness of Emerson as true as he can make it — to the fidelity of which not merely his own opportunities of observation, but also the faithful reports of friends and life-long associates have contributed. In the pages which follow, the reader may see, through many different eyes, some- thing of the personality and surroundings of the most original thinker and highest-reaching ethical teacher his country has produced — who, during a long, serene, and beautiful life — a life, the end and aim of which was " to make truth lovely, and manhood valorous " — has exercised on some of the most thoughtful minds of his age an influence probably not exceeded by that of any other wTiter of the century.
Inglewood,
BowDON, Cheshire, October 21, 18
[Of the three portraits in this volume, the first was taken about 1873, when Emerson was in his 70th year; the second is reduced from a large one which he sent to the author in 1867, taken probably a few years before. The youngest portrait is from a daguerreotype taken while he was in England, in 1847, he being then in his 44th year. His own family regard this likeness as the best, at this period of his life. There was a crayon hke- ness of him of rare excellence, taken at an earlier period of his life, by an American artist, Samuel Rowse, of which the writer has a photographic copy, and which he would have wished to include with the others, but it has been found too faded for successful reproduction.]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Ralph Wai.do Emerson :— His Life, Genius, and Writings :
A Biographical Sketch ...... i
The Funeral : Address of the Rev. J. Freeman Clarice, &c. 130 Recollections of Emerson's Visits to England in
1833, 1847-8, and 1872-3 140
Letters to Thos. Carlyle on "The Life of Friedrich "
and The American Civil War, 1S59-1S64 . .182
Letter to the Rev. Dr. Sprague, with Reminiscences
of the Rev. Ezra Ripley, D.D., 1 848 . . .191 Letters to Alex. Ireland, 1833 to 1873 . . .196 TRIP.UTF.S to Emerson : Addresses by Dr. Ellis, Judge Hoar, and Dr. OHver Wendell Holmes, at the Meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, May 11, 1882. 217 William Henry Channing on Emerson . . . 240 Miscellaneous Characteristic Records :
Emerson's House and Surroundings .... 246 Emerson at Home, Sketches by G. W. Curtis, A. B.
Alcott, N. Hawthorne, &c 249
Emerson as a Listener. — His Conversation . . . 255 Frederika Bremer's Visit to Emerson .... 257
The Voung Preacher . . . • • .261
Emerson Hissed while speaking against the Fugitive
Slave Law ....... 263
A Mother's Conversation with Emerson in a Railway
Car 266
CONTENTS.
Awkward Position while on a Lecturing Tour
Mr. A. B. Alcott and his Daughters .
Emerson and his Daughter ....
"INIonday Conversations"' at Concord
Concord and its Scenery .....
The " School of Philosophy" at Concord, 1880 .
A Touching Conversation, 1881 .
G. J. Holyoake's Visit .....
Some Literary Opinions .....
Harmony between his Life and Teachings .
Latest Glimpses of Emerson, by Walt Whitman .
Characteristic Anecdotes
The Brook Farm Community Experiment .
Emerson's Resignation of his Pastoral Charge in 1832 ,, Speech in Manchester, 1847 ,, Speech on Robert Burns, 1859 . ,, Address on Sir Walter Scott, 1871
" Emerson and Carlyle," by J. R. Lowell .
Articles on Emerson in English and American Periodical
Books, Pamphlets, &c., on Emerson .
Magazine Articles, <S:c., since his Death
Foreign Translations of, and Articles on Emerson
I'AGE
270
272
278 280 283 288
291
292
293 294
296
299 308 319 323 326
329 332
334 336 336 jj7
U2-4
Wf
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
'TT^HE grave has scarcely closed over the -■- remains of the great man whose renown all over the world is more firmly established than that of any Englishman of his time,* when the news comes to us that the foremost thinker and philo- sopher of America has joined the ranks of the majority. America has produced great soldiers, distinguished men of science, and poets of world- wide fame, but it is not too much to say that since the Declaration of Independence no man has so powerfully influenced the intellect of the nation as Ralph Waldo Emerson. On Thursday night, April 27th, at nine o'clock, at his house in Concord, Mass., surrounded by those dearest to him, this great man
Charles Darwin died April 19th, 1882.
B
2 IN MEMORIAM:
peaceably departed. He leaves a widow, a son — Dr. Edward Emerson, of Concord, — and two daughters. The eldest, Ellen — his devoted and helpful companion whenever he left home, his amanuensis in later years, and, as he sometimes lovingly called her, his " memory " — is unmarried. The youngest, Edith, is married to Colonel W. H. Forbes, of Milton Hill, Mass., and has several children. When they visited England in 1872, bringing their children with them, Mr. Carlyle sat for a likeness, with Emerson's grandson, Ralph, then a fine boy of twelve or thirteen, standing by his knee.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the most original and independent thinker and greatest moral teacher that America has produced, was born at Boston on May 25th, 1803. He was a legitimate product of Puritanism. As far back as his family is traced it has been represented by ministers of the old faith of New England, the founder of it having voyaged thither with his congregation from Glou- cestershire, in England, in 1635, and each of these ministers was associated wath some phase of that faith, whether Calvinism, Universalism, or Uni- tarianism. He sprang on both sides from clerical stock, and his ancestry forms an indispensable explanation and background of every page of his
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 3
writings. The Emerson family were intellectual, eloquent, with a strong individuality of character, robust and vigorous in their thinking — practical and philanthropic. His father was the Rev. William Emerson, pastor of the First (Unitarian) Church of Boston, and was noted for his vigorous mind, earnestness of purpose, and gentleness of manner. The boy lost his father when he was but eight years old. His mother was described as " a woman of great sensibility, modest, serene, and very devout. She was possessed of a thoroughly sincere nature, devoid of all sentimentalism, and of a temper the most even and placid — (one of her sons said that in his boyhood, when she came from her room in the morning, it seemed to him as if she always came from communion with God) — possessed great patience and fortitude, had the serenest trust in God, was of a discerning spirit, and a most cour- teous bearing, one who knew how to guide the affairs of her house, and to exercise the sweetest authority. Both her mind and her character were of a superior order, and they set their stamp upon manners of peculiar softness and natural grace and quiet dignity. Her sensible and kindly speech was always as good as the best instruction ; her smile, though it was ever ready, was a reward. Her dark, liquid eyes, from which old age did not take away
4 IN MEMORIAM :
the expression, were among the remembrances of all on whom they ever rested."
The subject of this memoir was the second of five brothers. William, the eldest, graduated at Harvard in 1820. Although wanting the genius of the others, he was said to have been " a man whom it was a privilege to know." Edward, the third brother, who gave early promise of the rarest and most brilliant qualities, was of a robust moral nature, and high-toned in his ideas of duty, and " incapable," as his brother Waldo said, " of self- indulgence." He died in 1834. Peter Bulkeley, the fourth brother, died in early life. Charles Chauncy, the youngest of the family, graduated at Harvard in 1828. He died of consumption in 1836. Both these young men possessed unusual gifts of intellect, and the little they did of literary work was of the very best. That exquisite poem, "The Dirge," by Ralph Waldo, expresses, with unsurpassed tenderness, his sense of their loss. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks of Edward and Charles as young men of " exceptional and superior natural endowments. Edward was of the highest promise. Of Charles I knew something in my college days. A beautiful, high-souled, pure, exquisitely delicate nature in a slight but finely- wrought mortal frame, he was for me the very ideal of an embodied celestial intelligence.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 5
. . . I felt as many have felt after being with his brother, Ralph Waldo, that I had entertained an angel visitant. The Fawn of Marvell's imagi- nation survives in my memory as the fitting image to recall this beautiful youth, a soul glowing like the rose of morning with enthusiasm, a character white as the lilies in its purity."
Mary Emerson, Waldo's aunt, assisted his mother in bringing up the boys. She was "a woman of many remarkable qualities, high-toned in motive and con- duct to the greatest degree, very conscientious, and with an unconventional regard of social forms." Waldo was greatly indebted to her. He once said that her influence upon his education had been as great as that of Greece or Rome. She was well read in theology, and a scholar of no mean abilities. In her old age she was described as "still retaining all the oddities and enthusiasms of her youth — a person at war with society as to all its decorums, who enters into conversation with everybody, and talks on every subject ; is sharp as a razor in her satire, and sees you through and through in a moment. She has read all her life in the most miscellaneous way ; and her appetite for meta- physics is insatiable.. Her power over her young friends was almost despotic." There was another remarkable woman who exercised much influence
6 IN MEMORIAM:
on his early life — Sarah Bradford, afterwards the wife of Samuel Ripley. She, like his aunt, was a great lover of books, and " both of them were unusually well-informed for the time ; under their lead he early came to love Plato." One of the earliest of the serious books he read was a transla- tion of the " Pensees " of Pascal, which he used to carry to church with him, and to peruse diligently.
" In this pious and conscientious household," says Mr. Cooke,* " the mother and aunt exer- cised a rare influence over him and his brothers. The most careful economy had to be practised, and they grew up with the strictest regard for all that is good and true. They were care- fully and conscientiously trained at home, especially in regard to every moral virtue. Honesty, pro- bity, unselfishness — these virtues they had deeply instilled into them." At eight years of age he entered the public grammar-school, and soon after, the Latin School, in which he made good pro- gress. This is apparent from a letter written to him, when he was eleven, by Miss Bradford, urging him to send her a translation from Virgil, and to
*" Ralph Waldo Emerson; his Life, Writings, and Philosophy," by George Willis Cooke. To this volume, which contains the fullest and most accurate record of Emerson's Life and Works yet published, the author of this Memoir has been much indebted during its compilation.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 7
write her a letter in Latin or in Greek, or tell her what most interests him in Rollin. In response, he returned her a poetic version of part of the fifth bucolic. He was fond of writing verses as school exercises, and was an eager reader of books of history. In one of his essays he takes us into his confidence with regard to his habits of reading in those early days, where he says, ''The regular course of studies, the years of academical and pro- fessional education, have not yielded me better facts than some idle books under the bench at the Latin School. What we do not call education is more precious than that which we do call so."
Rufus Dawes, who knew Emerson as a boy, gives us in his " Boyhood Memoirs " (1843) ^ sight of the boy when he was about ten years old : — " It is eight o'clock a.m. ; and the thin gentleman in black, with a small jointed cane under his arm, his eyes deeply sunken in his head, has asked that spiritual-looking boy in blue nankeen, who seems to be about ten years old, to ' touch the bell ; ' — it was a privilege to do this; — and there he stands, that boy, whose image, more than any others, is still deeply stamped upon my mind, as I then saw him and loved him, I knew not why, and thought him so angelic and remarkable — feeling towards him more than a
8 IN MEMORIAM:
boy's emotion — as if a new spring of brotherly affection had suddenly broken loose in my heart. There is no indication of turbulence and disquiet about him ; but with a happy combination of energy and gentleness, how truly is he the father of the man ! He has touched the bell, and while he takes his seat among his fellows, he little dreams that in after times he will strike a different note."* Young Emerson entered Harvard University in his fourteenth year, viz., in 1817. Edward Everettwas then Professor of Greek Literature. His lecturing and Sundaypreaching had a powerful influence upon the boy student. Ticknor was also a professor at
*Since the First Edition of this Memoir was published, the author of it has received from the venerable Dr. Furness, of Philadelphia — Emerson's schoolfellow and senior by about a year — a letter, from which he ventures to give the following extract, partly relating to the school-day period of their lives : — " The language of eulogy is apt to run wild, but I have no words to tell my sense of the greatness and worth of R. W. E. I cannot remember when I did not know and admire him. We learned our ABC together. We sate together at our writing school when he, ten years of age, and I eleven, wrote verses on our naval battles in the war of 1812. The only time I can remember when he played was (when we were some six or seven years old) on the floor of my mother's chamber. He lived always from the earliest in a serene world of letters. Never since Shakespeare has our English tongue been used with such beauty as by our great friend. ... I have never presumed to analyse him. I have not needed to do so. 'The affections are their own justification.' The reverence, the love he inspired, bear witness to his rare worth. — Yours faithfully, W. H. Furness,"
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 9
that time, and was an inspiring influence to the students. In the class before his (E.'s) were Furness and Gannett, (afterwards Dr. Channing's co-pastor). Every graduating class in the university elects a poet and an orator for its celebration, which is called "class-day," and Emerson was chosen as the poet of his class. In his junior year he received a Bowdoin prize for an essay on " The Character of Socrates," and in his senior year he again gained a prize, his subject being "The Present State of Ethical Philosophy." Among his companions he was already distinguished for literary attainments, and more especially for a certain charm in the delivery of his addresses. He was then described as " a slender, delicate youth, younger than most of his classmates, and of a sensitive, retiring nature." According to his own account he received but little instruction from his professors that was of value to him. His favourite study was Greek, and his translations of the classical authors were neat and happy. In mathematics he could make no head- way, and in philosophy he did not get on very well. He was a great reader, and studied much outside of the prescribed course. Even before entering college he was well read. His favourite books were the old English poets and dramatists — Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Shakespeare
lo IN MEMO RI AM:
he knew almost by heart. Montaigne had special attraction for him. When a boy, he found a volume of his Essays among his father's books; after leaving college it again came to his notice, and he procured the remaining volumes. " I remember the deliglit and wonder in which I lived with him. It seemed to me as if I had myself written the book in some former life, so sincerely did he speak to my thought and experience." Tillotson, St. Augustine, and Jeremy Taylor were also among his favourite authors. In 1823 he began the study of theolog>^ At this time Dr. Channing's conversation and preaching were an important in- fluence. " The outcome of this eminent j^reachcr's most cherished ideas being a practical reliance on the soul of man as a medium of truth and goodness, Emerson eagerly embraced the essential spirit of his teaching. To the young student the contact with such a man was worth more than any formal instruction." After graduation he entered upon his studies in the Unitarian Divinity College connected with the University. After he had graduated from the Divinity College and been "approbated" for the ministry, he was led to visit the far South — South Carolina and Florida — on account of impaired health. On his return he was settled in 1829 as colleague to Henry Ware in the
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. ii
pastorate of the Second Church (Unitarian) of Boston. A year afterwards Mr. Ware's health broke down, and he was compelled to go to Europe, whence he returned only to resign his charge, and Emerson then became sole minister of the church. He was afterwards appointed chaplain to the State Legislature. His preaching attracted considerable attention, though it brought no crowd. Many an old hearer afterwards remembered these discourses in reading his essays. A venerable lady of those days, a member of his congregation, when asked what was his chief characteristic as a minister, said : " On God's law doth he meditate day and night." In September, 1829, he married Helen Louisa Tucker, to whom he addressed a beautiful poem, " To Ellen at the South." She died of consumption in February, 1832.
Emerson's earliest appearance in print, we believe, was in an address, delivered in 1830, at the ordination of the Rev. H. B. Goodwin, as colleague of Dr. Ripley, in the Concord Church. " On this occasion," says Mr. Cooke, "Emerson took part, and gave 'the right hand of fellowship ;' and it is the only discourse or address of his printed during his ministry. Itindicates a general acceptanceof the customsof the church, and a general reception of its most cherished ideas. In personally addressing his friend, he
12 IN MEM OR I AM:
said, — ' It is with sincere pleasure that I speak for the church on this occasion, and on the spot hallowed to all by so many patriotic, and, to me, by so many affectionate, recollections. I feel a peculiar, a personal right to welcome you hither to the home and the temple of my fathers. I believe the church whose pastor you are will forgive me the allusion, if I express the extreme interest which every man feels in the scene of the trials and labours of his ancestors. Five out of seven of your pre- decessors are my kindred. They are in the dust who bind my attachment to this place ; but not all. I cannot help congratulating you that one survives, to be to you the true friend and venerable counsellor he has ever been to me.'"
Owing to a conscientious disinclination to con- duct the communion service, he decided to resign his pastorate. On September 9th, 1832, he preached a remarkable sermon on the subject, giving a history of the rite of the "Communion Supper," and setting forth his reasons for rejecting the commemoration of it in the sense generally entertained. This sermon has been described as "justifying all the praise accorded to his pulpit abilities — being dispassionate, truly religious, and very charming in its quiet and yet earnest style. The rite seemed to him a repudiation of that spiritual
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 13
worship which Jesus taught, and a return to the forms from which he sought to hberate men." Mr. Frothingham, in his " Transcendentalism in New England," thus characterises the discourse: "It was a model of lucid, orderly, and simple statement ; so plain that the young men and women of the congregation could understand it ; so deep and elevated that experienced believers were fed ; learned enough, without a taint of pedantry ; bold, without a suggestion of audacity; reasonable, without critical sharpness or affectation of mental superiority ; rising into natural eloquence in passages that contained pure thought, but for the most part flowing in unartificial sentences that exactly expressed the speaker's meaning and no more."
Many of Emerson's poems were written during these early years — a well-known one among the number beginning
Good-bye, proud world ! I'm going home.
Mr. Cooke says it has been referred to the period after his leaving the pulpit, but he adds that this is incorrect. " It simply indicates the spirit and purpose of the young man, his genius, his high ideals, his love of a life of meditation, and his scorn for the shams and shows and low motives of the world. It was written before he left the
14 IN MEMORIAM:
ministry, and shows his intense love of nature,
and the devoutness of his mind." Here are the
concluding lines : —
I am going to my own hearth-stone, Bosomed 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,
O, 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 ?
After his resignation his health broke down, and he was advised to take a sea voyage. Unable to appear in the pulpit again, he addressed an affectionate letter of farewell to his congregation, dated 22nd December, 1832,* His health did not improve during the winter, and he embarked early in the spring of 1833 for Europe. He sailed up the
* The Sermon and Letter here alluded to contain so much that is characteristic of Emerson, even at this early period of his life, that extracts from both are given at the end of the volume. They will be read with interest by students of his mind and character.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 15
Mediterranean in a vessel bound for Sicily, and went as far eastward as Malta. Returning through Italy, where he dined with Walter Savage Landor in Florence — finding him "noble and courteous, living in a cloud of pictures at his villa Gherardesca" — " If Goethe had been still living, I might have wandered into Germany also. Besides those I have named, — Coleridge, Wordsworth, De Ouincey, and Carlyle — (for Scott was dead), there was not the man living whom I cared to behold, unless it were the Duke of Wellington, whom I saw in Westminster Abbey at the funeral of Wilberforce." He visited France, and in July reached London. He called on Coleridge, whom he describes in his " English Traits." In August of the same year (1833) he made a pilgrimage to Scotland. He remained some days in Edinburgh, and delivered a discourse in the Unitarian Chapel there, recollections of which happily still survive. Desirous of personally acknowledging to Carlyle his indebtedness for the spiritual benefit he had derived from certain of his writings — notably the concluding passage in the article on German Literature, and the paper entitled " Characteristics " — he found his way, after many hindrances, to Craigenputtock, among the desolate hills of the parish of Dunscore, in Dumfriesshire, where Carlyle was then living with his bright and
I6 IN MEMORIAM:
accomplished wife in perfect solitude, without a person to speak to, or a post office within seven miles. There he spent twenty-four hours, and became acquainted with him at once. They walked over miles of barren hills, and talked upon all the great questions which interested them most. The meeting is described in his " English Traits," published twenty-three years afterwards, and the account of it there given is reprinted by Mr. Froude in his "Life of Carlyle," &c., lately issued. Carlyle and his wife often after- wards spoke of that visit, "when that supernal vision, Waldo Emerson, dawned upon us," as if it had been the coming of an angel. They regarded Emerson as a "beautiful apparition" in their solitude. A letter exists (reprinted in this volume), addressed to the present writer, a few days after the visit, giving an account of it, as well as of one to Words- worth. This letter, written on the spur of the moment, and not intended for publication, contains some details not to be found in the more elaborate and carefully-prepared account of these two visits which he gave to the public so many years later. Mr. Froude says of this visit : " The fact itself of a young American having been so affected by his writings as to have sought him out on the Dunscore moors, was a homage of the
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 17
kind which he (Carlyle) could especially value and appreciate. The acquaintance then begun to their mutual pleasure ripened into a deep friendship, which has remained unclouded in spite of wide divergencies of opinion throughout their working lives, and continues warm as ever at the moment when I am writing these words (June 27, 1880), when the labours of both of them are over, and they wait in age and infirmity to be called away from a world to which they have given freely all that they had to give."
Emerson has the distinction of having been the first eminent literary man of either continent to appreciate and welcome " Sartor Resartus." The book was written in 1831 at Craigenputtock, but could find no publisher for two years. At last it appeared in " Fraser's Magazine " in successive chapters, in 1833-4 (Carlyle having to accept reduced remuneration); and it was not till 1838 that it appeared as a volume in England. While subscribers were complaining of the " intolerable balderdash" appearing from month to month in the magazine, under the title of " Sartor Resartus," — " sentences which might be read backward or for- ward, for they are equally intelligible either way" — and threatening to withdraw their subscriptions if "that clotted nonsense" did not speedily cease, c
1 8 IN MEMORIAM:
Emerson was quietly collecting the successive numbers with a view to its publication on comple- tion. In 1836 the American edition of the work appeared in Boston, and was sufficiently successful to yield a profit of ^^"150, which Emerson sent to Carlyle — the most important sum which he had, up to that time, received for any of his works. In Emerson's modest preface to the book (on its first appearance in the shape of a volume), occur these memorable words — the earliest cordial recognition of the originality and power of this now famous work : —
We believe, no book has been published for many years, written
in a more sincere style of idiomatic English, or which discovers an
equal mastery over all the riches of the language. The author
makes ample amends for the occasional eccentricity of his genius,
not only by frequent bursts of pure splendour, but by the wit and
sense which never fail him. But what will chiefly commend the book
to the discerning reader is the manifest design of the work, which
is a Criticism upon the Spirit of the Age, — we had almost said, of
the hour, in which we live ; exhibiting, in the mobt just and novel
light, the present aspects of Religion, Politics, Literature, Arts,
and Social Life. Under all his gaiety, the writer has an earnest
meaning, and discovers an insight into the manifold wants and
tendencies of human nature, which is very rare among our popular
authors. The philanthropy and the purity of moral sentiment,
which inspire the work, will find their way to the heart of every
lover of virtue.
A similar service was done by Emerson some years later in a few prefatory remarks to the
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. igi
first American reprint of Carlyle's " Critical and Miscellaneous Essays." In this case also, the American collected reprint preceded the one in England. Emerson, in his preface, refers to the influence these Essays had exerted in New England, especially on inquiring youthful minds ; how they spoke " with an emphasis that hindered them from sleep."
His health, which had always been delicate, and which in 1832 had been greatly affected by domestic bereavement (the death of his first wife) and the worry of controversy, was quite restored by the voyage and his subsequent travels. After his return to America he gave lectures before the Boston Lyceum, — his subjects being: "Water;" "Michael Angelo;" "Milton;" "Luther;" "George Fox;" "Edmund Burke;" also two lectures on "Italy," and three on "The Relation of Man to the Globe." In August, 1835, in a lecture before the American Institute of Instruction, his subject was the " Means of Inspiring a Taste for English Literature." In September of the same year he gave a historical address in Concord, it being the second centennial anniversary of the incorporation of that town. In September, 1835, he married Miss Lydia Jackson, of Plymouth. Her family was descended from one of the earliest Plymouth
20 IN MEMORIAM :
settlers. In December, 1835, he gave a course of ten lectures in Boston on " English Literature." The first two were on the earlier authors, and there were others on Chaucer, Bacon, Shakespeare, and the subsequent great writers. In the last lecture, he touched upon Byron, Scott, Dugald Stewart, Mackintosh, and Coleridge. He placed Coleridge among the sages of the world. In succeeding seasons he gave courses on " The Philosophy of History ; " " Human Culture ; " " Human Life ; " " The Present Age ; " " The Times ; " and other subjects. It is to be hoped that many of these lectures, hitherto unprinted, will be given to the world. At a meeting held in Con- cord in 1836, on the completion of a monument to commemorate the Concord fight, a hymn was written for the occasion by Emerson, and read by Dr. Ripley, and sung to the tune of the "Old Hundred." It contained the immortal lines : —
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
In 1835 he was reading Plato and Plutarch more diligently than ever, and began to study Plotinus and other writers of the same class. He also read the writings of the German mystics.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 21
including Jacob Boehmen,* as well as of the English idealists, the poems of George Herbert (which he keenly relished), and the prose works of Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, Milton, Jeremy Taylor, and Coleridge.
In 1836 appeared "Nature," a little volume of only ninety-five pages, the contents consisting of an Introduction, and eight chapters, entitled, Nature, Commodity, Beauty, Language, Discipline, Ideal- ism, Spirit, and Prospects. The spirit of its teachings is that nature exists only for the unfolding of a spiritual being. His ideas are in this little volume more systematically developed than elsewhere. They have been thus summarised : — " Every natu- ral fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Nature becomes a means of expression for these spiritual truths and experiences, which could not otherwise be interpreted. Its laws, also, are moral laws when applicable to man ; and so they become to man the language of the Divine Will. Because the
* In a letter from Miss Elizabeth Peabody, of Boston, U.S., editor of ".Esthetic Papers," 1S49, to the writer of this memoir (July 2, 1S82), she says: — "His favourite book was Bcehmen's ' Way to Christ,' which I borrowed from him as late as 1S60, and when he lent it to me he remarked, 'This is my vadc vicciun.' I have ever felt that Emerson was ' deeper in Christ ' than any one I knew, more entirely ' one with him ' in spirit than perhaps even Dr. Channing. They were the two souls from whom I have received most."
22 IN MEMORIAM:
physical laws become moral laws the moment they are related to human conduct, Nature has a much higher purpose than that of beauty or language — in that it is a Discipline. It is in these views that Emerson's resemblance to Swedenborg is apparent, in his caring for Nature only as a symbol and reve- lation of spiritual realities." The volume attracted the attention and warmest enthusiasm of a few thinkers, but it met with but a small sale, — only 500 copies being disposed of in twelve years ! The first edition of it is now one of the rarest books in America. A writer in " The Democratic Review " thus spoke of it: — "The highest intellectual culture and the simplest instinctive innocence have received it, and felt it to be a divine thought, borne on a stream of English undefiled, such as we had almost despaired could flow in this our world of grist and saw-mills." He finds evidence of "the highest imaginative power" in it, while "it proves to us that the only true and perfect mind is the poetic." Another writer says of it : — " It is replete with the deepest sentiment and the liveliest emotion. In it the heart predominates over the brain. The style is glowing rather than austere, rising not unfre- quently to a lofty pitch of eloquence. It is inspired throughout by a glad spirit born of recovered health, a happy, new-found home, and pleasant
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 23
domestic and social surroundings. It was the first great fruit of his genius, the ' first crushings ' of the grapes of his intellectual vineyard — for the reason that in it he more or less developed the germs of his speculations and theories." In England it met with even a heartier reception than in America. A remarkable lecture in Boston, on " War," in March, 1838, was afterwards printed in Miss Peabody's " Esthetic Papers " in 1849.
An oration, entitled " The American Scholar," delivered before the Phi-Beta-Kappa Society, at Harvard, August 31, 1837; an address before the literary societies of Dartmouth, on " Literary Ethics ;" and a discourse before the senior class in Divinity College, Cambridge, on Sunday, July 15, 1838 — won him wide notice for their origi- nality, boldness, and power. They exercised an immense influence on the youthful mind of New England. A. B. Alcott, who was present at the first of these addresses, said of it : — " I believe that was the first adequate statement of the new views that really attracted general attention. I had the good fortune to hear that address ; and I shall not forget the delight with which I heard it, nor the mixed confusion, consternation, surprise, and wonder with which the audience listened to it." Lowell, who also heard it, says the delivery of this
24 IN MEMORIAM :
lecture " was an event without any former parallel in our literary annals, a scene to be always treasured in the memory for its picturesqueness and its in- spiration. What crowded and breathless aisles, what windows clustering with eager heads, what enthusiasm of approval, what silence of foregone dissent ! "
It was the last of the above addresses, how- ever, which, like a trumpet-blast, most startled and took by surprise the thoughtful minds of the country. " It was Emerson's first, full, and direct expression of his faith in moral power and self-trust, and his repudiation of all commands laid on us from the teachings of other men, unless their thought is verified in our own nature." He said that the ofifice of the preacher was dying, and the church tottering to its fall ! " The real work of the pulpit is not discharged. Preaching is the expression of moral sentiment in application to the duties of life. In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man made sensible that he is a living soul. . . The true preacher can be known by this, that he deals out to his people his life — life passed through the fire of thought. Man is not made to feel that he is an infinite soul ; the life of to-day is not touched ; actual experience brings no lessons. The redemption is to be sought in the Soul.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 25
The present evils of the church are many, and need much to be put away. We need more faith. The old forms are good enough if new life be breathed into them. The remedy for these evils is — first, soul ; and second, soul ; and evermore soul."
This renowned address was warmly criticised, and as warmly defended, and Mr. Cooke tells us that the agitation caused by it reached such a height that the " Christian Examiner " thought it necessary in behalf of the Unitarians of the Divinity School to make a formal renunciation of the views given forth in it.*
The Rev. Henry Ware, then the most prominent professor in the School, addressed to Emerson a friendly expostulation against the doctrines of this discourse. In reply Emerson said : "What you say about the discourse at Divinity College is just what I might expect from your truth and charity, combined with your known opinions. I am not a stick or a stone, as one said in the old time, and could not feel but pain in saying some things in
*In the letter from Miss Elizabeth Peabody, quoted at p. 21, she says : — " Dr. Charming regarded the address at Divinity Hall as an entirely justifiable and needed criticism on the perfunctory character of service creeping over the Unitarian Churches at the time. He hailed the commotion of thought it stirred up as a sign that 'something did live in the embers' of that spirit which had developed Unitarianism out of the decaying Puritan Churches."
26 IN MEMORIAM :
that place and presence which I supposed would meet with dissent, I may say, of dear friends and benefactors of mine. Yet, as my conviction is per- fect in the substantial truth of the doctrines of this discourse, and is not very new, you will see at once that it must appear very important that it be spoken ; and I thought I could not pay the noble- ness of my friends so mean a compliment as to suppress my opposition to their supposed views, out of fear of offence. I would rather say to them — these things look thus to me, to you other- wise. Let us say our uttermost word, and let the all-pervading truth, as it surely will, judge between us. Either of us would, I doubt not, be willingly apprised of his error. Meantime, I shall be ad- monished, by this expression of your thought, to revise with greater care the ' address ' before it is printed (for the use of the class) ; and I heartily thank you for this expression of your tried tolera- tion and love." This was followed by a sermon against Emerson's views, delivered by Mr. Ware in the Divinity School, a copy of which was sent to the former, with a letter, the concluding sentences being these : — " I confess that I esteem it particularly unhappy to be thus brought into a sort of public opposition to you, for I ha\'e a thousand feelings which draw me toward you ; but my situation.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 27
and the circumstances of the times, render it unavoidable ; and both you and I understand that we are to act on the maxim, 'Amicus Plato, amicus Socrates, sed magis amica Veritas.' (I believe I quote right.) We would gladly agree with all our friends ; but that being impossible, and it being also impossible to choose which of them we will differ from, we must submit to the common lot of thinkers, and make up in love of heart what we want in unity of judgment. But I am growing prosy, so I break off. — Yours very truly."
To this letter Emerson returned the following characteristic reply : —
" Concord, Oct. 8, 1S38.
" My dear Sir, — I ought sooner to have acknow- ledged your kind letter of last week, and the sermon it accompanied. The letter was right manly and noble. The sermon, too, I have read with attention. If it assails any doctrine of mine, — perhaps I am not so quick to see it as writers generally, — certainly I did not feel any disposition to depart from my habitual contentment, that you should say your thought, whilst I say mine. I believe I must tell you what I think of my new position. It strikes me very oddly that good and wise men at Cam- bridge and Boston should think of raising me into an object of criticism. I have always been — from
28 /N MEMORIAM :
my very incapacity of methodical writing — a 'char- tered libertine,' free to worship and free to rail, — lucky when I could make myself understood, but never esteemed near enough to the institutions and mind of society to deserve the notice of the masters of literature and religion. I have appreciated fully the advantages of my position, for I well know there is no scholar less willing or less able than myself to be a polemic. I could not give an account of myself, if challenged. I could not possibly give you one of the 'arguments' you cruelly hint at, on which any doctrine of mine stands ; for I do not know what arguments are in reference to any ex- pression 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 certainly shall do no such thing. I shall read what you and other good mien write, as I have always done, glad when you speak my thoughts,and skipping the page that has nothing for me. I shall go on just as before, seeing what-
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 29
ever I can, and telling what I see ; and, I suppose, with the same fortune that has hitherto attended me, — the joy of finding that my abler and better brothers, who work with the sympathy of society, loving and beloved, do now and then unexpectedly confirm my perceptions, and find my nonsense is only their own thought in motley, — and so I am your affectionate servant," &c.
Mr. M. D. Conway, writing about the address in question, which Theodore Parker pronounced to be " the noblest, the most inspiring strain I ever listened to," says, — " Little wonder that the New England shepherds, watching their flocks by night, should have been sore afr-aid when this light shone round about them. But their terror could not quench the star that had risen. ' It is no use,' said an eminent divine, when he had heard that the Faculty had passed a censure on the discourse, ' henceforth the young men will have a fifth gospel in their Testaments.' Among the young men who listened was one who went back to his little subur- ban parsonage, and entered that night in his private journal these words : — ' In this Emerson surpassed himself as much as he surpasses others in a general way. I shall give no abstract, — so beautiful, so just, and terribly sublime was his picture of the Church in its present condition. My soul is roused,
30
IN MEMORIAL:
and this week I shall write the long-meditated ser- mons on the state of the Church and the duties of these times.' So under the electric touch of Emer- son, rose the American John Knox — Theodore Parker."
The " address " became the subject of many- sermons, pamphlets, and newspaper articles, while controversies and debates about it rose to a great height. The effect of all this was, in the words of Mr. Cooke, " to finally separate Emerson from the Unitarians, and to cause him to abandon the pulpit. He saw how strongly the Unitarians were wedded to the old forms, and he found himself more and more alienated from them. He could not continue to preach amidst controversy and objection, so he quietly withdrew to his work in a manner of his own." Henceforth he may be considered as having emancipated himself finally and for ever from the trammels of creed. Shaking off all traditions of creed and authority, " I stepped," to use his own words, " into the free and open world to utter my private thought to all who were willing to hear it." Thenceforth he became "the chartered libertine" of thought, as he sometimes humorously called himself From this time the lecture platform was his pulpit. How admirably he filled it during a period of more than forty years ; — how ennobling
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 31
were his teachings, and how beneficent and far- reachincf was their influence — the record of his life and work amply testifies.
About the end of 1836 there originated at Boston, in the house of the Rev. George Ripley, one of the most prominent of the Unitarian minis- ters in that town, a gathering of thoughtful persons for discussion and mutual inquiry. In this way gradually came together a number of friends " who entertained the same ideas, and had common hopes of a new era of truth and religion " — A. B. Alcott, Margaret Fuller, R. W. Emerson, George Ripley, F. H. Hedge, Dr. Channing, Convers Francis, James Freeman Clarke, J. S. Dwight, Elizabeth Peabody, W. H. Channing, Dr.C.Follen, C.A.Bartol, N. L. Frothingham, O. A. Brownson, Theodore Parker, Jones Very, Caleb Stetson, Charles S. Wheeler, R. Bartlett, S. J. May, George Bancroft, and others. Meetings were held four or five times a year, with very little form, from house to house, every one contributing something to the conver- sation. These meetings took place at various places — Boston, Chelsea, Concord, Milton, Newton, Watertown. Emerson was almost always present during the three or four years that the club met The idea of publishing a quarterly journal was first discussed at one of the meetings in 1839. The
32 IN MEMORIAM:
title, " The Dial," was suggested by Alcott. No one was willing to assume the editorship of the projected periodical. After much solicitation, Mar- garet Fuller consented to undertake what Emerson called this "private and friendly service." " Perhaps no enterprise was undertaken more diffidently by those interested in it. When it began it concen- trated a good deal of hope and affection." She was assisted in the editorship by Mr. George Ripley. The first number of " The Dial " had a very char- acteristic address to its readers from Emerson's pen. The purpose of the magazine was — the most various expression of the best, the most cultivated, and the freest thought of the time, — and was addressed to those only who were able to find " entertainment " in such literature. " There were no facts for popularity. Each number was a symposium of the most accomplished minds in the country ; it originated in the hopes of the young." Alcott was only 40, Ripley 38, Emerson 37, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker, W. H. Channing, and J. Freeman Clarke 30, Bartol, Cranch, and Dwight 27, Thoreau 23, and W. E. Channing 22. Through this organ Emerson, Ripley, Theodore Parker, Henry D. Thoreau (unique among American literary personalities), J. S. Dwight, W. H. Channing, Margaret Fuller, C. P. Cranch, J. F. Clarke, F.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. -^i
H. Hedge, J. R. Lowell, Elizabeth Peabody, A. B. Alcott, W. Ellery Channing, Thomas T. Stone, C. Lane, C. A. Dana, J. C. Cabot, and others, — all of them persons of high and varied culture, — gave utterance to their thoughts. Owing to the state of her health. Miss Fuller withdrew from the editor- ship, at the end of the second year, and Emerson became sole editor. Under his superintendence, " The Dial " became less literary and more refor- matory.
In "The Dial" Emerson published " Man the Reformer," " English Reformers," " The Young American," " Lectures on the Times " (including "The Conservative," and "The Transcendenta- list"), "The Senses and The Soul," "Thoughts on Modern Literature," " Prayers," " Tantalus," " Car- lyle's 'Past and Present,'" "Thoughts on Art," " Walter Savage Landor," " Europe and European Books" (including remarks on Wordsworth and Tennyson, Novels by Buhver, &c.), " The Tragic," " The Comic," " Letter to the Readers of ' The Dial ' " (on Railroads and Air- Roads, Communities, Culture, The Position of Young Men, Bettina von Arnim, and Theodore Mandt's Account of Holderlin's " Hyperion "). Some of these articles have not been reproduced in any of his collected essays. Many of his finest poems made their first appearance D
34
IN MEMORIAM
in this periodical, sometimes anonymously, and sometimes with his own signature.
In "The Dial," Thoreau was first introduced to the public. Almost every number contained some contribution from his pen. To Emerson he owed his introduction to literature. He wrote The Natural History of Massachusetts, A Winter Walk, translated Pindar, and the " Prometheus Bound " of yEschylus, besides contributing many poems. Elizabeth Pea- body furnished papers on Christ's Idea of Society, and The West Roxbury Community, and Mrs. George Ripley, one on Woman ; H. Tuckerman, a paper on Music, Mr. J. R. Lowell, three Sonnets, and Hedge, papers on The Art of Life — The Scholar's Calling. Ripley criticised Brownson's Writings, wrote a " Letter to a Theological Student," and contributed Records of the Month. Parker wrote on German Literature, the Pharisees, Primitive Christianity, The Divine Presence in Nature and in the Soul, Truth against the World, Thoughts on Theology, A Lesson for the Day, and Thoughts on Labour. Dwight, the foremost musical critic of New England, gave accounts of concerts, and wrote on the Religion of Beauty and Ideals of Everyday Life. Alcott furnished some Orphic Sayings and Days from a Diary. C. Lane con- tributed papers on James Pierrepont Greaves,
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 35
A. B. Alcott's Works, Social Tendencies, A Day with the Shakers, Brook Farm, Life in the Woods, and Millennial Church. W. H. Channing wrote Ernest the Seeker and other papers, and W. E. Channing contributed many poetical pieces. Margaret Fuller contributed much from the stores of her immense reading, and the rich treasures of her noble thought. Besides numerous pieces of miscellaneous criticism, she wrote a Short Essay on Critics, Goethe, the Great Composers, Menzel's View of Goethe, Canova, Romaic and Rhine Bal- lads, The Modern Drama (including a long criti- cism of John Sterling's tragedy, " Strafford"), Bettine Brentano, Dialogue, Allston's Pictures, Klopstock and Meta, Festus, and other subjects. The article on Goethe was alone " enough to establish her fame as a discerner of spirits." In the last volume appeared a remarkable article by her, entitled " The Great Lawsuit ; Man versus Men — Woman versus Women." It was afterwards enlarged and published as a volume, " Woman in the Nineteenth Century," one of the most admirable works ever written on the opportunities and duties of women.
The paper called " Notes from the Journal of a Scholar " was from the pen of Charles Chauncy Emerson, Ralph Waldo's youngest brother, who
36 IN MEMORIAM:
died in 1836, and is full of subtle power. Edward B. Emerson's beautiful poem, " The Last Fare- well," written while sailing out of Boston Harbour, for the West Indies — a voyage from which he never returned, — appeared in "The Dial," many years after his death. In his latest volume of poems, Ralph Waldo gives " The Last Farewell " a place, adding some memorial verses to this " brother of the brief but blazing star, born for the noblest life." This memorial poem is one of the best of its kind in the language. Under the head- ing " Ethnical Scriptures" were given from time to time selections from the oldest ethical and religious writings of men, exclusive of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, — the object being " to bring together the grand expressions of the moral sentiment in different ages and races, the rules for the guidance of life, and the bursts of piety and of abandonment to the Invisible and Eternal." Seven of this series of selections appeared ; from Veeshnoo Sarma, The Laws of Menu, Sayings of Confucius, The Desatir (from the Persian Prophets), The Chinese Four Books, Hermes Trismegistus, and The Chal- d^ean Oracles. The magazine existed for four years — 184 1-4, A complete set of the four volumes is now an almost unattainable rarity. Even odd numbers of it fetch a high price. In a recent
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 37
American literary periodical, it has been suggested that there should be a reprint of these volumes. An originally subscribed-for copy is in the posses- sion of the writer of this memoir, which is rendered unique and very precious by having the authorship of each article indicated in Emerson's own hand- writing.
" The Dial," says Mr. Cooke, " was a most notable effort toward a truer life, and a fresher ex- pression of thought, and its influence has doubtless been very great. It is the memorial of an intel- lectual impulse which the national life of America has never lost. Emerson has written of it with sound sense, giving interesting hints of its pur- pose. He has always spoken of it in a modest manner, giving to others whatever honour and fame the quarterly has produced. In fact, he was its chief contributor, its trusted adviser, from the first ; and he did far more than any other to give it what- ever of value and influence it had. ... It was the first American periodical to assume a character and aim of its own. ... Its influence was wholesome and vigorous. It quickened thought, gave its writers freedom of expression, and greatly stimulated originality. The school of writers which it formed and brought before the public has been the most productive and helpful we have yet seen
38 IN MEMORIAM:
in this country. Such has been the value of this short-lived quarterly, it already has a fame and honour quite its own, which are likely to increase in the future. Emerson thus wrote about it : —
It liail its origin in a club of speculative students, who found the air in America getting a little too close and stagnant ; and the agitation had, perhaps, the fault of being too secondary and bookish in- its origin, or caught, not from primary instincts, but from English, and still more from German, books. The journal was commenced with much hope, and liberal promises of many co-operators. But the workmen of sufficient culture for a poetical and philosophical magazine were too few ; and as the pages were filled liy unpaid con- tril)utors, each of whom had, according to the usage and necessity of this country, some paying employment, the journal did not get his best work, but his second best. Its scattered writers had not digested their theories into a distinct dogma, still less into a practical measure which the public could grasp; and the magazine was so eclectic and miscellaneous that each of its readers and writers valued only a small portion of it. For these reasons it never had a large circulation, and it was discontinued after four years. But " The Dial" betrayed, through all its juvenility, timidity, and conventional rulibish, some sparks of the true love and hope, and of the piety to spiritual law, which had moved its friends and founders ; and it was received by its early subscribers with almost a religious welcome. iSIany years after it was brought to a close, Margaret was surprised in England by very warm testimony to its merits ; and in 1848 the writer of these pages found it holding the same affectionate place in many a private book-shelf in England and Scotland which it had secured at home. Good or bad, it cost a good deal of precious labour from those who served it, and from Margaret most of all. As editor, she received a compensation for the first years, which was intended to be two hundred dollars per annum, but which, I fear, never reached that amount.
But it made no difference to her exertion. She put so much
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 39
heart into it that she bravely undertook to open, in "The Dial," the subjects which most attracted her ; and she treated, in turn, Goethe and Beethoven, the Rhine and the Romaic Ballads, the Poems of John Sterling, and several pieces of sentiment, with a spirit which spared no labour; and when the hard conditions of journalism held her to an inevitable day, she submitted to jeopardizing a long- cherished subject by treating it in the crude and forced article for the month. I remember, after she had been compelled by ill-health to relinquish the journal into my hands, my grateful wonder at the facility with which she assumed the preparation of laborious articles that might have daunted the most practiced scribe.
The first series of Emerson's " Essays," to which Mr. Carlyle contributed a preface, was pub- lished in 1 84 1. It contained "Self- Reliance," "Com- pensation," " Spiritual Laws," " Love," " Friend- ship," "The Over-Soul," and "Intellect." Some of his very best essays are in this volume, nearly every one of them rising to the highest level of his ability as a thinker and worker. He was here more truly himself than in any other book he has published, though single essays in the succeeding volumes reach the height almost con- stantly maintained in this. Here are a few charac- teristic sentences from Carlyle's Preface, which was the first signal recognition of Emerson's genius and powers by an English writer of high authority.
At the present time it can be predicted, what some years ago it could not be, that a certain number of human creatures will be found extant in England to whom the words of a man speaking from the heart of him, in what fashion soever, under what obstructions soever,
40 IN MEMORIAM:
will l)e welcome ; — welcome, perhaps, as a brother's voice, to "wanderers in the labyrinthic Night ! " For these, and not for any other class of persons, is this little book reprinted and recommended.
The name of Ralph Waldo Emerson is not entirely new in England : distinguished Travellers bring us tidings of such a man ; fractions of his writings have found their way into the hands of the curious here ; fitful hints that there is, in New England, some spiritual Notability called Emerson, glide through Reviews and Magazines. Whether these hints were true or not true, readers are now to judge for them- selves a little better,
Emerson's writings and speakings amount to something : — and yet hitherto, as seems to me, this Emerson is perhaps far less notable for what he has spoken or done, than for the many things he has not spoken and has forborne to do. With uncommon interest I have learned that this, and in such a never-resting locomotive country too, is one of those rare men who have withal the invaluable talent of sitting still ! That an educated man of good gifts and opportunities, after looking at the public arena, and even trying, not with ill success, what its tasks and its prizes might amount to, should retire for long years into rustic obscurity ; and, amid the all-pervading jingle of dollars and loud chaffering of ambitions and promotions, should quietly, with cheerful deliberateness, sit down to spend Ids life not in Mammon-worship, or the hunt for reputation, influence, place or any outward advantage whatsoever : this, when we get notice of it, is a thing really worth noting.
For myself I have looked over with no common feeling to this brave Emerson, seated by his rustic hearth, on the other side of the Ocean (yet not altogether parted from me either), silently communing with his own soul, and with the God's World it finds itself alive in yonder. . . . The words of such a man, what words he finds good to speak, are worth attending to. By degrees a small circle of living souls eager to hear is gathered. The silence of this man has to become speech : may this too,- in its due season, prosper for him ! — Emerson has gone to lecture, various times, to special audiences, in Boston, and occasionally elsewhere. Three of those Lectures, already printed, are known to some here ; as is the little Pamphlet,
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 41
called "Nature," of somewhat earlier date. It may be said, a great meaning lies in these pieces, which as yet finds no adequate expres- sion for itself.
That this little Book has no "system," and points or stretches far beyond all systems, is one of its merits. We will call it the soliloquy of a true soul, alone under the stars, in this day. In England as elsewhere the voice of a true soul, any voice of such, may be wel- come to some. . . . That one man more, in the most modern dialect of this year 1841, recognises the oldest everlasting truths : here is a thing worth seeing, among the others. 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 ; and who with all these devout beliefs has dared, like a valiant man, to bid chimeras, " ^t' chimerical; disappear, and let us have an end of you ! " — is not this worth something ?
What Emerson's talent is, we will not altogether estimate by this Book. The utterance is abrupt, fitful ; the great idea not yet embodied struggles towards an embodiment. Yet everywhere there is the true heart of a man ; which is the parent of all talent ; which without much talent cannot exist. A breath as of the green country, — all the welcomer that it is A'i^w-England country, not second-hand but first-hand country, — meets us wholesomely every- where in these Essays : the authentic green Earth is there, with her mountains, rivers, with her mills and farms. Sharp gleams of insight arrest us by their pure intellectuality ; here and there, in heroic rusticism, a tone of modest manfulness, of mild invincibility, low-voiced but lion-strong, makes us too thrill with a noble pride. Talent ? Such ideas as dwell in this man, how can they ever speak themselves with enough of talent ? The talent is not the chief ques- tion here. The idea, that is the chief question. Of the living acorn you do not ask first. How large an acorn art thou ? The smallest living acorn is fit to be the parent of oaktrees without end, — could clothe all New England with oaktrees by and by. You ask it, first of all : Art thou a living acorn ? Certain, now, that thou art not a dead mushroom, as the most are ? — But, on the whole, our Book is
42 IN MEMORIAM:
short ; the Preface should not grow too long. Closing these questionable parables and intimations, let me in plain English recommend this little Book as the Book of an original veridical man, worthy the acquaintance of those who delight in such ; and so : Welcome to it whom it may concern !
In 1 84 1 he delivered an address at Concord, on the anniversary of the emancipation of the negroes in the West Indies. " Man the Reformer," a lecture, was read before the Mechanics' Appren- tices' Library Association, at the Masonic Temple, Boston, 25th January, 1841 ; and "The Method of Nature," an address to the Society of the Adelphi, in Waterville College, Maine, on August nth, 1841. Three addresses, viz., " Lecture on the Times," "The Conservative," "The Transcenden- talist," were read at the Masonic Temple, Boston, in December, 1841. "Man the Reformer," and the last three addresses on "The Times," were after- wards printed in " The Dial."
About this time (1841) originated the notable experiment of the Brook Farm Community, with which Emerson sympathised, but which he never joined, although he frequently visited the farm. It was one of the many movements of the day, point- ing to a new order of things. To all these move- ments he gave his sympathy, " in so far as they expressed a genuine purpose, and showed a candid desire to make life richer with truth." The social
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 43
and educational reformation of mankind by means of temperance, the common and normal school, associated living, and other agencies, was advocated at conventions of all kinds, and in the press. A society called "The Friends of Universal Progress" held conventions in Boston to revitalize the old church forms and doctrines, and to discuss the institutions of the Sabbath, the church, and the ministry. Almost all of Emerson's friends were connected with these various movements. The Brook Farm men and women he loved, " and thoroughly sympathised with their anxious desire to make life better ; but he saw the folly of their experiment, and its weaknesses, and he quickly discovered the evils which it fostered in place of those it attempted to escape. His sense of humour was always a restraining and sanitary influence in his character. He saw the ridiculous, the incon- gruous side of Brook Farm ; and his humour, his rare perception of the fitness of things, led him to see that finely-conceived reform in its real light." Among those who took a leading part in the experiment was the Rev. George Ripley. Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the first to take up the scheme, and his published note-books contain passages of deep interest in connection with it. In the " Blithedale Romance " his weird pen has
44 IN MEMORIAM:
thrown a halo of imagination, romance, and senti- ment about Brook Farm ; although he disclaims any purpose to describe persons or events connected with it, and expressed a hope that someone might yet do justice to a movement so full of earnest aspiration, whose aim was " to simplify economics, combine leisure for study with healthful and honest toil, avert unjust collisions of caste, equalise refine- ments, awaken generous affections, diffuse courtesy, and sweeten and sanctify life as a whole." Mar- garet Fuller, "sympathising with the heroism that prompted the scheme, considered it as premature, but she gave her friends connected with it the cheer of her encouragement and the light of her counsel. She visited them often ; entering genially into their trials and pleasures, and missing no chance to drop good seed in every furrow upturned by the plough- share or softened by the rain." Her intimate friend, W. H. Channing, said of her in relation to this movement : — " In the secluded yet intensely ani- mated circle of those co-workers, I frequently met her during several succeeding years, and rejoice to bear witness to the justice, magnanimity, wisdom, patience, and many-sided good will that governed her every thought and deed." An account of the Brook Farm experiment is given by Mr. O. B. Frothingham in his "Transcendentalism in New
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 45
England," from which some extracts are given towards the end of this volume. To these the attention of the reader is specially called, as they afford a vivid picture of the aims and aspirations of a circle which included many of Emerson's most valued friends.
In 1842 he lost a most promising child, called Waldo. This domestic loss he has bewailed in his " Threnody," a poem of unequalled tenderness and beauty, some passages of which vividly express feelings known only to those who have lost a bright and precocious child. Margaret Fuller knew this child, and said of him, " I hoped more from him than from any living being. I cannot yet reconcile myself to the thought that the sun shines upon the grave of the beautiful blue-eyed boy, and that I shall see him no more. Five years he was an angel to us, and I know not that any person was ever more the theme of thought to us. ... I loved him more than any child I ever knew, as he was of nature more fair and noble. You would be surprised to know how dear he was to my imagination." A few of the opening lines will perhaps induce readers to become acquainted with the whole poem, which occupies fourteen pages. In order fully to appreciate this poem, the reader should know that the second part, beginning " The deep Heart
46 IN MEMORIAM:
answered, ' Weepest thou ?' " was written three years after the first.
The South-wind brings
life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire ;
But over the dead he has no power,
The lost, the lost, he cannot restore ;
And, looking over the hills, I mourn
The darling who shall not return.
I see my empty house,
I see my trees repair their boughs ;
And he, the wondrous child,
Wh6se 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, —
Has disappeared from the Day's eye ;
Far and wide she cannot find him ;
My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.
Returned this day, the south wind searches,
And finds young pines and budding birches ;
But finds not the budding man ;
Nature, who lost, cannot remake him ;
Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him ;
Nature, Fate, men, him seek in vain.
A second series of "Essays" appeared in 1844, the Enghsh edition having a few prefatory words
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 47
by Carlyle. " I will wish the brave Emerson a fair welcome among us again ; and leave him to speak with his old friends and to make new." This series contained nine papers — "The Poet," "Experience," "Character," "Manners," "Gifts," "Nature," "Poli- tics," "Nominalist and Realist," and "New England Reformers." In the essay " Nature " is incorpo- rated a piece entitled " Tantalus," which originally appeared in " The Dial." The last of these papers was a lecture, read before the Society in Amory Hall on March 3rd, 1844. " The Young American," a lecture read before the Mercantile Library Asso- ciation, Boston, was delivered February 7th, 1844, and printed in "The Dial," April, 1844. In 1846, he published his first volume of Poems. The London reprint of it in 1847 is disfigured by many glaring typographical errors. In 1847, he wrote the " Editor's Address " in the first number of the " Massachusetts Quarterly Review ;" but did not contribute any paper to it. He was announced as one of its editors ; but the originator and real editor was Theodore Parker. It existed for three years. The address showed his interest in socialism, in Swedenborg, and the future of America, and his general attitude towards the reforms of the time. In a closing paragraph he says the Review is to be open especially to those "inspired pages" which
i 48 IN MEMORIAM:
i come of " inevitable utterances." " We entreat the aid I
of every lover of truth and right, and let principles '
entreat for us. We rely on the talents and industry of eood men known to us, but much more on the magnetism of truth, which is multiplying and edu- |
eating advocates for itself and friends for us. We i
rely on the truth for and against ourselves." \
The publication of his two volumes of Essays, I
having stamped Emerson as a thinker of indis- i
putable originality and power, his fame rapidly increased in this country, and many of his admirers became desirous that he should visit England, and deliver courses of lectures, as he had done in the great towns of his own land. He had now gained the ear of England, and many of the most thoughtful minds of both hemispheres had acknowledged his genius and power. For some time he hesitated, doubting whether his name would bring together any numerous company of hearers. Several letters passed on the subject. At length his hesitancy was overcome, and permission granted by him to the writer of this memoir to announce his visit, and his intention to read lectures to institutions, or to any gathering of friendly individuals who sym- pathised with his studies. Applications imme- diately flowed in from every part of the kingdom, and in many cases it was found impossible to
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 49
comply with the wishes of the requisition ists, from a fear of enforcing too much labour on the lecturer. Had every offer that was made been accepted, his engagements would have extended over a much longer period than he was prepared to remain in England. At last he arrived at Liverpool on 22nd October, 1847. Carlyle was greatly delighted with the prospect of again seeing his friendly visitor — " the lonely, wayfaring man," as he described him — of 1833. -^ letter from Emerson, announcing the probable time of his sailing, had, by negligence at a country post-office, failed to be delivered to Carlyle in due course, and was not received until near the time of Emerson's expected arrival, thus depriving the former of the opportunity of responding with hospitable messages and invitations. This led to great trouble of mind in Carlyle, fearing, as he did, that it might subject him to the appearance of a want of hospitality — a possibility abhorrent to his feelings. His trouble was ended, however, by an arrangement being made to have his reply deli- vered to Emerson the instant he landed in England, which, it is needless to say, was faithfully carried out. His minute instructions and almost solemn injunctions in regard to this matter were delightfully characteristic of his high regard for Emerson. The reader \\\\\ find them in a later page. E
50 IN MEMORIAM:
For some months he took up his residence in Manchester, from which, as a centre, he went forth to lecture in various towns in the midland and northern counties of England. His first course was delivered to the members of the Manchester Athenaeum, the subject being "Representative Men, including Plato, Swedenborg, Montaigne, Shake- speare, and Napoleon." His next course was given in the Manchester Mechanics' Institution, the subjects being " Eloquence," " Domestic Life," " Reading," and "The Superlative in Manners and Literature." They excited great interest, and attracted crowded audiences. While in Manches- ter he delivered a remarkable speech at a soiree, held under the auspices of the Manchester Athe- naeum, Sir A. Alison being in the chair. Richard Cobden and other notabilities were present. His text was the indomitable " pluck" and steadfastness and grandeur of England, amid all her difficulties and trials. At that time English commerce and industry were in a very depressed condition. This speech, although comparatively brief, was carefully prepared for the occasion, and the importance he attached to it may be gathered from the fact that he printed it, in extenso, in his " English Traits," published nine years after. The speech is given at the end of this volume. He also visited
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 51
Edinburgh in February, 1848, where he lectured, and met many of its celebrities, including Robert Chambers, with whose geniality and kindly humour, and charming family environment, he was delighted. While in Edinburgh he was the guest of Dr. Samuel Brown. He spent two days at Ambleside with Miss Martineau and again visited Wordsworth — his first visit having been paid fifteen years before. A few records of his stay in London, and remarks on some of the people he met there, will be found in his " English Traits," one of the most brilliant and striking books ever written about England and its characteristics. In perusing this volume the reader will be charmed by its vigour, vivacity, and acuteness. There is nowhere in it any didactic dulness, or commonplace descriptions, as in many books of this class. In hanging over its pages, one experiences much the same feelings as if one were transplanted from a dead-level country to hilly pastures and wooded ridges, where the turf is elastic, and the air sharp, keen, and bracing.
His lectures in London were attended by the elite of the social and literary world of the metropolis. Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle, the Duchess of Sutherland, Lady Byron and her daughter Ada (Lady Lovelace), the Duke of Argyll, Dr. John Carlyle, William and
52 IN MEMORIAM:
Mary Howitt, Douglas Jcrrold, Mr. John Forster, Thackeray, and many other distinguished persons were among his hearers. The writer of this notice can speak for the breathless attention of his audience, and the evident all-absorbing interest with which his discourses were listened to. The course consisted of six lectures, on " The Minds and Manners of the Nineteenth Century," " Power and Laws of Thought," "Relation of Intellect toNatural Science," " Tendencies and Duties of Men of Thought," " Politics and Socialism," " Poetry and Eloquence," and " Natural Aristocracy." It was a remarkable course. Only one or two of these lectures have been printed. Not a few of his aristocratic au- dience must have winced under some of his keen and searching reminders of duty. He uttered his convictions with a daring independence, and gave his judgments with a decisiveness of tone and earnest solemnity of manner which might have put kings in fear. He made his audience feel as if he had got them well in hand, and did not mean to let them go without giving them his "mind." It was as if he had said (to use his own words, on another occasion) : — " This you must accept as fated, and final for your salvation. It is mankind's Bill of Rights, the royal proclamation of Intellect, descending the throne, and announcing its good
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. S3
pleasure, that, hereafter, as heretofore, and now once for all, this world shall be governed by common sense and law of morals, or shall go to ruin." During the delivery of this course a letter appeared in the London Examiner, urging a repetition of it at a price sufficiently low to admit of poor literary men hearing Emerson. " This might be done by fixing some small admission charge, commensurate with the means of poets, critics, philosophers, his- torians, scholars, and the other divine paupers of that class. I feel that it ought to be done, because Emerson is a phenomenon whose like is not in the world, and to miss him is to lose an important, informing fact, out of the nineteenth century. If, therefore, you will insert this, the favour will at all events have been asked, and one conscience satis- fied. It seems also probable that a very large attendance of thoughtful men would be secured, and that Emerson's stirrup-cup would be a cheer- ing and full one, sweet and ruddy with international charity."
Three lectures were also given at Exeter Hall : "Napoleon," " Shakespeare," and " Domestic Life." At their conclusion Mr. Monckton Milnes (now Lord Houghton) made a speech complimentary to the lecturer, and to which the latter replied.
The first impression one had in listening to
54 IN MEMORIAM:
him in public was that his manner was so singularly quiet and unimpassioned that you began to fear the beauty and force of his thoughts were about to be marred by what might almost be described as monotony of expression. But very soon was this apprehension dispelled. The mingled dignity, sweetness, and strength of his features, the earnest- ness of his manner and voice, and the evident depth and sincerity of his convictions gradually extorted your deepest attention, and made you feel that you were within the grip of no ordinary man, but of one "sprung of earth's first blood," with "titles mani- fold ;" and as he went on with serene self-posses- sion and an air of conscious power, reading sentence after sentence, charged with well-weighed meaning, and set in words of faultless aptitude, you could no longer withstand his "so potent spell," but were forthwith compelled to surrender yourself to the fascination of his eloquence. He used little or no action, save occasionally a slight vibration of the body, as though rocking beneath the hand of some unseen power. The precious words dropped from his mouth in quick succession, and noiselessly sank into the hearts of his hearers, there to abide for ever, and, like the famed carbuncle in Eastern cave, shed a mild radiance on all things therein. Perhaps no orator ever succeeded with so little
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 55
exertion in entrancing his audience, stealing away each faculty, and leading the listeners captive at his will. He abjured all force and excitement — dispensing his regal sentences in all mildness, good- ness, and truth ; but stealthily and surely he grew upon you, from the smallest proportions, as it were; steadily increasing, until he became a Titan, a commanding power —
To whom, as to the mountains and the stars, The soul seems passive and submiss.
The moment he finished, he took up his MS. and quietly glided away, — disappearing before his audi- ence could give vent to their applause.
The French Revolution of 1848 happening while he w^as in this country, he went over to Paris in the spring of that year, and was present at several meetings of the political clubs, which were then in a state of fullest activity. He was accompanied by Mr. W. E. Forster (the late Chief Secretary for Ireland). In Paris he made the acquaintance of the late Mr. James Oswald Murray, then resident in that city. Mr. Murray, who was an artist, made a crayon sketch of Emerson, which is in the pos- session of the present writer. It brings him, as he then was, very vividly before the mind's eye. This likeness has not been reproduced. His observa- tions made during that visit were embodied in a
56 IN MEMORIAM:
brilliant lecture on the French, which he delivered after his return to America, but which has never been published. Before sailing for America, in the summer of 1848, he spent a night in Man- chester with the present writer, and had much to say of all he had seen and met. He overflowed with pleasant recollections of his visit, and spoke in the warmest terms of the kindness and con- sideration which he had everywhere experienced. He said he had not been aware there was so much kindness in the world. Would that some unseen but swift pen could have recorded all he said in these last rapidly-flying hours ! Speak- ing of Carlyle, he repeated the words used in a letter written some months before: "The guiding genius of the man, and what constitutes his supe- riority over almost every other man of letters, is his commanding sense of justice, and incessant demand for sincerity." He spoke of De Quincey and Leigh Hunt as having the finest manners of any literary men he had ever met. His visit to Leigh Hunt is described in the " Recollections " which follow this memoir.
On the Sunday before he sailed for America, a large number of his friends and admirers from all parts of the country were invited to meet him at the hospitable mansion of Mr. and Mrs. Paulet
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 57
(both since dead), near Liverpool whose guest he was. Among other notable persons gathered together on that occasion to spend a few hours in his company, and to listen to his rich experiences and recollections, was Arthur Hugh Clough, fpr whom Emerson had a most tender regard. In the following year the former met Margaret Fuller in Rome. He had become known to a select circle of scholars by his poem, "The Bothie of Tober-Na- Vuolich," which Kingsley eulogised, and Oxford pronounced " indecent, immoral, profane, and com- munistic." Mr. Emerson esteemed the poem highly, and was the means of procuring its re-publication in America. In a private letter, dated December 8th, 1862, he says: "I grieve that the good Clough, the generous and susceptible scholar, should die. I have read over his ' Bothie ' again, so full of the wine of youth." In the autumn of 1852 Clough went to America, by Emerson's invitation, voyaging thither in company with Thackeray and Lowell. He settled at Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was welcomed with remarkable cordiality, and formed many friendships which lasted to the end of his life. While in America he contributed several articles to the reviews and magazines, and undertook a revision of the translation, known as Dryden's, of Plutarch's "Lives" for an American
58 IN MEMORIAM:
publisher, which appeared in five volumes. In the following year he returned to England. He died at Florence in 1861, in his 43rd year.
" Representative Men," seven lectures, was pub- lished in 1850, the subjects being Uses of Great Men ; Plato, or, The Philosopher ; Plato, New Read- ings ; Swedenborg, or, The Mystic ; Montaigne, or, The Sceptic; Shakespeare, or. The Poet ; Napoleon, or, The Man of the World ; Goethe, or. The Writer. The " Essay on War," a lecture delivered in Boston, in March, 1838, was published in 1850, in Miss Elizabeth Peabody's "Esthetic Papers." In 1852, in conjunction with W. H. Channing and J. Freeman Clarke, he wrote " Memoirs of Margaret Fuller," his contribution to the work being the chapters on her life while resident in Concord and Boston, and her wonderful powers of conversa- tion. When Kossuth visited the United States in 1852 he went to Concord, where Emerson welcomed him. There was a procession, a review, and speeches in the town hall, the address of the occasion being made by Emerson. A lecture on The Anglo-American Race was given by him in New York in 1855. In 1856 he lectured in Boston on English Civilisation, France, Signs of the Times, Beauty, The Poets, The Scholar. In the same year he delivered an address before the Woman's Rights
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 59
Convention. " The aspiration of this century will be the code of the next," was one of his utterances on this subject. In 1863, when a Woman's Journal was proposed to be published in Boston, he wrote for it a short essay defining his position on this subject. The journal was not started, and the essay remained unprinted until it appeared in "The Woman's Journal" of March 26th, 1881. In 1856 he published" English Traits," a record of his impressions of England, already referred to, p. 16.
In January, 1855, he gave one of a course of anti-slavery lectures at Tremont Temple, Boston. " It was a strong and forcible address, full of fire, alive with magnetic power, plain and simple in style, and was listened to throughout with breath- less interest. He charged the prevalent indifference to the wrongs of the slave to scepticism concerning great human duties and concerns." In the same year he delivered an address before the Anti- Slavery Society of New York, in which he declared that " an immoral law is void." Under the title of " Echoes of Harper's Ferry," he published in i860 three speeches concerning John Brown, which he had delivered at Boston in 1859, at Concord later in the same year, and at Salem in i860. In 1856, when Charles Sumner was assaulted by Brooks, a
6o IN MEMORIAM:
mectinc^ of sympathy was held in Concord, and Emerson spoke with warm appreciation of the services of that senator.
At no time was he a leader in the actual battle against slavery, but as time went on and the struggle increased in intensity, his spoken word and pen became more and more con- spicuous and powerful. In January, 1861, he made a speech at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Boston. The speakers were often disturbed by a mob, and it was with great difficulty they could be heard. Emerson was frequently interrupted by hisses and other demonstrations of disapproval. He said that "slavery is based on a crime of that fatal character that it decomposes men. The barbarism which has lately appeared wherever that question has been touched, and in the action of the States where it prevails, seems to stupefy the moral sense. The moral injury of slavery is infinitely greater than its pecuniary and political injury. I really do not think the pecuniary mischief of slavery, which is always shown by statistics, worthy to be named in comparison with this power to subvert the reason of men ; so that those who speak of it, who defend it, who act in its behalf, seem to have lost the moral sense." In speaking of the threatened seces-
KALPH WALDO EMERSON. 6i
sion, he used these emphatic words, appropriate for the hour and occasion : —
In the great action now pending, all the forbearance, all the dis- cretion possible, and yet all the firmness will be used by the repre- sentatives of the North, and by the people at home. No man of patriotism, no man of natural sentiment, can undervalue the sacred Union which we possess ; but if it is sundered, it will be because it had already ceased to have a vital tension. The action of to-day is only the ultimatum of what had already occurred. The bonds had ceased to exist, because of this vital defect of slavery at the South, actually separating them in sympathy, in thought, in char- acter, from the people of the North ; and then, if the separation had gone thus far, what is the use of a pretended tie ? As to con- cessions, we have none to make. The monstrous concession made at the formation of the Constitution is all that ever can be asked ; it has blocked the civilisation and humanity of the times to this day.
He received an invitation to give an anti-slavery lecture at Washington. This he delivered in Feb- ruary, 1862, to a very large audience. President Lincoln, his cabinet, and the leading officials in the capital were present. Next day Seward introduced Lincoln to Emerson, and they had a long con- ference on slavery. The lecture had deeply im- pressed the President. The effect produced by the lecturer on his audience was described as most powerful, and it was listened to with unbounded enthusiasm. Those who had often heard Emerson considered it as one of his greatest and best efforts, and that he seemed inspired throughout its delivery. The lecture was printed in the "Atlantic
62 JN MEMORIAM:
Monthly," April, 1862. A meeting was held in Boston immediately after the President's procla- mation came out, on September 22nd, 1862, at which Emerson spoke of Lincoln's difficulties, and the wisdom which characterised his action. The speech was given in the " Atlantic Monthly," November, 1 862. Mr. Cooke thus speaks of it : — *' It was a clear, strong, earnest address, full of sympathy for the blacks, and grandly true to the highest moral convictions. There were no con- ceits of language in it, but a plain directness and a simple power that were full of charm. It is well to recall these addresses, that we may so much the more clearly understand how practical and human is Emerson's genius. On these occasions he came directly to the subject in hand, uttered not a word but of the highest wisdom, and proclaimed in majestic words that moral law which is written in the nature of things." After the proclamation had been carried into effect, and emancipation became a fact, a great meeting of rejoicing was held in Boston. At this meeting Emerson read his " Boston Hymn." Not long after he pub- lished his "Voluntaries," celebrating the victories of Liberty. In April, 1865, a meeting took place at Concord, to express the universal grief felt on account of Lincoln's death. On this occasion he
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 63
delivered an address, giving full expression to his thoughts about the war, the victory of the North, and his love of Lincoln. This fine oration is given in extenso at p. 152 of Mr. Cooke's book.
In 1859 he lectured on Morals, Conversation, Culture, Domestic Life, Natural Religion, The Law of Success, Originality, Criticism, Clubs, and Manners. In a publication called "The Dial, a Monthly Magazine for Literature, Philosophy, and Religion," started in i860 by his young friend, M. D. Conway, in Cincinnati, Ohio, were first printed The Sacred Dance from the Persian, Twelve Quatrains, and the Essay on Domestic Life, pre- viously delivered as a lecture, and which subse- quently took its place as one of the essays in the volume entitled "Society and Solitude;" and by his permission was printed in the same periodical the Address on West Indian Emancipation, de- livered in Concord in 1844.
In i860, he lost his friend Theodore Parker, and in 1862, H. D. Thoreau. To the former he paid a noble tribute at a public meeting, closing with these words : — " His sudden and singular eminence, the importance of his name and influence, are the verdict of his country to his virtues. We have few such men to lose ; amiable and blameless at home ; feared abroad as the standard-bearer of
64 IN MEMORIAM:
liberty ; taking all the duties he could grasp ; and, more, refusing to spare himself. He has gone down in early glory to his grave, to be a living and enlarging power, wherever learning, wit, honest valour, and independence are honoured." At Tho- reau's funeral he spoke about his rare genius — " a man 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." This address appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly," August, 1862. He assisted in editing Thoreau's Letters in 1865, and in preparing several other volumes from his manuscripts. Parker's con- gregation, after his death, asked Emerson to give them a sermon in Music Hall, which he was reluc- tant to do, " as he could no longer preach in the ordinary sense, and as he had long before aban- doned all thought of ever preaching again. He was urged so strongly, however, that at last he con- sented. He said he was glad that Parker had made the place one of freedom ; that he had valued religion more than its forms. During several years he frequently appeared before the society — often on Sundays — giving lectures for the Parker fraternity." One of his sermons in Music Hall has been reported by Mr. M. D. Conway in " Eraser's Magazine," May,
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 65
1867, who says it was " the most impressive utter- ance he ever heard from Emerson. It produced an effect on those who heard it beyond anything that I ever witnessed, many being moved at times to tears. I went with pencil and paper, intending to take down as much as I could, but at the end of the hour occupied by it, the paper remained blank, and the pencil had been forgotten. I can, therefore, only produce the record of my impressions of it, as they were written down the same day."
" The Conduct of Life" w^as published in i860. The nine Essays of which it consists had mostly been delivered as lectures during the previous half- dozen years. Their titles are — Fate, Power, Wealth, Culture, Behaviour, Worship, Considerations by the Way, Beauty, and Illusions. The first, sixth, seventh, and last of these w^ere considered to be among his best efforts. While his previous books had sold slowly, this one w^ent off rapidly — 2,500 copies of it being disposed of within two days after its publica- tion. In July, 1 86 1 , he gave an address before one of the societies of Tuft's College, the subject being the duties and attitude of students. In 1863 he wrote the " Biographical Sketch " preceding H. D. Tho- reau's " Excursions," extending to thirty-three pages, and in 1864, an " Introductory Essay on Persian Poetry," prefixed to the " Gulistan " of Saadi, and F
66 AV MEMORIAM:
afterwards printed in the "Atlantic Monthly," July, 1864. In November, 1864, he gave a course of Sunday Lectures before the Parker fraternity on "American Life" — the subjects being Public and Private Education, Social Aims, Resources, Table- Talk, Books, Character. Three of these lectures were reprinted — Books, in the volume entitled " Society and Solitude," and Social Aims and Resources, in a later volume called " Letters and Social Aims." The essay on Character was printed in the " North American Review" for 1866. In 1865, he spoke at "Commencement" Festival at Har- vard, and lectured on Literature before one of the Amherst societies. In 1866, he gave a course of lectures at Boston on " Philosophy for the People ;" the subjects being Intellect, Instinct, Perception, Talent, Genius, Imagination, Taste, Laws of the Mind, Conduct of the Intellect, and Relation of Intellect to Morals. During the winter of the same year, he gave lectures on The Man of the World, Eloquence, Immortality, and an address on the reception of the Chinese Embassy. He said in the course of one of these lectures that John Brown gave at Charlestown the best speech made in the nineteenth century, and that Daniel Webster and Father Taylor were the only two men who had reached his ideal of oratory.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 67
"May-day and other Poems" made its appear- ance in 1867. Many of the smaller pieces had appeared before in the "Atlantic Monthly." "The Rule of Life" was the subject of a lecture delivered to the Parker Fraternity in 1867. In the same year he attended the meeting for the organisation of the " Free Religious Association." The per- sons taking a lead in this movement had been largely influenced by his writings and lectures. " To study religion as a universal sentiment, to find the sources of its world-wide manifestation in man, to regard all its forms as expressions of the same fundamental principles — these objects of the new association had been for many years among his most cherished ideas." He delivered an address on the occasion, in which he said, " We are all very sensible — it is forced on us everyday — of the feeling that the churches are outgrown, that the creeds are outgrown, that a technical theology no longer suits us. . . . The church is not large enough for the man. . . , The child, the young student, finds scope in his mathematics and chemistry, or natural history, because he finds a truth larger than he is — finds himself continually instructed. But in the churches every healthy and thoughtful mind finds itself in something less ; it is checked, cribbed, confined ; and the statistics of the American, the
68 IN MEMORIAM:
English, and the German cities, showing that the mass of the population is leaving off going to church, indicate the necessity which should have been fore- seen, that the church should always be new and extemporized, because it is eternal, and springs from the sentiment of men, or it does not exist."
In July, 1867, he was made an Overseer of Har- vard University, and received the honorary degree of LL.D. At this time he gave his Phi-Beta-Kappa address on " The Progress of Culture," afterwards published in " Letters and Social Aims." Public opinion had at last come round to him, and his startling and — to the conservative element at Harvard — obnoxious and heretical Divinity-School address of 1838 was at length condoned, and the University " did herself the honour to forget his heresies, and accord to the great thinker a just recog- nition. It was a triumph on his part, nobly won and richly deserved. His critics had become his ad- mirers, his heresies were forgotten ; his genius, his rare merits, his pure and noble life only were remem- bered." His address was full of hope and courage, and richly suggestive with those great ideas he had preached for so many years. It was a strong plea for the truest culture, as the great promise of the American people. His concluding sentences were : *' When I look around me, and consider the sound
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 69
material of which the cultivated class here is made up — what high personal worth, what love of men, what hope, is joined with rich information and practical power, and that the most distinguished by- genius and culture are in this class of benefactors — I can not distrust this great knighthood of virtue, or doubt that the interests of science, of letters, of politics and humanity, are safe. I think these bands are strong enough to hold up the Republic. I read the promise of better times and of greater use."
" Society and Solitude," a volume containing twelve essays, was given to the public in 1870. The essays are — Society and Solitude, Civilization, Art, Eloquence, Domestic Life, Farming, Work and Days, Books, Clubs, Courage, Success, Old Age. Many of these papers had been long before given as lectures. The one on Art was printed in "The Dial," and that on Farming had been delivered in Concord in 1858. The papers on Books and Domestic Life had been delivered as lectures in England in 1847-8, and those on Society and Solitude and Old Age had appeared in early volumes of the "Atlantic Monthly," while the one on Civilization was a portion of the Wash- ington Address of 1862. Colonel Higginson, an accomplished American author, said of these
70 IN MEMORIAM:
essays that there was in them "a greater variety and a more distinct organic Hfe than in the earlier ones, while they are no less finished and scarcely less concentrated. It is not enough to say that such papers as these constitute the high-water mark of American literature ; it is not too much to say that they are unequalled in the literature of the age. Name, if one can, the Englishman or the Frenchman who, on themes like these, must not own himself second to Emerson."
In the spring of 187 1 he visited California with a party of friends, and delivered some lectures while there. In the autumn of the same year he gave an address before the Massachusetts Historical Society on the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Walter Scott. The address will be found at the end of this volume. In the same year he gave six lectures and readings in Mechanics' Hall. " The first was on literature. In the last he spoke of the effects of culture on the soul, and its influence on the forma- tion of ideas about life and destiny." The " Boston Journal " thus spoke of these lectures : —
The same consummate magnetism lingers around and upon every phrase ; there is the same thrilling earnestness of antithesis, the same delight and brooding over poetry and excellence of ex- pression, as of old. There is no other man in America who can, by the mere force of what he says, enthrall and dominate an audience. Breathless attention is given, although now and then
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 71
his voice falls away so that those seated farthest off have to strain every nerve to catch the words. The grand condensation, the unfaltering and almost cynical brevity of expression, are at first startling and vexatious ; but presently one yields to the charm, and finds his mind in the proper assenting mood. The loving tender- ness with which Emerson lingers over a fine and thoroughly expressive phrase is beyond description. It thrills the whole audi- ence ; arrests universal attention. The sacredness of the printed page is interpreted in a new and universal light. There is the same passionate adoration displayed over a fine line from a sonnet, or lavished upon one of Thoreau's quaint conceits, which Ingres bestowed upon a specimen of pure drawing. The innate and inexhaustible love of beauty, softening and permeating every utter- ance, infusing its delicate glow and its delicious harmony into each idea, and investing abstractions with the charms of real and vivid beings, triumphs over age and diffidence, gives to the austere and unworldly philosopher the bloom and enthusiasm of the lover and the poet.
In 1 87 1 he wrote an introduction to Goodwin's translation of Plutarch's " Morals," in which he gave an account of the works of that author. In January, 1872, while in Washington, he visited Howard University, and spoke extemporaneously to the coloured students on books as a means of education, on the choice of a profession, and other kindred topics.
In 1872 he again visited Europe, accompanied by his daughter, arriving in November, After a short stay in London, they proceeded to Egypt, spending some time there, returning in the spring of 1873 to England, I'ia Italy and France. During
72 IN MEMORIAM:
this visit he did not deliver any lectures. He resided for some weeks in London, and visited Professor Max Miiller at Oxford. He spent a single day (8th May) in Edinburgh, his main object being to sec Dr. J. Hutchison Stirling, author of " The Secret of Hegel." His two last days were spent under the roof of the writer of this memoir, and many of his old acquaintances and hearers of 1847-8 had thus an opportunity of meeting him. Mr. George W. Smalley, the able London corre- spondent of " The New York Tribune," writing about Emerson's last visit to England, said : — " I know no American, — indeed, there can be no other, who has in England a company of such friends and disciples as those who gather about Mr. Emerson ; no one for whom so many rare men and women have a reverence so affectionate ; no one who holds to the best section of English students, and of her most religious and cultivated minds, a relation so delightful to both. The incomparable charm of his manner and of his conversation remains what it always was, and marked always by the same sweetness, the same delicacy, mingled with the same penetration and force."
Previously to this, his last visit to Europe, his house at Concord was accidentally destroyed by fire. Fortunately, none of his books or manu-
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 73
scripts were injured. During his absence in Europe it was rebuilt. When he returned home in May, 1873, ^^ '^^^s received with the greatest enthusiasm by his fellow-townsmen — the crowd accompanying him from the railway station to the newly-built house, which was an exact counterpart of the old home. A letter from one of his own family, written at the time, records that the citizens gathered at the railway terminus in crowds, and the school children were drawn up in two smiling rows, through which he passed, greeted by enthu- siastic cheers and songs of welcome. All followed his carriage to the house, and sang " Home, sweet Home " to the music of the band. A few days afterwards, he invited all his townsmen and towns- women to call and see him in his restored home, and a large number of them availed themselves of the opportunity.
In October, 1873, he gave the "Dedication Address " in connection with a new Free Library in Concord, the gift of an enlightened citizen of the town. His subject was the uses and value of books and libraries, and in the course of his address he spoke of Thoreau and Hawthorne. At Faneuil Hall, December i6th, 1873, he read a poem on the centennial anniversary of the destruction of tea in Boston harbour. He read the poem a second time
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on the last day of the year before the Radical Club. At this meeting a reception was given him, at which many of his friends were present. His manner was described as " so gentle, that he seemed only reading to one person, and yet his voice v/as so distinct that it filled the room in its lowest tones."
In 1874 he was put in nomination for the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University. Emerson received 500 votes, against 700 for Disraeli, who was elected. In a letter addressed to Dr. J. Hutchison Stirling, the honorary president in con- nection with the movement, he said : — " I count that vote as quite the fairest laurel that has ever fallen on me. Probably I have never seen one of these 500 young men ; and thus they show us that our recorded . thoughts give the means of reaching those who think with us in other countries, and make closer alliances, sometimes, than life-long neighbourhood."
In 1875 appeared "Parnassus, a Selection of British and American Poetry, with prefatory remarks," of which it may be truly said that it is the best collection of English Poetry ever pub- lished. The only defect in the volume is the much-to-be-regretted absence of a few specimens of his own poems — attributable to Emerson's charac-
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 75
teristic modesty. Any other selector — had he been a poet — would, hi all probability, have given some specimens of his own verses ; e.g.^ in a recent volume of " Selections of English Poetry," published in London, the editor obligingly presents the reader with eleven passages from Shakespeare, seven from Milton, and tlih'teen from his own works! Some of the selections in " Parnassus " have been inserted for their historical importance ; some for their weight of sense ; some for single couplets or lines, perhaps even for a word ; some for magic of style ; and others which — although in their structure betraying a defect of poetic ear — have nevertheless a wealth of truth which ought to have created melody. The arrangement is not chrono- logical, but based upon the character of the subject, under the following heads : — Nature ; Human Life ; Intellectual ; Contemplative, Moral and Religious; Heroic ; Portraits ; Narrative Poems and Ballads ; Songs ; Dirges and Pathetic Poems ; Comic and Humorous ; Poetry of Terror, and Oracles and Counsels. An index of authors, prefixed, with dates of birth and death, is a useful guide in many instances, especially as regards the period of the writings. It does not appear that the merits of an author's acknowledged — or perhaps we should say recognised — position had had much to do
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with the copiousness of the extracts. In his preface he erroneously attributes to Landor a remark on Wordsworth's beautiful poem, " Laodamia," which was really made by another critic : — " It is a poem that might be read aloud in Elysium, and the spirits of departed heroes and sages would gather round to listen to it." Tbe sentence occurs in " The Spirit of the Age ; or Contemporary Portraits," by William Hazlitt.
On 19th April, 1875, Emerson delivered a brief address on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the Concord fight. " May-day and other Poems," being a second volume of Poems, was published in 1874; "Letters and Social Aims," containing eleven essays — Poetry and Imagination, Social Aims, Eloquence, Resources, The Comic, Quota- tion and Originality, Progress of Culture, Persian Poetry, Inspiration, Greatness, and Immortality — appeared in 1876. Some of these essays are equal to any that he has written — notably " The Progress of Culture," and "Immortality." Most of the others had been given as lectures between i860 and 1 870. " Fortune of the Republic " was the title of a lecture delivered at the Old South Church, Bos- ton, March 30, 1878, afterwards published in a thin volume. In the same year and in the same place he gave a lecture on "The Superlative;" in 1879
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. -jj
one on " Memory," before the Concord School of Philosophy ; another in Cambridge, on " Elo- quence;" and one before the Harvard Divinity School on " The Preacher." This was printed in the " Unitarian Review" (1880). In 1880 he gave his hundredth lecture before the Concord Lyceum, on " New England Life and . Letters ; " and before the School of Philosophy, " Natural Aristocracy." In the autumn he read an essay before the members of the Divinity School, and early in 1881 he read a paper on " Carlyle " (written in 1848) before the Massachusetts Historical Society.
In the " North American Review " will be found the following prose essays and articles : — Michael Angelo, Milton, Character, Demonology, Perpetual Forces, The Sovereignty of Ethics, In the "Atlantic Monthly" appeared, between 1858 and 1876, the following articles and poems: — The Rommany Girl, The Chartist's Complaint, Days, Brahma, Illusions, Solitude and Society, Two Rivers, Books, Persian Poetry, Eloqtietice, Waldeinsamkeit, Song of Nature, CiUtiire, The Test, Old Age, The Titmouse, American Civilization, Compensation, Tkoreaii, The President's Proclamation, Boston Hymn, Voluntaries, Saadi, My Garden, Boston, Terminus, Progress of Culture (Phi-Beta-Kappa Address,. Harv. Univ., 1867). The prose articles are indicated
78 IN AIEMORIAM:
by being printed in italics. It has been already mentioned that several of the above pieces have been included in successive volumes of his col- lected essays.
At the end of this volume the reader will find a list of the articles on Emerson and his writings which have appeared in the magazines and reviews of Great Britain and the United States, as well as indications of what has been written about him in France, Germany, and Holland.
Any sketch of the life and environment of Emerson, however brief, would be incomplete if it did not include some reference to that remarkable woman, Margaret Fuller, and to the influence which she exercised on the best men and women with whom she came in contact. The friendship which subsisted between her and Emerson was only ter- minated by her untimely death. Returning from Europe with her husband (Count D'Ossoli) and child, the vessel in which they sailed was wrecked on 1 6th June, 1850, within sight of her own New England shores — indeed, quite close to the beach. For twelve agonising hours they were face to face with death. She refused an attempt made by four of the crew to save her, lest she might have been parted from those dearest to her. She bravely preferred certain death to the chances of a life-long
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 79
separation. To perish with them were better than to live without them. The terrible story has been told with intense power and sympathy by her friend, Mr. W. H. Channing, in that portion of her " Me- moirs" written by him. A more thrilling narrative has never been written.
Of this woman of true genius and extraordinary acquirements, and whose conversation was of un- rivalled fluency, power, and brilliancy, ample records remain. As a biography, giving the inward and outward life of a woman of the highest culture, and endowed with rare gifts of soul, her " Memoirs " written by Mr. Emerson, Mr. J. Freeman Clarke, and Mr. W. H. Channing, are of the deepest interest. They knew her intimately, and have performed their task with loving admiration and sympathy, and " with extraordinary frankness, courage, and deli- cacy." She was a good Greek, Latin, and Hebrew scholar, was well read in French, Italian, and Ger- man literature, and had studied ancient and modern Art carefully and diligently. She had a singular power of communicating her literary enthusiasm to her companions. She has left behind her several volumes containing the best of her literary work. It has been said of her that "she was plain in appear- ance, and that she had a faculty of unsheathing herself at the touch of a thought ; and those who
8o IN ME MORI AM:
came into right relations with her remember her as almost beautiful. Her natural place was at the centre of a circle where thoughts and truths were being discovered, and which had not yet found their channels in literature. With the finest womanly sympathies she combined the strong masculine intellect, and an individuality which stimulated every other individuality. Her influence was great in the intellectual activities of her day." At first, Emerson reluctantly made her acquain- tance, and for a time they were not much drawn to each other. She said he was not fully responsive to her outbursts of sentiment, and was cold and unapproachable ; while he found in her too much of the sybil. Afterwards, however, " she became," to use his own words, " an established friend and frequent inmate of our house, and continued thence- • forward for years to come once in three or four months to spend a week or a fortnight with us. She adopted all the people and all the interests she found here. ' Your people shall be my people, and yonder darling boy I shall cherish as my own.' Her ready sympathies endeared her to my wife and my mother, each of whom highly esteemed her good sense and sincerity. She was an active, inspiring companion and correspondent ; and all the art, the thought, and the nobleness in New
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 8l
England seemed at that moment related to her, and she to it. She was everywhere a welcome guest. The houses of her friends in town and country were open to her, and every hospitable attention eagerly offered. Her arrival was a holi- day, and so was her abode. She stayed a few days, often a week, more seldom a month ; and all tasks that could be suspended were put aside to catch the favourable hour, in walking, riding, or boating, to talk with this joyful guest, who brought wit, anecdotes, love-stories, tragedies, oracles with her, and, with her broad web of relations to so many friends, seemed like the queen of some parliament of love, who carried the key to all confidences, and to whom every question had been finally referred. . . . The day was never long enough to exhaust her opulent memory ; and I, who knew her inti- mately for ten years, never saw her without surprise at her new powers. . . . Her talents were so various, and her conversation so rich and enter- taining, that one might talk with her many times, by the parlour fire, before he discovered the strength which served as foundation to so much accomplishment and eloquence. ... In the evening she would come to the library, and many and many a conversation was there held, whose de- tails, if they could be preserved, would justify all G
82 ■ IN MEMORIAM:
encomiums. They interested me in every manner; — talent, memory, wit, stern introspection, poetic play, religion, the finest personal feeling, the aspects of the future, — each followed each in full activity, and left me, I remember, enriched and sometimes astonished by the gifts of my guest. Her topics were numerous, but the cardinal points of poetry, love, and religion were never far off ... It remains to say that all these powers and accomplish- ments found their best and only adequate channel in her conversation; a conversation which those who have heard it, unanimously, as far as I know, pronounced to be, in elegance, in range, in flexi- bility, and adroit transition, in depth, and cordiality, and in moral aim, altogether admirable ; surprising and cheerful as a poem, and communicating its own civility and elevation like a charm to all hearers. . . . Whilst she embellished the moment, her conversation had the merit of being solid and true. She put her whole character into it, and had the power to inspire. The companion was made a thinker, and went away quite other than he came." Miss Peabody tells a very characteristic anecdote relating to Emerson's first acquaintance with Mar- garet Fuller : — " Emerson had returned from Europe, had recovered his health, had married a second time, had settled at Concord, and he and I had gotten
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over being shy with each other ; but he had not gotten on as well with Margaret Fuller. Margaret wrote poetry, and people laughed about it, and said she wrote it in fits of exaltation, which she called * intense times.' This gave Mr. Emerson, who was very simple and natural, a prejudice against her. One day, when visiting at his house, I expressed the wish that he could know Margaret better. Mrs. Emerson, who is the soul of disinterested kindness, proposed at once that Margaret be in- vited to come to their house. ' Oh, no,' cried Mr. Emerson, ' I don't want to know a lady who has " intense times," and writes poetry in them.' Then I went on and told how I had had the same pre- judice ; how it all melted away when I conversed with her, and how, in talking with me, she had made the whole universe look larger. At this assurance Mr. Emerson's face suddenly lighted, and, turning to his wife, he exclaimed : ' Yes, Queenie, you are right. Invite her, by all means. Let us welcome any young woman whose converse can make the whole universe look larger to us.' "
With regard to the influence which Emerson had on her mind and character, we have her own estimate: — "His influence has been more beneficial to me than that of any American, and from him I first learned what is meant by an inward life.
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Many other springs have since fed the stream of i
living waters, but he first opened the fountain. That the 'mind is its own place' was a dead phrase to me till he cast light upon my mind. Several of his sermons stand apart in memory, like land-marks of my spiritual history. It would take a volume to tell what this one influence did for me." And again : — " My inmost heart blesses the fate that gave me birth in the same clime and time, and \
that has drawn me into such a close bond with him j
as, it is my hopeful faith, will never be broken, but j
from sphere to sphere ever be hallowed. When I look forward to eternal growth, I am always aware that I am far larger and deeper for him."
Margaret Fuller has left a record of her impres- sions of Emerson's Lectures, too long for quotation i in full, but from which it is worth while giving a few sentences : " Among his audience some there , were — simple souls — whose life had been, perhaps, without clear light, yet still a search after truth for i its own sake, who were able to recognise beneath his i veil of words the still small voice of conscience, the vestal fires of lone religious hours, and the mild | teachings of the summer woods. The charm of his ! elocution was great. His general manner was that | of the reader, occasionally rising into direct address | or invocation in passages where tenderness or |
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 85
majesty demanded more energy. At such times both eye and voice called on a remote future to give a worthy reply — a future which shall manifest more largely the universal soul as it was then mani- fest to his soul. The tone of the voice was a grave body tone, full and sweet rather than sonorous, yet flexible, and haunted by many modulations, as even instruments of w^ood and brass seem to become after they have been long played on with skill and taste ; how much more so the human voice ! In the most expressive passages it uttered notes of silvery clearness, winning, yet still more command- ing. The words uttered in those tones floated awhile above us, then took root in the memory like winged seed. In the union of an even rustic plainness with lyric inspiration, religious dignity with philosophic calmness, keen sagacity in details with boldness of view, we saw what brought to mind the early poets and legislators of Greece — men who taught their fellows to plough and avoid moral evil, sing hymns to the gods, and watch the metamorphosis of nature. Here in civic Boston was such a man — one who could see man in his original grandeur and his original childishness, rooted in simple nature, raising to the heavens the brow and eye of a poet."
Something has been said in the preceding para-
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graph with regard to Emerson's voice. Another friend, Mr. E. Whipple, the well-known American critic, alluding to this characteristic, says : — " Emer- son's voice had a strange power, which affected me more than any other voice I ever heard on the stage or on the platform. It was pure thought translated into purely intellectual tone, — the perfect music of spiritual utterance. It is impossible to read his verses adequately without bearing in mind his pecu- liar accent and emphasis ; and some of the grandest and most uplifting passages in his prose lose much of their effect unless the reader can recall the tones of his voice ; — a voice now, alas ! silent on earth for ever, but worthy of being heard in that celestial company which he, ' a spirit of the largest size and divinest mettle,' has now exchanged for his earthly companions. . , . His voice had the stern, keen, penetrating sweetness which made it a fit organ for his self-centred, commanding mind. Yet though peculiar to himself, it had at the same time an impersonal character, as though a spirit was speaking through him." When strongly moved, his voice would assume the deepest intensity, and his whole frame tremble with emotion, — kindling, as if by magnetic sympathy, the feelings of his audience. Such was the case on a memorable occasion. An eminent lawyer of Boston, Rufus
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 87
Choatc, in defending slavery, spoke of the Declara- tion of Independence, popularly held to be incon- sistent with slavery, as a series of " glittering generalities." In a lecture given afterwards, Emer- son quoted some of Choate's phrases — as those declaring "all men are born equal," and are endowed with " inalienable rights," — and then said with ineffable scorn — "These have been called glittering generalities ; they are BLAZING UBIQUITIES," The impression produced by this indignant sentence was tremendous.
The writer of this memoir had the good fortune to spend an evening in Miss Fuller's company in the autumn of 1846. She had just arrived in Eng- land, with the intention of making a long-delayed tour in Europe, with some American friends by whom she was accompanied. She spent a few days in Liverpool, and it was in the house of Mrs. Ames, a lady well known in Liverpool and Manchester circles in those days, that the conversazione took place. Her conversation — or rather monologue — was so memorable as to warrant all that has been said of it by her friends. On this occasion she ranged over a great variety of topics, social, literary, artistic, and religious, with an ease and assured grasp which made the listener feel that he was under the spell of a mind of undoubted
88 IN MEMORIAM:
oi'^inality, of singular magnetic force, and of the widest culture and accomplishments. Among other subjects she spoke in the warmest manner of a book that had recently appeared, called "Margaret; a Talc of the Real and the Ideal," written by the Rev. Sylvester Judd, of Augusta, Maine, containing the material for half-a-dozen ordinary novels — " full of imagination, aromatic, poetical, pictur- esque, tender, and in the dress of fiction — setting forth the whole gospel of Transcendentalism in religion, political reform, social ethics, personal character,professional and private life." The subject of the story, which belongs to the years following the Revolutionary War, is the development of a beauti- ful female nature, — the embodiment of an inbred natural refinement and purity, — amidst the rudest and most boorish surroundings, with vivid pictures of the religious life and homely customs of a rough frontier country ; a tale full of moral earnestness, and fidelity to local traits, with wonderfully real descrip- tions of the varying appearances of nature and the changes of human occupation. This strange story, which some critics consider one of the best of American romances, was the theme of much bril- liant and far-reaching comment, which she poured forth with a fluency and commanding eloquence that almost took the breath from some among her
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 89
audience. She kindly lent the book to the present writer, and invited a correspondence regarding it. While in Liverpool she heard a discourse by the Rev. James Martineau, which called forth her warm admiration.
Every reader of Mr. Lowell knows his intensely humorous description of the characteristics of Emerson and Carlyle, in "A Fable for Critics." That keen and vigorous critic has said many admirable things in prose about Emerson, and any memoir of him would be incomplete and inadequate which did not include the following exquisitely ex- pressed tribute to his genius and influence. "A lec- turer now for something like a third of a century, one of the pioneers of the lecturing system, the charm of his voice, his manner, and his matter has never lost its power over his earlier hearers, and con- tinually winds new ones in its enchanting meshes. . . . I have heard some great, speakers and some accomplished orators, but never any that so moved and persuaded men as he. There is a kind of undertone in that rich baritone of his that sweeps our minds from their foothold into deep waters with a drift we can not and would not resist. And how artfully (for Emerson is a long-studied artist in these things) does the deliberate utterance, that seems waiting for the first word, seem to admit us
90 IN MEMO R I AM:
partners in the labour of thought, and make us feel as if the glance of humour were a sudden suggestion ; as if the perfect phrase lying written there on the desk were as unexpected to him as to us. . . . There is no man living to whom, as a writer, so many of us feel and thankfully acknowledge so great an indebtedness for ennobling impulses. We look upon him as one of the few men of genius whom our age has produced. Search for his eloquence in his books, and you will perchance miss it, but meanwhile you will find that it has kindled all your thoughts. For choice and pith of language he belongs to a better age than ours, and mie:ht rub shoulders with Fuller and Sir Thomas Browne — a diction at once so rich and so homely as his I know not where to match. It is like homespun cloth-of-gold. I know no one that can hold a promiscuous crowd in pleased attention so long as he. . . . ' Plain living and high thinking' speak to us in this altogether unique lay-preacher. We have shared in the beneficence of this varied culture, this fearless impartiality in criticism and speculation, this masculine sincerity, this sweetness of nature which rather stimulates than cloys, for a generation long. If ever there was a standing testimonial to the cumulative power and value of Character — wc have it in this gracious and dig-
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 91
nified presence. What an antiseptic is a pure life ! At sixty-five he has that privilege of soul which abolishes the calendar, and presents him to us always the unwasted contemporary of his own prime. . . . Who that saw the audience will ever forget it, where every one still capable of fire, or longing to renew in them the half-forgotten sense of it, was gathered? Those faces, young and old, agleam with pale intellectual light, eager with pleased attention, flash upon me once more from the deep recesses of the years with an exquisite pathos. Ah, beautiful young eyes, brimming with love and hope, wholly vanished now in that other world we call the Past, or peering doubtfully through the pensive gloaming of memory, your light impoverishes these cheaper days ! I hear again that rustle of sensation, as they turned to exchange glances over some pithier thought, some keener flash of that humour which always played about the horizon of his mind like heat-lightning, and it seems now like the sad whisper of the autumn leaves that are whirling around me. . . . His younger hearers could not know how much they owed to the benign impersonality, that quiet scorn of everything ignoble, the never-sated hunger of self-culture, that were personified in the man before them. But the older knew how much the country's
92 IN MEMORIAM:
intellectual emancipation was due to the stimulus of his teaching and example, how constantly he had kept burning the beacon of an ideal life above our lower reg-ion of turmoil. To him more than to all other causes did the young martyrs of our Civil War owe the sustaining strength of thoughtful heroism that is so touching in every record of their lives. Those who are grateful to Mr, Emerson, as many of us are, for what they feel to be most valuable in their culture, or perhaps I should say their impulse, are grateful not so much for any direct teachings of his as for that inspiring lift which only genius can give, and without which all doctrine is chaff." " I can never help applying to him what Ben Jonson said of Bacon — ' There hap- pened in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his speaking. His language was nobly censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. He commanded where he spoke.' "
Mr. Lowell gives a vivid description of the effect produced by Emerson's speech at the Burns Cen- tenary dinner at Boston in 1859. "In that closely- filed speech of his every word seemed to have just
RALPH WALDO EMERSON, 93
dropped from the clouds. He looked far away- over the heads of his hearers with a vague kind of expectation, as into some private heaven of inven- tion, and the winged period came at last obedient to his spell. . . . Every sentence brought down the house, as I never saw one brought down before, — and it is not so easy to heat Scotsmen with a sentiment that has no hint of native brogue in it. I watched, for it was an interesting study, how the quick sympathy ran flashing from face to face down the long tables, like an electric spark thrilling as it went, and then exploded in a thunder of plaudits. I watched till tables and faces vanished, for I, too, found myself caught up in the common enthusiasm." This celebrated speech is reprinted in the latter portion of this volume.
From an Essay on Emerson by John Burroughs, the author of several volumes of rare merit, pub- lished in New York, and which it is surprising no London publisher has yet introduced to British readers, a few sentences are here given, — full of pith and just appreciation. Mr. 'Burroughs wields a racy pen, and there is the ring of the true metal in his delightful sketches of outdoor nature, mingled with chapters of a more purely literary character.
I know of no other writing that yields the reader so many strongly stamped medallion-like sayings and distinctions. There
94 IN MEMO RI AM:
is a perpetual refining and recoining of the current wisdom of life and conversation. It is the old gold or silver or copper ; but how bright and new it looks in his pages ! Emerson loves facts, things, objects, as the workman his tools. He makes everything serve. The stress of expression is so great that he bends the most obdurate element to his purpose; as the bird, under her keen necessity, weaves the most contrary and diverse materials into her nest. He seems to like best material that is a little refractory ; it makes his page more piquant and stimulating. Within certain limits he loves roughness, but not to the expense of harmony. He has a wonderful hardiness and push. Where else in literature is there a, mind, moving in so rare a medium, that gives one such a sense of tangible resistance and force ?
But after we have made all possible deductions from Emerson there remains the fact that he is a living force, and, tried by home standards, a master. Wherein does the secret of his power lie? He is the prophet and philosopher of young men. The old man and the man of the world make little of him, but of the youth who is ripe for him he takes almost an unfair advantage. One secret of his charm I take to be the instant success with which he trans- fers our interest in the romantic, the chivalrous, the heroic, to the sphere of morals and the intellect. We are let into another realm unlooked for, where daring and imagination also lead. The secret and suppressed heart finds a champion. To the young man fed upon the penny precepts and staple Johnsonianism of English literature, and of what is generally doled out in the schools and colleges, it is a surprise; it is a revelation, A new world opens before him. The nebrflje of his spirit are resolved or shown to be irresolvable. The fixed stars of his inner firmament are brought immeasurably near. He drops all other books. , . . Emerson is the knight errant of the moral sentiment. He leads in our time and country, one illustrious division, at least, in the holy crusade of the affections and the intuitions against the usurpations of tradition and theological dogma.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 95
Everything about a man like Emerson is important. I find his phrenology and physiognomy more than ordinarily typical and sug- gestive. Look at his picture there, — large, strong features on a small face and head, — no blank spaces; all given up to expression ; a high, predacious nose, a sinewy brow, a massive, benevolent chin. In most men there is more face than feature ; but here is vast deal more feature than face, and a corresponding alertness and emphasis of character. Indeed, the man is made after this fashion. He is all type. His mind has the hand's pronounced anatomy, its cords and sinews and multiform articulations and processes, its opposing and co-ordinating power. There may have been broader and more catholic natures, but few so towering and audacious in expression, and so rich in characteristic traits. Every scrap and shred of him is im- portant and related. Like the strongly aromatic herbs and simples, — • sage, mint, wintergreen, sassafras, — the least part carries the flavour of the whole. Is there one indifferent, or equivocal, or unsympathising drop of blood in him ? Where he is at all he is entirely, — nothing extemporaneous ; his most casual word seems to have lain in pickle for a long time, and is saturated through and through with the Emersonian brine. Indeed, so pungent and penetrating is this quality, that his quotations seem more than half his own.
Mention has already been made of Emerson's sympathy with the Anti-Slavery Movement (^'.p. 59), and the priceless service he rendered to that cause. His views on Free Trade were of the most advanced and far-reaching nature. "America," he said in one of his public addresses, "means opportunity, freedom, power. The genius of this country has marked out her true policy; opportunity — doors wide open — every port open. If I could I would have Free Trade with all the world, without toll or custom- house. Let us invite every nation, every race, every
96 IN MEMO R I AM:
skin; white man, black man, red man, yellow man. Let us offer hospitality, a fair field, and equal laws to all. The land is wide enough, the soil has food enough for all." With regard to National Educa- tion he said : — " We should cling to the common school, and enlarge and extend the opportunities it offers. Let us educate every soul. Every native child, and every foreign child that is cast on our coast should be taught, at the public cost, first, the rudiments of knowledge, and then, as far as may be, the ripest results of art and science." An acute writer in the " Spectator," of May 6th, 1882, speak- ing of the interest Emerson took in all public events, makes this remark : " He sympathised ardently with all the great practical movements of his own day, while Carlyle held contemptuously aloof He was one of the first to strike a heavy blow at the institution of slavery. He came for- ward to encourage his country in the good cause, when slavery raised the flag of rebellion. He had a genuine desire to see all men free, while Carlyle only felt the desire to see all men strongly governed — which they might be, without being free at all. Emerson's spirit, moreover, was much the saner, and more reverent, of the two, though less rich in power and humour."
During the last three or four years his memory
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. q-j
frequently failed him, especially in reference to his recollection of more recent events. But he was himself perfectly conscious of this, and though it did not prevent his occasionally delivering lectures and taking part in public gatherings, from the time this defect became manifest he was always accompanied to the platform by his daughter, whose devotion and considerate tact invariably supplied the words and phrases which Mr. Emerson could not recall. To the last he continued to take great interest in the well-being of his neighbours and the intellectual and material progress of his native village. He had never lost his inherent love of dignified simplicity in domestic life, and his home was a model of refinement and unostenta- tious comfort. He was never more happy than in the company of his grandchildren, and all children loved him. His old age was serene, and the sweet- ness and gentleness of his character were more and more apparent as the years rolled on. To the last, even when the events of yesterday were occasion- ally obscured, his memory of the remote past was unclouded. He would talk about the friends of his early and middle life with unbroken vigour ; and those who ever had the good fortune to hear him, in the free intercourse of his own study, will not soon forget the charm of his conversation and the H
98
IN MEMORIAM:
crraciousncss of his demeanour. He would drive with his visitors to the numerous interesting spots in and about Concord, he would point out the old home of his own family, the house of his friend, Mr. Alcott, and the still more famous " old manse " which Hawthorne has made immortal.
One who had the pleasure of visiting him within the last two years has told how he saw the wise old man whom he had first heard in Manchester more than thirty years before, and again in the seclusion of a friend's house during Mr. Emerson's last visit to England, and at last in the home of his youth and age. " Assuredly," says this privileged visitor, "this great and good man was seldom seen to rarer advantage. He drove me to the haunts of the pilgrims who came to Concord to see the place of so many noble and interesting associations ; in the public library of the town which he had helped to establish, he showed me not a few literary treasures which the greatest libraries in the world might envy — he pointed out the famous tavern where the British soldiers stopped on the day made memorable by the first fight in the war of Indepen- dence. And on the battle-field itself, where the beautiful Concord river still flows silently between the low hills which almost entwine the little town, he told the story of the famous struggle. It was a
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 99
perfect spring day ; light breezes stirred the pine trees under which lay the remains of the nameless English soldiers ; and hard by was the granite monument to the memory of the local militiamen who fell in that famous skirmish. The scenes and the associations were in themselves eloquent, but they were rendered immeasurably more so by the narrative of the sage whose verses, cut in stone on the monument before us, will tell to future gene- rations how Concord's noblest son sang of the renown of his country's defenders. A few weeks afterwards I was present at one of the dinners of the famous Saturday Club. As the wits of the Restoration and Queen Anne's days met at Will's Coffee House to listen to Dryden or in the more select conclave of the October Club, so the poets, essayists, and humourists of Boston assembled at these dinners, held sometimes at the houses of the members, and sometimes, when the meetings were larger, in one of the hotels. This was a notable gathering ; it was intended to do special honour to the distinguished Massachusetts lawyer, who had just returned from presiding at the Chicago Con- vention which had nominated General Garfield, Republican candidate, for the Presidency. Long- fellow was in the chair ; James T. Fields was near him. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was as usual the
lOO IN MEMORIAM:
life and soul of the party, and the company in- cluded other scarcely less famous men. Emerson had not recently been able to attend many of the meetings, but the occasion was no ordinary one. ' Look at Emerson,' said Fields ; ' how happy he appears ; was there ever such a sweet smile, and yet how silent he is. In the early days of the club, when Agassiz, its founder, was with us, he and Emerson were the liveliest of us all.' It was touching to see the marks of reverence and regard which all displayed to him, and to notice his appreciatory responses. He thoroughly enjoyed the sparkling sallies of Wendell Holmes, and when Longfellow, to whom speech-making was always a punishment, in a few well-chosen words, referred to the presence of their honoured fellow-member, Emerson was constrained to reply, and he did not forget to tell us that if he could not make them a speech he was only following the example of his friend the chairman. It was altogether a delightful meeting, but already there are melancholy associa- tions with it. Fields, whose 'Yesterdays with Authors ' has given us so many delightful sketches of famous men, has followed his friends Thackeray and Dickens. Longfellow, the sweetest, the most genial, and gentle of poets and men, has also gone, and now we mourn the departure of the greatest
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. loi
of them, Emerson himself, a man in whom were combined the strength of the New England Puri- tan and the grace and beauty of the accomplished Greek."
The sense of beauty was so vital an element in the very constitution of Emerson's being, that it decorated everything it touched. The perception and sentiment of beauty is one of the great charac- teristics of his intellect. Beauty is the theme of some of his noblest utterances. " So strong is this," says his friend Mr. E. Whipple, " that he accepts nothing in life that is uncomely, haggard, or ghastly. The fact that an opinion depresses, instead of invigorates, is with him a sufficient reason for its rejection. His observation, his wit, his reason, his Imagination, his style, all obey the controlling sense of beauty which is at the heart of his nature, and instinctively avoid the ugly and the base."
The native elevation of his mind and the general loftiness of his thinking have sometimes blinded his admirers to the fact that he was one of the shrewdest of practical observers, and was capable of meeting so-called practical men on the level of the facts and principles which they relied upon for success in life. " He always impressed me with the conviction," says the last-quoted writer, "that an idealist of the high type of Emerson was as
102 . IN MEMORIAM:
good a judge of investments on earth as he was of investments in the heaven above the earth." His practical, unerring sagacity and power of observa- tion show themselves throughout his writings, what- ever be the subject. No better illustration of this quality can be given than in the few sentences in which he happens to speak of infancy and its real though unacknowledged influence over every mem- ber of the household — everything having to adapt itself to its wants, and moods, and caprices : —
Who knows not the beautiful group of l)a1je and mother, sacred in nature, now sacred also in the religious associations of half the globe ? Welcome to the parents is the puny struggler, strong in his weakness, his little arms more irresistible than the soldier's, his lips touched with persuasion which Chatham and Pericles in manhood had not. The small despot asks so little that all nature and reason are on his side. His ignorance is more charming than all know- ledge, and his little sins more bewitching than any virtue. All day, between his three or four sleeps, he coos like a pigeon-house, sputters and spurns, and puts on his faces of importance ; and when he fasts, the little Pharisee fails not to sound his trumpet before him. Out of blocks, thread-spools, cards and chequers, he will build his pyramid with the gravity of Palladio. With an acoustic apparatus of whistle and rattle he explores the laws of sound. But chiefly, like his senior countrymen, the young American studies new and speedier modes of transportation. Mistrusting the cunning of his small legs, he wishes to ride on the necks and shoulders of all flesh. The small enchanter nothing can withstand, — no seniority of age, no gravity of character; uncles, aunts, cousins, grandsires, grandames, — all fall an easy prey : he conforms to nobody, all conform to him ; all caper and make mouths, and babble and chirrup to him. On the strongest shoulders he rides, and pulls the hair of laurelled heads.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 103
It was a peculiarity in Emerson that the thing he most disHked was sickness, while disease he regarded with the strongest aversion. He himself said that during forty years he was never confined to bed for a single day. To him virtue was health, and he used to quote a saying of Dr. Johnson's that " every man is a rascal when he is sick." He be- lieved that the outward complaint originates in some inward complaint, and that if we were perfectly obedient to the laws of the soul and of nature, there would be no sickness or disease. He believed that human suffering arose from disobedience to laws that may and ought to be obeyed. When obeyed, the sickness will cease, and the weakness will be gone. Among many practical rules laid down for the promotion of the happiness of social intercourse he considered this as one of prime importance : — " Never name sickness. Even if you could trust yourself on that perilous topic, beware of un- muzzling a valetudinarian, who will soon give you your fill of it."
With regard to Emerson's claims as a poet, something must here be said. The essence of true poetry is manifest in many of his utterances that take not the form of versification. He is emphati- cally a poet in his prose. His poems contain genuine inspiration of the very highest kind, but
104 IN MEMORIAM:
rhyme does not always aid its development. In a single page he gives more of the spirit of poetry than would supply a dozen of ordinary rhymesters for the whole of their lives ; and yet there are poetasters who could at least equal him in the con- struction of passable verses. When the world is wiser, Emerson will be owned as a great poet. There are single poems of his which for depth of feeling, tender regret, profound insight into the human soul, and an inimitable quaintness and simplicity (sometimes rivalling George Herbert himself) are not to be matched in the works of the acknowledged masters of the poetic art. It has been said that " Some of his stanzas read like oracles. Their worth to our moral being is so close, that we are scarcely surprised that he gives them forth with the confident tone of the seer and the prophet. They rank with the loftiest utterances which have ever proceeded from the awakened heart, and con- science, and intellect of man."
It is worth while to observe the consensus of opinion regarding the intrinsic worth of his poetry, resulting from minds of the widest diver- sity of constitution and culture. His friend. Dr. Hedge, says: — " In poetic art he does not excel. The verses often halt, the conclusion sometimes flags, and metrical propriety is recklessly violated.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 105
But this defect is closely connected with the charac- teristic merit of the poet, and springs from the same root — his utter spontaneity. And this spon- taneity is but a mode of his sincerity. More than those of any of his contemporaries, his poems, for the most part, arc inspirations. They are not made, but given ; they come of themselves. They are not meditated, but burst from the soul with an irrepressible necessity of utterance — sometimes with a rush which defies the shaping intellect. It seems as if it were not the man himself that speaks, but a power behind— call it Daemon or Muse. Where the Muse flags, it is her fault, not his ; he is not going to help her out with wilful elaboration or emendation. There is no trace, as in most poetry, of joiner-work, and no mark of the file. . . . Wholly unique, and transcending all contemporary verse in grandeur of style, is the piece entitled ' The Problem.' When first it appeared in ' The Dial,' forty years ago, I said : ' There has been nothing done in English rhyme like this since Milton. All between it and Milton seemed tame in comparison.' "
Miss Elizabeth Peabody, Emerson's life-long friend, in the same letter to the present writer, quoted at p. 21, says, with reference to his poetry: — " He seems to me to have most fully expressed his
io6 IN MEMORIAM :
peculiar individuality in his poetry. He seems to me a poet, par eminence — his Sphynx, his Uriel, Bacchus, The Problem, the Ode to Beauty, Each and All, his Threnody, his Dirge, his In Memoriam, Love and Thought — where can be found higher flights — more of the music of the spheres? He once said to me, ' I am not a great poet — but what- ever is of me, is a poet ! ' "
Since the first edition of this memoir was pub- lished, the writer of it has received a letter from Earl Lytton (July i8th, 1882), containing some remarks on Emerson as a poet, from which he takes the liberty of giving a few sentences : — " I suppose there are few Englishmen of our genera- tion who have not been more or less influenced at some period of life by Emerson's genius. He is the most far-reaching of all American writers. On my own youth he made a deep and delightful impression, and when I visited America in 1849, he was of all eminent Americans the only one I had an ardent desire to meet. Alas for me, of those then living he is also the only one I did not meet. ... I am glad you have spoken up for his verse, which I admire greatly and think under- rated by the majority of critics, who, like the majority of administrators, never know how to deal with a case for which they can find no prece-
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 107
dent upon the file. Neither creative nor passionate, and, therefore, not of the highest order of poetry, they must be judged, I think, in reference to the value of the thought that inspires them, and to the fitness of their service as its vehicles. From these points of view they seem to me perfect of their kind ; and the roughness of their rhythm a virtue — not a defect of art. They are not Hebrew Psalms uttered to the harp, but Delphic oracles, or sunny meditations of a serene Pan, delivered in broken snatches to faint sounds of sylvan flutes. . . . Emerson's work in its ensemble (prose and verse together) I take to be the loftiest, the largest, and the loveliest expression yet given to the philosophy of Democracy."
In a letter to the present writer, soon after Emerson's death, from Mr. Henry Larkin,* one of his most discriminating English admirers and critics, some remarks occur relating to his poems which are worthy of preservation : —
" I well recollect the wonder with which I first
* Mr. Larkin is the author of a remarkable book, entitled " Extra Physics, and The Mystery of Creation : including a Brief Examination of Professor Tyndall's Admission concerning the Human Soul ;" but he is better known as having contributed one of the most interesting articles on Carlyle that has yet appeared, under the title of "Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle; a Ten Years' Reminiscence." It extends to over fifty pages, and will be found in "The British Quarterly Review," for July, 1S81.
io8 AV MEMORIAM:
became familiar with those crystal-clear perceptions
of his, — visions as if from the very mountain top
of the human intellect. To me they were a distinct
revelation of new intellectual possibilities, hitherto
only dimly imagined. We talk, naturally enough,
of Emerson being one of the greatest of American
writers ; to mc he has always stood alone in the
great history of literature — the clearest seer, the
most dauntless speaker, the deftest and most subtle
intellect ; uttering his convictions in words of light
tinted only from the azure of infinity. I know
nothing more exquisitely dainty than some of his
snatches of poetry. Those who see no poetry in
them, simply do not see them at all. I can only
compare them to exquisite snow-crystals, fresh
gathered from some highest mountain peak, where
the clouds of human infirmity never reach. Human
passion, in the Edgar Foe sense, they have none ;
but for subtlety of insight and delicacy of utterance,
I think they stand alone in literature."
Another critic says: — "The reason that such erand utterances as these thrill us with unwonted emotion is to be found in our instinctive belief that the poet's character was on a level with his lofty thinking. He affirmed the supremacy of spiritual laws because he spoke from a height of spiritual experience to which he had mounted by the steps
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 109
of spiritual growth. In reading him, we feel that we are in communion with an original person, as well as with an original poet, — one whose character is as brave as it is sweet, as strong as it is beautiful, as firm and resolute in will as it is keen and delicate in might, — one who has earned the right to authori- tatively announce, without argument, great spiritual facts and principles, because his soul has come into direct contact with them. As a poet he often takes strange liberties with the established laws of rhyme and rhythm ; even his images are occasionally enigmas ; but he still contrives to pour through his verse a flood and rush of inspiration not often per- ceptible in the axiomatic sentences of his most splendid prose. In his verse he gives free, joyous, exulting expression to all the audacities of his thinking and feeling."
Mr. E. Whipple, whom we have already quoted, contributes an article on Emerson's poetry to a recent number of the " North American Review," from which the following extract is given : —
Perhaps it may be asserted that the finest, loftiest, and deepest thoughts of Emerson, being poetic in essence, would naturally have found vent in some of the forms of poetic expression, for they announce spiritual facts and principles, vividly and warmly perceived, which are commonly not content with being stated, but carry with them an impulse and demand to be sung or chanted. If his piercing insight had been accompanied by a sensibility corresponding to it,
no IN MEMORIAM:
he would have given us more poems and fewer essays ; but there was a certain rigidity in his nature which could be made to melt and flow only when it was subjected to intense heat. Some persons were inclined to confound this rigidity with frigidity of character, and called him cold ; but the difference was as great as that between iron and ice. The fire in him, which would instantly have dissipated ice into vapour, made the iron in him run molten and white-hot into the mould of his thought, when he was stirred by a great senti- ment or an inspiring insight. It is admitted that he is worthy to rank among the great masters of expression ; yet he was the least fluent of educated human beings. In a company of swift talkers he seemed utterly helpless, until he fixed upon the right word or phrase to embody his meaning, and then the word or phrase was like a gold coin, fresh and bright from the mint, and recognised as worth ten times as much as the small change of conversation which had been circulating so rapidly around the table, while he was mute or stammering. That wonderful compactness and condensation of statement, which surprise and charm the readers of his books, were due to the fact that he exerted every faculty of his mind in the act of verbal expression. A prodigal in respect to thoughts, he was still the most austere economist in the use of words. We detect this quality in his poetry as in his prose ; but, in his poetry, it is found to be compatible with the lyric rush, the unwithholding self- abandonment to the inspiration of the muse, which commonly characterizes poets who, in their enthusiasm, have lost their self- possession and self-command.
As regards Emerson's literary methods, Mr. Cooke thus speaks : — " It was his habit to spend the forenoon in his study, with constant regularity. He did not wait for moods, but caught them as they came, and used their results in each day's work. It was his wont to jot down his thoughts at all hours and places. The suggestions resulting
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Ill
from his readings, conversations, and meditations, were immediately transferred to the note-book he ahvays carried with him. In his walks, many a gem of thought was in this way preserved. Even during the night he would get up and jot down some thought worth laying hold of The story is told that his wife suddenly awoke in the night, before she knew his habits, and heard him moving about the room. She anxiously inquired if he were ill. 'Only an idea' was his reply, and proceeded to jot it down. All the results of his thinking were thus stored up, to be made use of when required. After his note-books were filled, he transcribed their contents in a large common- place book. When a fresh subject possessed his mind, he brought together the jottings he found he had written down concerning it, forming them into a connected whole, with additional material suggested at the time. His essays were thus very slowly elaborated, wrought out through days and months, and even years, of patient thought. They were all carefully revised, again and again ; cor- rected, wrought over, portions dropped, new matter added, or the paragraphs arranged in a new order. He was unsparing in his corrections, striking out sentence after sentence ; and whole paragraphs disappear from time to time. His manuscript was
112 IN iMEMORIAM:
everywhere filled with erasures and emendations ; scarcely a page that was not covered with these evidences of his diligent revision."
A friend says that few authors have published less than Emerson in comparison with the great mass of papers which remain unprinted. " Scarcely any of his numerous sermons have ever been pub- lished ; most of his speeches on political and social occasions remain uncollected and unedited ; many verses exist only in manuscript, or have been with- drawn from publication ; and even of his lectures, from which he has printed freely for nearly forty years, a great many still remain in manuscript. Even those published omit much that was spoken, — the five lectures on History, on Love, and others, displaying so many omissions to those who heard them, that the author was at the time sorely complained of by his faithful hearers for leaving out so much that had delighted them. Few or none of the philosophical lectures read at Harvard University eight or nine years ago, and designed to make part of what he called ' The Natural History of the Intellect,' have ever been printed. This work, when completed, was to be the author's most systematic and connected treatise. It was to contain, what could not fail to be of interest to all readers, his observ^ations on his own intellec-
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 113
tual processes and methods, of which he has always been studiously watchful, and which, from his habit of writing, he has carefully noted down. From this work, which, even if not finished, will at some time be printed, and^from his correspondence of these many years, portions of which will finally be printed, it will be possible to reconstruct hereafter a rare and remarkable episode in literary history."
Another American writer, speaking of Emerson's unwillingness to print anything but his best, says : — " He has always been extremely careful of what he put into print, regarding the covers of a book as a sacred temple into which only the purest and best of a writer should be permitted to enter. No American or European has been so superlatively fastidious as he respecting publication. He believed that a book should have every reason for being ; that nothing trivial, passing, or temporary should be introduced into it ; that the sole excuse for a book should be the presentation of fresh thought ; that its contents should be in some manner an addition to the common stock of knowledge. Most authors would have put all their lectures and essays between covers because they had written them, and because they could gain something thereby. Emerson was an illustrious example to his guild in this particular. If he had less vanity I
114 IN MEMORIAM:
than members of his craft generally he had more pride, more regard for his reputation, more confi- dent expectation of enduring fame. It is said that he had unwavering confidence in J:his, and that therefore he published what waaruniversal and abiding in interest and influence, and compressed his utterances into the smallest space. Had all writers followed his example how immeasurably libraries would have been reduced ! A hundred volumes would shrink to one, and there might be some hope of a tireless student in a long life gaining a slight smattering of the great authors with whom everybody is presumed to be wholly familiar. Emerson is a pattern to all mere book- makers present and to come. If he had done nothing else than to inculcate by example the economy of print he would deserve a separate niche in the temple of literary fame, and who shall say that he has not secured it ? All the writings he has wished to be known by can be put into three small volumes, and in these is there not as much weighty and important matter as can be discovered in the same space in any language? The matter is not (as in the great majority of books) what can be found elsewhere — generally far better said — in the illimitable wilderness of type. It is, barring quotations, which always serve
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 115
to illustrate his idea, actually Emerson's own, the fruit of his observation, study, and reflection — the action of an original individual mind upon life, history, and nature."
Emerson always declined controversy, and re- fused to enter into disputation with a view to bring people round to his way of thinking. This charac- teristic is well brought out in the following extract from a recent article by Mr. E. Whipple.*
It is impossible for those who only knew Emerson through his writings to vmderstand the peculiar love and veneration felt for him by those who knew him personally. Only by intercourse with him could the singular force, sweetness, elevation, originality, and com- prehensiveness of his nature be fully appreciated ; and the friend or acquaintance, however he might differ from him in opinion, felt the peculiar fascination of his character, and revolved around this solar mind, in obedience to the law of spiritual gravitation — the spiritual law operating, like the natural law, directly as the mean, and inversely as the square of the distance. The friends nearest to him loved and honoured him most ; but those who only met him occa- sionally felt the attraction of his spiritual turn, and could not mention him without a tribute of respect. There probably never was a man of the first class, with a general system of thought at variance with accredited opinions, who exercised so much gentle, persuasive power over the minds of his opponents. By declining all tempta- tions to controversy he never reahsed the ferocious spirit which con- troversy engenders ; he went on year after year in affirming certain spiritual facts which had been revealed to him when his soul was on the heights of spiritual contemplation ; and if he differed from other
* " Some Recollections of Ralph Waldo Emerson," in "Harper's Monthly Magazine," September, 1822.
Ii6 IN ME MORI AM:
minds, he thought it ridiculous to attempt to convert them to his individual insight and experience by arguments against their indivi- dual insights and their individual experiences. To his readers in the closet, and his hearers on the lecture platform, he poured lavishly out from his intellectual treasury — from the seemingly exhaustless Fortunatus' purse of his mind — the silver and gold, the pearls, rubies, amethysts, opals, and diamonds of thought. If his readers and his audiences chose to pick them up, they were welcome to them ; but if they conceived that he was deceiving them with sham jewelry, he would not condescend to explain the laborious pro- cesses in the mines of meditation by which he had brought the hidden treasures to light. I never shall forget his curt answer to a superficial auditor of one of his lectures. The critic was the intel- lectual busybody of the place, dipping into everything, knowing nothing, but contriving by his immense loquacity to lead the opinion of the town. "Now, Mr. Emerson," he said, "I appre- ciated much of your lecture, but I should like to speak to you of certain things in it which did not commend my assent and appro- bation." Emerson turned to him, gave him one of his piercing
looks, and replied, "Mr. if anything I have spoken this
evening met your mood, it is well ; if it did not, I must tell you that I never argue on these high questions."
Professor Tyndall thus speaks of his reason for so often quoting Emerson : — " I do so mainly because in him we have a poet and a profoundly religious man, who is really and entirely undaunted by the discoveries of science — past, present, or prospective. In his case poetry, with the joy of a bacchanal, takes her graver brother science by the hand and cheers him with immortal laughter. By Emerson scientific conceptions are continually transmuted into the finer forms and warmer hues
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. I17
of an ideal world," " If anyone can be said to have given the impulse to my mind, it is Emerson ; whatever I have done, the world owes to him." It is said that on the fly-leaf of an odd volume of Emerson's works, accidentally picked up by the Professor at an old-book stall, and which first made him acquainted with his writings, are inscribed these words : " Purchased by inspiration."
Herman Grimm, an accomplished German critic of Emerson, says: — "I found in his works a sense of joy and beauty, such as is given by the greatest books. I found myself made captive by thoughts which it seemed as if I were hearing for the first time. When I again read his sentences, the enchant- ing breezes of hope and spiritual joy fills my soul anew. The old worn-out machinery of the world is re-created, and I feel as if I had never breathed so heavenly an atmosphere. I can indeed say that no author has had such an influence upon me as Emerson. The manner of writing of the man, whom I hold to be the greatest of all living authors, has revealed to me a new way of express- ing thought."
The late Dean Stanley concludes a letter about him in these words :— " Long may Ralph Waldo Emerson enjoy the influence which superiority gives over mediocrity, and calm reason over fleeting pas-
iiS IN MEMORIAM:
sion." The impressions of Emerson, received by Frederika Bremer, and the magic influence he exer- cised upon her, arc recorded in her " Homes of the New World," extracts from which will be found at the end of this volume. Elsewhere she concluded some remarks on him by saying : — " I believe my- self to have become greater through his greatness, stronger through his strength ; and I breathe the air of a higher sphere in this world, which is in- describably refreshing to me." In Harriet Mar- tineau's " Retrospect of Western Travel," 1838, will be found many pages relating to Emerson, his in- fluence on the thought of his time even at that early date, and the expectations that were then entertained regarding his career. Hawthorne said that his mind acted on other minds with "wonderful magnetism." " It was good to meet him in the wood-paths, or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure intellectual gleam diffusing about his presence like the garment of a shining one ; and he, so quiet, so simple, so without pretension, encountering each man alive as if expecting to receive more than he would impart, and, in truth, the heart of many an ordinary man had, perchance, inscriptions which he could not read. But it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling more or less the mountain atmos- phere of his lofty thought."
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 119
Whatever verdict may be pronounced upon Emerson's opinions, he must be universally regarded as one who by his teaching and practical example has done more to make the life of the scholar beau- tiful, and the career of the man of letters a reproof to all low aims, and an inspiration to all high ones, than any other man in America — one might almost say, in either continent. His greatest service has been the inculcation of intellectual self-reliance, of fearless manliness, and absolute sincerity of thought, — that we should stand morally and intel- lectually alone ; no prop left but the trust in God. " We must suffer no fiction to exist for us ; we must realise all that we know ; in the high refine- ment of modern life, in arts, in sciences, in books, in men, we must exact 'good faith, reality and a purpose, and first, last, midst, and without end, we must honour every truth by use. . . . What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion ; it is easy in solitude to live after our own ; but the great man is he, who, in the midst of the
120 IN MEMORIAM:
crowd, keeps with perfect sweetness the indepen- dence of solitude."
In an oration delivered before the literary- societies of Dartmouth College in July, 1838, will be found the highest expression of his opinion regarding the duty and aims of the scholar : —
If, with a high trust, he can thus submit himself to the supreme soul, he will find that ample returns are poured into his bosom, out of what seemed hours of obstruction and loss. Let him not grieve too much on account of unfit associates. When he sees how much thought he owes to the disagreeable antagonism of various persons who pass and cross him, he can easily think that in a society of perfect sympathy, no word, no act, no record, would be. He will learn that it is not much matter what he reads, what he does. Be a scholar, and he shall have the scholar's part of everything. As, in the counting room, the merchant cares little whether the cargo be hides or barilla ; the transaction, a letter of credit or a transfer of stocks ; be it what it may, his commission comes gently out of it ; so you shall get your lesson out of the hour, and the object, whether it be a concentrated or a wasteful employment, even in reading a dull book, or working off a stint of mechanical day labour, which your necessities or the necessities of others impose. . . .
Be content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize yourself, nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature com- forts of an acre, house, or barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope. You will not fear that I am enjoining too stern an asceticism. Ask not, Of what use is a
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. I2i
scholarship that systematically retreats? or Who is the better for the philosopher who conceals his accomplishments, and hides his thoughts from the waiting world ? Hides his thoughts ! Hide the sun and moon. Thought is all light, and publishes itself to the uni- verse. It will speak, though you were dumb, by its own miraculous organ. It will flow out of your actions, your manners, and your face. It will bring you friendships. It will impledge you to truth by the love and expectation of generous minds. By virtue of the laws of that Nature, which is one and perfect, it will yield every sincere good that is in tlie soul, to the scholar beloved of earth and heaven.
Emerson is also one of the consummate masters of the English tongue. " His style is in the purest harmony with the character of his thought. It is condensed almost to abruptness. There is a singular beauty and intense life and significance in his language, which combines the most austere economy of words, with the determination to load every word with vital meaning." "His sentences are often like diamonds. There is no thinker of our day who, for sentences that have the ring of oracles, can quite compare with him." " In no other writer are there so many sentences which complete the sub- ject, and which will stand, unsupported and alone, as indications of the author's thought." " No writer is so quotable. Scarcely a page, especially of the earlier essays, but supplies some terse and pregnant saying, worthy to be inscribed in a golden treasury of portable wisdom." " His sentences score them-
122 IN ME MORI AM:
selves on the brain. Force of statement, the sur- prise of fitness, the hitting of the nail on the head — arc the distinguishing characteristics of his writings." " His pages are laden with aphorisms — his style of composition is eminently aphoristic — and they arc so felicitously put, and on such a variety of themes, that the capturing memory declines to surrender them, and speedily claims them as its own. Let him the fit audience find, though few, and he will illustrate what it is to speak golden words in that natural style of perfect sincerity, tenderness, and thoughtfulness, by which every syllable is conducted straight home to the faculty it was meant for. For the enunciation of his own sentences we call him simply a perfect speaker. The manner fits the matter as if cut out for it from eternity."
Theodore Parker, in one of the best critical papers on Emerson that has appeared, written in 1849, says : — " He is the most republican of repub- licans, the most protestant of dissenters. His culture is cosmopolitan. He trusts himself, trusts man, and trusts God. He has confidence in all the attributes of Infinity. Hence he is serene ; nothing disturbs the even poise of his character, and he walks erect. Nothing impedes him in his search for the true, the lovely, and the good ; no
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 123
private hope, no private fear, no love of wife or child or gold or ease or fame. He has not written a line which is not conceived in the interest of mankind. He never writes in the interest of a section, of a party, of a church, of a man, but always in the interest of mankind. No faithful man is too low for his approval and encourage- ment ; no faithless man too high and popular for his rebuke. To no English writer, since Milton, can be assigned so high a place ; even Milton him- self, great genius though he was, and great architect of beauty, has not added so many thoughts to the treasury of the race ; no, nor been the author of so much loveliness. Emerson is a man of genius such as does not often appear ; such as has never appeared before in America, and but seldom in the world. He learns from all sorts of men ; but no English writer, we think, is so original. His style is one of the rarest beauty. It is simple, without imitation, unique and robust. It is manly, pure, direct and thoroughly natural, and he has the remarkable power of saying precisely and exactly the thing he means."
Mr. J. B. Crozier, in "The Religion of the Future," thus ably summarises his opinion of Emerson : — " There is, perhaps, no writer of the nineteenth cen- tury who will better repay a careful and prolonged
124 IN MEMORIAM:
perusal than Emerson. He enjoys the rare distinc- tion of having ascended to the highest point to which the human mind can climb, — to the point where, as he says of Plato, the poles of thought are on a line with the axis on which the frame of things revolves. . . . We can turn to him, with the same delight for the philosophical expression of the deep laws of human life, as we do to Shakespeare for their dramatic representation. For he is one of the pro- foundest of thinkers, and has that universality, serenity, and cosmopolitan breadth of comprehen- sion, that place him among the great of all ages. He has swallowed all his predecessors, and con- verted them into nutriment for himself. He is as subtle and delicate, too, as he is broad and massive, and possesses a practical wisdom and keenness of observation that hold his feet fast to the solid earth when his head is striking the stars. His scientific accuracy and freedom of speculation mark him out as one of the representative men of the nineteenth century."
It would be out of place in a biographical sketch like the present to attempt to explain Emerson's philosophy. He has, in fact, propounded no system. Those who read his works in the hope of finding a theological or philosophical system will be disap- pointed. Strictly, he is not the founder of any
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 125
school, but has furnished the foundation stones of many schools. He beholds and reports all, be it secular or sacred. He trustingly accepts what comes " to the open sense and the waiting mind." If he has not discovered the secret of the universe, he tells frankly what he finds as a perceiver or observer, and constantly endeavours to place him- self in harmony with the Most High. He seeks to solve the riddle of the universe for himself, and is content with no traditionary answer. He insists on man's individuality, and protests against the merging of our separate beings into indolent con- formity with a majority. His faith in God, in spiri- tual laws, in the moral order of the universe, never leaves him. This faith saturates and vitalizes all that he has written. With him the spiritual is the real. His own words on this subject are full of deepest import. " That which is signified by the words moral and spiritual is a lasting essence, and, with whatever illusions we have loaded them, will cer- tainly bring back the words age after age to their ancient meaning. I know no words that mean so much. In our definitions we grope after the spiri- tual by describing it as invisible. The true meaning of spiritual is real, that law which executes itself, which works without means, and which cannot be conceived as not existing."
126 IN MEMO RI AM:
Emerson has been called a Transcendentalist ; but he never adopted the name. " In the sense that Socrates and Plato, and the fathers of the Stoic school, and Paul and the apostles, and Luther, and the saints and martyrs of the Christian Church, and all the great poets, painters, sculptors, and musicians, have been, and will be to the end of time, Transcendentalists, — Emerson, too, was one. For Transcendentalism is essentially neither more nor less than Idealism — Spiritualism — in its best and highest meaning. The Transcendentalist be- lieves in what transcends the senses ; he believes in inspiration, flowing ever fresh and pure from the Infinite Source of all wisdom and power; he believes in the human soul, its power, its divine lineage, and its high destiny. He values the past, but he values more the present, and, most of all, the future, — that great promised land of all our hopes. He does not believe that all truth is enshrined in any book, or any institution, for he holds that man is always greater than his achievements, and God infinitely greater than either our memory or our comprehen- sion."* Emerson neither dogmatizes nor defines. His chief anxiety seems to be to avoid committing himself to opinions, to keep all questions open, to close no avenue in any direction to the free ingress
* "The Harvard Magazine," April, 1855.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 127
of the mind. " He will not be questioned ; not because he doubts, but because his convictions are so rich, so various and many-sided, that he is unwilling, by laying emphasis on any one of them, to do an apparent injustice to the others. He will be held to no definition ; he will be seduced to no final state- ments. The mind must have free range. He dwells in principles, and will not be cabined in beliefs."* " Those who, amid declining creeds or institutions, can only repeat the plaintive parrot-cry, What is to be put in its place ? will have to unlearn some- \- thing before they can gain the secret of Emerson." His own words will be the most fit conclusion to this fragmentary summary of his ideas of Truth and Duty: " Let a man know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Beneath opinions, habits, customs, is the spirit of a man. The one thing in the world of value is the soul, — free, sovereign, active. Man shall be true to himself, let the world say what it will. The truly religious mind will find beauty and necessary facts, — in the shop and the mill. Proceeding from a religious heart, it will raise to a divine use the railroad, the insurance office, the telegraph, the chemist's retort, — in which we now seek only an economic use. The end and aim of life is not to assert ourselves, but by indivi-
* O. B. Frothingham's "Transcendentalism in New England."
128 IN MEMO RI AM:
dual faithfulness to become fit recipients of the Divine Mind, so as to live in thoughts and act with energies which are immortal. The greatest philosopher is but the listener of simple faithful- ness ; and the loftiest wisdom is gained when self is forgotten in communion with God. Let man thus learn the revelation of all nature and all thought to his heart ; this, namely, that the Highest dwelleth with him ; and that the sources of Nature are in his own mind. Therefore, let it not be recorded, that in this moment of the Eternity, when we who were named by our names, flitted across the light, we were afraid of any fact, or disgraced the fair day by a pusillanimous preference of our bread to our freedom. What is the scholar, what is the man foi\ but for hospi- tality to every new thought of his time ? Have you leisure, power, property, friends ? you shall be the asylum and patron of every new thought, every unproven opinion, every untried project, which pro- ceeds out of goodwill and honest seeking. All the newspapers, all the tongues of to-day will of course at first defame what is noble ; but you who hold not of to-day, not of the times, but of the Everlasting, are to stand for it ; and the highest compliment Man ever receives from Heaven, is the sending to him its disguised and discredited angels."
RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 129
Those who have felt throughout their lives the purifying and elevating power of this great man's writings, and who have recognised in his inspiring career the perfect sanity of true genius, can never think of him without affectionate reverence. He now rests, in that deep repose which he has so well earned, and beneath laurels that will never fade.
#
THE FUNERAL.
The last rites over the remains of Ralph Waldo Emerson took place at Concord on the 30th of April. A special train from Boston carried a largc^n number of people. Many persons were on the street, attracted by the services, but were unable to gain admission to the church where the public ceremonies were held. Almost every building in town bore over its entrance door a large black and white rosette with other sombre draperies. The public buildings were heavily draped, and even the homes of the very poor bore outward marks of grief at the loss of their friend and fellow-townsman.
The services at the house, which were strictly private, occurred at 2-30, and were conducted by Rev. W. H. Furness, of Philadelphia. They were simple in character, and only Mr. Furness took part. The body lay in the front north-east room, in which were gathered the family and close friends of the deceased. The only flowers were contained
THE FUNERAL. 131
in three vases on the mantel, and were lilies of the valley, red and white roses, and arbutus. The adjoining room and hall were filled with friends and neighbours.
The poet's wife and daughter Ellen sat near the coffin. Dr. Furness occupied a position in the passage-way, and made a brief and touching address, saying that the peaceful face lying before them only indicated a like quiet of soul within, and reflected the peace and purity of the soul while it yet tenanted the body. He then recited Tennyson's " Deserted Home," and repeated from Longfellow words read at that poet's own funeral, a few weeks ago. Appropriate quotations from Scripture followed.
The procession was then formed for the public services at the Unitarian Church, which is but a short distance from the house. The Concord Social Circle led the way, then followed the hearse and pall-bearers : — his son. Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson; and his nephews, Charles Emerson and Haven Emerson; Wm: H. Forbes, his son-in-law; J. Eliott Cabot, his designated biographer; Prof. James B. Thayer, of Harvard Law School; Mr. Ralph Forbes, and Mr. W. Thayer, all relatives of the deceased, and following them were a few car- riages with the family and intimate friends, among
132 RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
whom were Oliver Wendell Holmes, G. W. Curtis, President Eliot, of Harvard College; Professors Norton, Pierce, Horsford, and Hills, of Cambridge; Mrs. J. T. Fields, representatives of the Boston publishing houses, and many others.
At the church many hundreds of persons were awaiting the arrival of the procession, and all the space, except the reserved pews, was packed. In front of the pulpit were simple decorations, boughs of pine covered the desk, and in their centre was a harp of yellow jonquils, the gift of Miss Louisa M. Alcott. Other floral tributes were an open volume, upon one page on white ground the word " Finis" in blue flowers. This was from the teachers and scholars in the Emerson School. By the sides of the pulpit were white and scarlet geraniums and pine boughs, and high upon the wall a laurel wreath.
Before 3-30 the pall-bearers brought in the plain black walnut coffln, which was placed before the pulpit. The lid was turned back and upon it was put a cluster of richly coloured pansies and a small bouquet of roses. While the coffln was being carried in, " Pleyel's Hymn " was rendered on the organ by request of the family of the deceased. Dr. James Freeman Clarke then entered the pulpit. Judge E. Rockwood Hoar remained
THE FUNERAL. 133
by the coffin below, and when the congregation became quiet made a brief and pathetic address, his voice many times trembling with emotion.
Mr, Hoar began his tribute with the words : " The beauty of Israel is fallen in its high place." He then spoke of the world-wide sorrow felt at the poet's death and of the special veneration and grief of the townspeople, who considered him their own. " There is nothing to mourn for. That brave and manly life was rounded out to the full length of days ; that dying pillow was softened by the sweetest domestic affection, and as he lay down to the sleep which the Lord giveth His beloved, his face was as the face of a child and seemed to give a glimpse of the opening heavens. Wherever the English language is spoken throughout the world his fame is established and secured ; from beyond the sea and throughout this great land will come innumerable voices of sorrow for this great public loss. But we, his neighbours and townsmen, feel that he was ours ; he was descended from the founders of the town ; he chose our village for the place in which his life-long work was to be done ; it was to our fields and orchards that his presence gave such value ; it was in our streets that children looked up to him with love, and the elders with reverence ; he was our ornament and pride. The
134 RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
lofty brow, the home of all wise thoughts and aspirations ; those lips of eloquent n:iusic ; that great soul, which, trusting in God, never lost its hope of immortality ; that great heart, to which everything was welcome that belonged to man ; that impressible nature, loving and tender and generous, having no repulsion or scorn for any- thing but meanness and baseness ; our friend, brother, father, lover, teacher, inspirer, guide, is gone. There is no more that we can do now than to give this our hail and farewell !"
Judge Hoar's remarks were followed by the congregation singing the hymns " Thy will be done," " I will not fear the fate provided by Thy love." The Rev. Mr. Furncss then read selections from the Scriptures.
The Rev. James Freeman Clarke then delivered the following address : —
This assembly has come together not only to testify its respect for one of the greatest thinkers and writers of our time, but also it is drawn to this place by gratitude for the strength, help, and inspira- tion which has been given to us through the mediation of this noble soul. It is not for me, it is not for this hour, to say what ought to be said of the genius which has kindled the fires of thought in two continents. The present moments belong to reverential love. We thank God here for the influences which have made us all better. The voice now hushed never spoke but to lift us to a higher plane of generous sentiment. The hand now still never wrote except to take us out of " our dreary routine of sense, worldliness, and sin,"
THE FUNERAL. 135
into communion with whatever is noblest, purest, highest. By the side of this revered form, we thank God that through all these years we have been made better by his words and his life. He has been a preacher of righteousness to this and other lands. When he left the pulpit, he said, in his farewell sermon, that he did not relinquish his profession, — that he hoped, whatever was his work, to be still a teacher of God's truth. How well has he kept that promise ! Ncv one can say, till the day of judgment declares it, how large a part of the genuine faith in the things not seen but eternal has come to us from the depths of his spiritual insight. He was one of God's seers ; and he was sent to us at a time like the one of which it is written, ' ' The Word of the Lord was precious in those days : there was no open vision." Men lived by past inspirations, with no faith in the possibility of any new revelation to the soul of the divine will. No doubt they did well to resort to the words of ancient prophets until the day should dawn and the day-star arise in their own hearts. That day dawned anew when the sight of the divine truth kindled a light in the solemn eyes of Channing and created a new power which spoke from the lips of Emerson. Yet the young and hopeful listened with joy to this morning song, they looked gladly to this auroral light. When the little book " Nature " was published, it seemed to some of us a new revelation. Mr. Emerson then said what has been the text of his life, " Let the single man plant him- self on his instincts, and the great world will come round to him." He did not reply to his critics. He went on his way. And to-day we see that the world has come round to him. He is the preacher of spiritual truth to our age. We understand through him what Jesus meant when he said, " You must eat my flesh and drink my blood." Our souls have been fed by his life. We have been nourished by his character more than by his words. He has been bread and wine to us — the bread of strength, the wine of joy.
The saying of the liturgy is true and wise, that " in the midst of life we are in death." But it is still more true that "in the midst of death we are in life." Do we ever believe so much in immortality as when we look on such a dear and noble face, now so still, which a few hours ago was radiant with thought and love? "He is not
136 RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
here : he is risen." That power which we knew, — that soaring intel- ligence, that soul of fire, that ever-advancing spirit, — that cannot have been suddenly annihilated with the decay of these earthly organs. It has left its darkened dust behind. It has outsoared the shadow of our night. God does not trifle with his creatures by bringing to nothing the ripe fruit of the ages by the lesion of a cere- bral cell or some bodily tissue. Life does not die, but matter dies off from it. The highest energy we know, the soul of man, the unit in which meet intelligence, imagination, memory, hope, love, purpose, insight, — this agent of immense resource and boundless power, — this has not been subdued by its instrument. When we think of such an one as he, we can only think of life, never of death.
Such was his own faith, as expressed in his paper on Immortality. But he himself was the best argument for immortality. Like the greatest thinkers, he did not rely on logical proof, but on the higher evidence of universal instincts, — the vast streams of belief which flow through human thought like currents in the ocean ; those shoreless rivers which for ever roll along their paths in the Atlantic and Pacific, not restrained by banks, but guided by the revolutions of the globe and the attractions of the sun.
Mr. Emerson stated such indications of immortality as these : That all great natures love stability and permanence. *' Everything here," he says, " is prospective." " The mind delights in immense time." " We are not interested in anything which ends." "All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for w^hat I have not seen." "All the ways of virtuous living lead upwards and not downwards."
In his "Threnody" he shows us how the Deep Heart said to
him : —
" When the scanty shores are full
With Thought's perilous, whirling pool ;
WTien frail Nature can be more.
Then the spirit strikes the hour ;
My servant Death, with solving rite,
Pours finite into infinite."
There are few who remain who remember the beginnings of this long progress. The first time I saw him I went with Margaret
THE FUNERAL. 137
Fuller to hear him preach in the church on Hanover-street. Neither of us then knew him. We sat in the gallery, and felt that a new influence, sweet and strong, had come. Then I recall his kindness, after I came to have his acquaintance, and how he gave me to print in a Western magazine four of his early poems, the first ever printed. Next, I think of the group which always collected at his lectures, ever the same persons, those who came to be fed, and never went away hungry. After that were the days of the Transcendental Club, which we called the " Like-minded," — I suppose because no two of us thought alike. One summer afternoon we came to Concord and had one meeting in his parlour. There was George Ripley, admirable talker, most genial of men; and Orestes A. Brownson, full of intelligence, courage, and industry, who soon went over into the Roman Catholic Church; and James Walker, of whom Mr. Emerson once said to me, "I have come to Boston to hear Dr. Walker thunder this evening;" Theodore Parker, and many others. Days of enthusiasm and youthful hope, when the world seemed so new and fair, life so precious, when new revelations were close at hand as we thought, and some new Plato or Shakespeare was about to appear. We dwelt in what Halleck calls "the dear charm of life's illusive dream ;" and the man who had the largest hope of all, yet joined with the keenest eye to detect every fallacy, was Ralph Waldo Emerson. We looked to him as our master. And now the ■zaor/d calls him its master — in insight, judgment, charm of speech, unfailing courage, endless aspiration. We say of him as Goethe of Schiller: — " Lo, he went onward, ever onward, for all these years, — then, indeed, he had gone far enough for this earth. For care is taken that trees shall not grow up to heaven." His work, like that of the apostle, was accomplished by the quantity of soul that was in him, — not by mere power of intellect, but "by pureness, by know- ledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Spirit, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by