Ralph Waldo Emerson | Page 7

recognizes neither psychology nor element."--"Usefulness, if it requires
action, seems less like existence than the desire of being absorbed in
God, retaining consciousness.... Scorn trifles, lift your aims; do what
you are afraid to do. Sublimity of character must come from sublimity
of motive."
So far as hereditary and family influences can account for the character
and intellect of Ralph Waldo Emerson, we could hardly ask for a better
inborn inheritance, or better counsels and examples.
* * * * *
Having traced some of the distinguishing traits which belong by
descent to Mr. Emerson to those who were before him, it is interesting
to note how far they showed themselves in those of his own generation,
his brothers. Of these I will mention two, one of whom I knew
personally.
Edward Bliss Emerson, who graduated at Harvard College in 1824,
three years after Ralph Waldo, held the first place in his class. He
began the study of the law with Daniel Webster, but overworked
himself and suffered a temporary disturbance of his reason. After this
he made another attempt, but found his health unequal to the task and
exiled himself to Porto Rico, where, in 1834, he died. Two poems
preserve his memory, one that of Ralph Waldo, in which he addresses
his memory,--
"Ah, brother of the brief but blazing star,"
the other his own "Last Farewell," written in 1832, whilst sailing out of
Boston Harbor. The lines are unaffected and very touching, full of that
deep affection which united the brothers in the closest intimacy, and of
the tenderest love for the mother whom he was leaving to see no more.

I had in my early youth a key furnished me to some of the leading traits
which were in due time to develop themselves in Emerson's character
and intelligence. As on the wall of some great artist's studio one may
find unfinished sketches which he recognizes as the first growing
conceptions of pictures painted in after years, so we see that Nature
often sketches, as it were, a living portrait, which she leaves in its
rudimentary condition, perhaps for the reason that earth has no colors
which can worthily fill in an outline too perfect for humanity. The
sketch is left in its consummate incompleteness because this mortal life
is not rich enough to carry out the Divine idea.
Such an unfinished but unmatched outline is that which I find in the
long portrait-gallery of memory, recalled by the name of Charles
Chauncy Emerson. Save for a few brief glimpses of another, almost
lost among my life's early shadows, this youth was the most angelic
adolescent my eyes ever beheld. Remembering what well-filtered blood
it was that ran in the veins of the race from which he was descended,
those who knew him in life might well say with Dryden,--
"If by traduction came thy mind Our wonder is the less to find A soul
so charming from a stock so good."
His image is with me in its immortal youth as when, almost fifty years
ago, I spoke of him in these lines, which I may venture to quote from
myself, since others have quoted them before me.
Thou calm, chaste scholar! I can see thee now, The first young laurels
on thy pallid brow, O'er thy slight figure floating lightly down In
graceful folds the academic gown, On thy curled lip the classic lines
that taught How nice the mind that sculptured them with thought, And
triumph glistening in the clear blue eye, Too bright to live,--but O, too
fair to die.
Being about seven years younger than Waldo, he must have received
much of his intellectual and moral guidance at his elder brother's hands.
I told the story at a meeting of our Historical Society of Charles
Emerson's coming into my study,--this was probably in 1826 or
1827,--taking up Hazlitt's "British Poets" and turning at once to a poem
of Marvell's, which he read with his entrancing voice and manner. The
influence of this poet is plain to every reader in some of Emerson's
poems, and Charles' liking for him was very probably caught from
Waldo. When Charles was nearly through college, a periodical called

"The Harvard Register" was published by students and recent graduates.
Three articles were contributed by him to this periodical. Two of them
have the titles "Conversation," "Friendship." His quotations are from
Horace and Juvenal, Plato, Plutarch, Bacon, Jeremy Taylor,
Shakespeare, and Scott. There are passages in these Essays which
remind one strongly of his brother, the Lecturer of twenty-five or thirty
years later. Take this as an example:--
"Men and mind are my studies. I need no observatory high in air to aid
my perceptions or enlarge my prospect. I do not want a costly apparatus
to give pomp to