Ralph Waldo Emerson | Page 9

as representing a modest constellation of literary
luminaries: John Thornton Kirkland, afterwards President of Harvard
University; Joseph Stevens Buckminster; John Sylvester John Gardiner;
William Tudor; Samuel Cooper Thacher; William Emerson. These
were the chief stars of the new cluster, and their light reached the world,
or a small part of it, as reflected from the pages of "The Monthly
Anthology," which very soon came under the editorship of the
Reverend William Emerson.
The father of Ralph Waldo Emerson may be judged of in good measure
by the associates with whom he was thus connected. A brief sketch of
these friends and fellow-workers of his may not be out of place, for
these men made the local sphere of thought into which Ralph Waldo
Emerson was born.
John Thornton Kirkland should have been seen and heard as he is
remembered by old graduates of Harvard, sitting in the ancient
Presidential Chair, on Commencement Day, and calling in his
penetrating but musical accents: "_Expectatur Oratio in Lingua
Latina_" or "Vernacula," if the "First Scholar" was about to deliver the
English oration. It was a presence not to be forgotten. His "shining
morning face" was round as a baby's, and talked as pleasantly as his
voice did, with smiles for accents and dimples for punctuation. Mr.
Ticknor speaks of his sermons as "full of intellectual wealth and
practical wisdom, with sometimes a quaintness that bordered on
humor." It was of him that the story was always told,--it may be as old
as the invention of printing,--that he threw his sermons into a barrel,
where they went to pieces and got mixed up, and that when he was
going to preach he fished out what he thought would be about enough
for a sermon, and patched the leaves together as he best might. The
Reverend Dr. Lowell says: "He always found the right piece, and that
was better than almost any of his brethren could have found in what
they had written with twice the labor." Mr. Cabot, who knew all

Emerson's literary habits, says he used to fish out the number of leaves
he wanted for a lecture in somewhat the same way. Emerson's father,
however, was very methodical, according to Dr. Lowell, and had "a
place for everything, and everything in its place." Dr. Kirkland left little
to be remembered by, and like many of the most interesting
personalities we have met with, has become a very thin ghost to the
grandchildren of his contemporaries.
Joseph Stevens Buckminster was the pulpit darling of his day, in
Boston. The beauty of his person, the perfection of his oratory, the
finish of his style, added to the sweetness of his character, made him
one of those living idols which seem to be as necessary to
Protestantism as images and pictures are to Romanism.
John Sylvester John Gardiner, once a pupil of the famous Dr. Parr, was
then the leading Episcopal clergyman of Boston. Him I reconstruct
from scattered hints I have met with as a scholarly, social man, with a
sanguine temperament and the cheerful ways of a wholesome English
parson, blest with a good constitution and a comfortable benefice. Mild
Orthodoxy, ripened in Unitarian sunshine, is a very agreeable aspect of
Christianity, and none was readier than Dr. Gardiner, if the voice of
tradition may be trusted, to fraternize with his brothers of the liberal
persuasion, and to make common cause with them in all that related to
the interests of learning.
William Tudor was a chief connecting link between the period of the
"Monthly Anthology," and that of the "North American Review," for he
was a frequent contributor to the first of these periodicals, and he was
the founder of the second. Edward Everett characterizes him, in
speaking of his "Letters on the Eastern States," as a scholar and a
gentleman, an impartial observer, a temperate champion, a liberal
opponent, and a correct writer. Daniel Webster bore similar testimony
to his talents and character.
Samuel Cooper Thacher was hardly twenty years old when the
"Anthology" was founded, and died when he was only a little more
than thirty. He contributed largely to that periodical, besides publishing
various controversial sermons, and writing the "Memoir of
Buckminster."
There was no more brilliant circle than this in any of our cities. There
was none where so much freedom of thought was united to so much

scholarship. The "Anthology" was the literary precursor of the "North
American Review," and the theological herald of the "Christian
Examiner." Like all first beginnings it showed many marks of
immaturity. It mingled extracts and original contributions, theology and
medicine, with all manner of literary chips and shavings. It had
Magazine ways that smacked of Sylvanus Urban; leading articles with
balanced paragraphs which recalled the marching tramp of Johnson;
translations that might have