Emerson | Page 6

all before him--his audience becoming like clay in the hands
of the potter. But I must confess that the pregnant thoughts and serene
self-possession of the young Boston minister had a greater charm for
me than all the rhetorical splendours of Chalmers' (Ireland, 141).
At the lecturer's desk the same attraction made itself still more
effectually felt. 'I have heard some great speakers and some

accomplished orators,' Mr. Lowell says, 'but never any that so moved
and persuaded men as he. There is a kind of undertone in that rich
barytone of his that sweeps our minds from their foothold into deep
waters with a drift that we cannot and would not resist. 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.' The same effect was
felt in its degree wherever he went, and he took pains not to miss it. He
had made a study of his art, and was so skilful in his mastery of it that it
seemed as if anybody might do all that he did and do it as well--if only
a hundred failures had not proved the mistake.
In 1838 Emerson delivered an address in the Divinity School of
Harvard, which produced a gusty shower of articles, sermons, and
pamphlets, and raised him without will or further act of his to the high
place of the heresiarch. With admirable singleness of mind, he held
modestly aloof. 'There is no scholar,' he wrote to a friend, 'less willing
or less able to be a polemic. I could not give account of myself if
challenged. 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 men,' The year
before, his oration on the American Scholar had filled Carlyle with
delight. It was the first clear utterance, after long decades of years, in
which he had 'heard nothing but infinite jangling and jabbering, and
inarticulate twittering and screeching.' Then Carlyle enjoined on his
American friend for rule of life, 'Give no ear to any man's praise or
censure; know that that is not it; on the one side is as Heaven, if you
have strength to keep silent and climb unseen; yet on the other side,
yawning always at one's right hand and one's left, is the frightfullest
Abyss and Pandemonium' (Dec. 8, 1837). Emerson's temperament and
his whole method made the warning needless, and, as before, while
'vociferous platitude was dinning his ears on all sides,' a whole world of
thought was 'silently building itself in these calm depths.' But what
would those two divinities of his, Plato and Socrates, have said of a
man who 'could not give an account of himself if challenged'?
Assuredly not every one who saith Plato, Plato, is admitted to that ideal
kingdom.
It was soon after this that the Dial was projected. It had its origin in the

Transcendental Club, a little knot of speculative students at Boston,
who met four or five times a year at one another's houses to discuss
questions mainly theological, from more liberal points of view than
was at that time common, 'the air then in America getting a little too
close and stagnant.' The Club was first formed in 1836. The Dial
appeared in 1840, and went on for four years at quarterly intervals.
Emerson was a constant contributor, and for the last half of its
existence he acted as editor. 'I submitted,' he told Carlyle, 'to what
seemed a necessity of petty literary patriotism--I know not what else to
call it--and took charge of our thankless little Dial here, without
subscribers enough to pay even a publisher, much less any labourer; it
has no penny for editor or contributor, nothing but abuse in the
newspapers, or, at best, silence; but it serves as a sort of portfolio, to
carry about a few poems or sentences which would otherwise be
transcribed or circulated, and we always are waiting until somebody
shall come and make it good. But I took it, and it took me and a great
deal of good time to a small purpose' (July 1, 1842). On the whole one
must agree that it was to small purpose. Emerson's name has reflected
lustre on the Dial, but when his contributions are taken out, and, say,
half a dozen besides, the residuum is in the main very poor stuff, and
some of it has a droll resemblance to the talk between Mrs. Hominy
and the Literary Ladies and the Honourable Elijah Pogram. Margaret
Fuller--the Miranda, Zenobia, Hypatia, Minerva of her time, and a truly
remarkable figure in the gallery of wonderful women--edited it for two
years, and contributed many a