Emerson | Page 9

of a sententiousness that is
not fertility but only hydropsy. This curious infection, which has spread
into divers forms of American literature that are far removed from
philosophy, would have been impossible if the teacher had been as
perfect in expression as he was pure, diligent, and harmonious in his
thinking.
Yet, as happens to all fine minds, there came to Emerson ways of
expression deeply marked with character. On every page there is set the
strong stamp of sincerity, and the attraction of a certain artlessness; the
most awkward sentence rings true; and there is often a pure and simple
note that touches us more than if it were the perfection of elaborated

melody. The uncouth procession of the periods discloses the travail of
the thought, and that too is a kind of eloquence. An honest reader easily
forgives the rude jolt or unexpected start, when it shows a thinker
faithfully working his way along arduous and unworn tracks. Even at
the roughest, Emerson often interjects a delightful cadence. As he says
of Landor, his sentences are cubes which will stand firm, place them
how or where you will. He criticised Swedenborg for being
superfluously explanatory, and having an exaggerated feeling of the
ignorance of men. 'Men take truths of this nature,' said Emerson, 'very
fast;' and his own style does no doubt very boldly take this capacity for
granted in us. In 'choice and pith of diction,' again, of which Mr.
Lowell speaks, he hits the mark with a felicity that is almost his own in
this generation. He is terse, concentrated, and free from the important
blunder of mistaking intellectual dawdling for meditation. Nor in fine
does his abruptness ever impede a true urbanity. The accent is homely
and the apparel plain, but his bearing has a friendliness, a courtesy, a
hospitable humanity, which goes nearer to our hearts than either literary
decoration or rhetorical unction. That modest and lenient fellow-feeling
which gave such charm to his companionship breathes in his gravest
writing, and prevents us from finding any page of it cold or hard or dry.
Though Emerson was always urgent for 'the soul of the world, clean
from all vestige of tradition,' yet his work is full of literature. He at
least lends no support to the comforting fallacy of the indolent, that
originating power does not go with assimilating power. Few thinkers
on his level display such breadth of literary reference. Unlike
Wordsworth, who was content with a few tattered volumes on a kitchen
shelf, Emerson worked among books. When he was a boy he found a
volume of Montaigne, and he never forgot the delight and wonder in
which he lived with it. His library is described as filled with
well-selected authors, with curious works from the eastern world, with
many editions in both Greek and English of his favourite Plato; while
portraits of Shakespeare, Montaigne, Goethe, Dante, looked down upon
him from the walls. Produce a volume of Plato or of Shakespeare, he
says somewhere, or 'only remind us of their names,' and instantly we
come into a feeling of longevity. That is the scholar's speech. Opening
a single essay at random, we find in it citations from Montesquieu,

Schiller, Milton, Herodotus, Shelley, Plutarch, Franklin, Bacon, Van
Helmont, Goethe. So little does Emerson lend himself to the idle vanity
of seeking all the treasures of wisdom in his own head, or neglecting
the hoarded authority of the ages. It is true that he held the unholy
opinion that a translation is as good as the original, or better. Nor need
we suppose that he knew that pious sensation of the book-lover, the
feel of a library; that he had any of the collector's amiable foolishness
about rare editions; or that he nourished festive thoughts of 'that
company of honest old fellows in their leathern jackets in his study,' as
comrades in a sober old-world conviviality. His books were for
spiritual use, like maps and charts of the mind of man, and not much
for 'excellence of divertisement.' He had the gift of bringing his reading
to bear easily upon the tenor of his musings, and knew how to use
books as an aid to thinking, instead of letting them take the edge off
thought. There was assuredly nothing of the compiler or the erudite
collegian in him. It is a graver defect that he introduces the great names
of literature without regard for true historical perspective in their place,
either in relation to one another, or to the special phases of social
change and shifting time. Still let his admirers not forget that Emerson
was in his own way Scholar no less than Sage.
A word or two must be said of Emerson's verses. He disclaimed, for his
own part, any belief that they