Ralph Waldo Emerson | Page 2

Comic.--Quotation and
Originality. --Progress of Culture.--Persian
Poetry.--Inspiration.--Greatness. --Immortality.--Address at the
Unveiling of the Statue of "The Minute-Man" at Concord.--Publication
of Collected Poems

CHAPTER XIII.
1878-1882. AET. 75-79.
Last Literary Labors.--Addresses and Essays.--"Lectures and
Biographical Sketches."--"Miscellanies"

CHAPTER XIV.
Emerson's Poems

CHAPTER XV.
Recollections of Emerson's Last Years.--Mr. Conway's Visits.--Extracts
from Mr. Whitman's Journal.--Dr. Le Baron Russell's Visit.--Dr.
Edward Emerson's Account.--Illness and Death.--Funeral Services

CHAPTER XVI.
EMERSON.---A RETROSPECT.
Personality and Habits of Life.--His Commission and Errand.--As a
Lecturer.--His Use of Authorities.--Resemblance to Other Writers.--As
influenced by Others.--His Place as a Thinker.--Idealism and
Intuition.--Mysticism.--His Attitude respecting Science.--As an
American.--His Fondness for Solitary Study.--His Patience and
Amiability.--Feeling with which he was regarded.--Emerson and
Burns.--His Religious Belief.--His Relations with Clergymen.--Future
of his Reputation.--His Life judged by the Ideal Standard

INTRODUCTION.
"I have the feeling that every man's biography is at his own expense.
He furnishes not only the facts, but the report. I mean that all biography
is autobiography. It is only what he tells of himself that comes to be
known and believed."
So writes the man whose life we are to pass in review, and it is
certainly as true of him as of any author we could name. He delineates

himself so perfectly in his various writings that the careful reader sees
his nature just as it was in all its essentials, and has little more to learn
than those human accidents which individualize him in space and time.
About all these accidents we have a natural and pardonable curiosity.
We wish to know of what race he came, what were the conditions into
which he was born, what educational and social influences helped to
mould his character, and what new elements Nature added to make him
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
He himself believes in the hereditary transmission of certain
characteristics. Though Nature appears capricious, he says, "Some
qualities she carefully fixes and transmits, but some, and those the finer,
she exhales with the breath of the individual, as too costly to perpetuate.
But I notice also that they may become fixed and permanent in any
stock, by painting and repainting them on every individual, until at last
Nature adopts them and bakes them in her porcelain."
* * * * *
We have in New England a certain number of families who constitute
what may be called the Academic Races. Their names have been on
college catalogues for generation after generation. They have filled the
learned professions, more especially the ministry, from the old colonial
days to our own time. If aptitudes for the acquisition of knowledge can
be bred into a family as the qualities the sportsman wants in his dog are
developed in pointers and setters, we know what we may expect of a
descendant of one of the Academic Races. Other things being equal, he
will take more naturally, more easily, to his books. His features will be
more pliable, his voice will be more flexible, his whole nature more
plastic than those of the youth with less favoring antecedents. The gift
of genius is never to be reckoned upon beforehand, any more than a
choice new variety of pear or peach in a seedling; it is always a surprise,
but it is born with great advantages when the stock from which it
springs has been long under cultivation.
These thoughts suggest themselves in looking back at the striking
record of the family made historic by the birth of Ralph Waldo
Emerson. It was remarkable for the long succession of clergymen in its
genealogy, and for the large number of college graduates it counted on
its rolls.
A genealogical table is very apt to illustrate the "survival of the

fittest,"--in the estimate of the descendants. It is inclined to remember
and record those ancestors who do most honor to the living heirs of the
family name and traditions. As every man may count two grandfathers,
four great-grandfathers, eight great-great-grandfathers, and so on, a few
generations give him a good chance for selection. If he adds his
distinguished grandmothers, he may double the number of personages
to choose from. The great-grandfathers of Mr. Emerson at the sixth
remove were thirty-two in number, unless the list was shortened by
intermarriage of relatives. One of these, from whom the name
descended, was Thomas Emerson of Ipswich, who furnished the staff
of life to the people of that wonderfully interesting old town and its
neighborhood.
His son, the Reverend Joseph Emerson, minister of the town of
Mendon, Massachusetts, married Elizabeth, daughter of the Reverend
Edward Bulkeley, who succeeded his father, the Reverend Peter
Bulkeley, as Minister of Concord, Massachusetts.
Peter Bulkeley was therefore one of Emerson's sixty-four grandfathers
at the seventh remove. We know the tenacity of certain family
characteristics through long lines of descent, and it is not impossible
that any