"worth one note upon his new and fresh-strung lyre was a thousand men." Men were looking for something original, they always are; when it came some said it thundered, others that an angel had spoke. How men wondered at the little book! It took nearly twelve years to sell the five hundred copies of Nature. Since that time Mr Emerson has said much, and if he has not printed many books, at least has printed much; some things far surpassing the first essay, in richness of material, in perfection of form, in continuity of thought; but nothing which has the same youthful freshness, and the same tender beauty as this early violet, blooming out of Unitarian and Calvinistic sand or snow. Poems and Essays of a later date are there, which show that he has had more time and woven it into life; works which present us with thought deeper, wider, richer, and more complete, but not surpassing the simplicity and loveliness of that maiden flower of his poetic spring. We know how true it is, that a man cannot criticise what he cannot comprehend, nor comprehend either a man or a work greater than himself. Let him get on a Quarterly never so high, it avails him nothing; "pyramids are pyramids in vales," and emmets are emmets even in a Review. Critics often afford an involuntary proof of this adage, yet grow no wisor by the experience. Fow of our tribo can make the simple shrift of the old Hobrow poot, and say, "we have not exercised ourselves in great matters, nor in things too high for us." Sundry Icarian critics have we seen, wending their wearying way on waxen wing to overtake the cagle flight of Emerson; some of them have we known getting near enough to see a fault, to overtake a feather falling from his wing, and with that tumbling to give name to a sea, if one cared to notice to what depth they fell. Some of the criticisms on Mr Emerson, transatlantic and cisatlantic, have been very remarkable, not to speak more definitely. "What of this new book?" said Mr Public to the reviewer, who was not "seized and tied down to judge," but of his own free will stood up and answered: "Oh! 'tis out of all plumb, my lord-quite an irregular thing! not one of the angles at the four corners is a right angle. I had my rule and compasses, my lord, in my pocket. And for the poem, your lordship bid me look at it-upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying them at home, upon an exact scale of Bossu's-they are out, my lord, in every one of their dimensions." Oh, gentle reader, we have looked on these efforts of our brother critics not without pity. There is an excellent bird, terreno, marine, and soini-acrial; a broad-footed bird, broad-beaked, broad-backed, broad-tailed; a notable bird she is, and a long-lived; a useful bird, once indispensable to writers, as furnishing the pen, now fruitful in many a hint. But when she undertakes to criticise the music of the thrush, or the movement of the hummingbird, why, she overstops the modesty of her nature, and if she essays the flight of the cagle-she is fortunate if she falls only upon the water. "No man," says the law, may stultify himself." Does not this canon apply to critics? No, the critic may do so. Suicide is a felony, but if a critic only slay himself critically, dooming himself to "hoise with his own petard," why, 'tis to be forgiven "That in our aspirations to be great, Our destinies o'erleap our mortal state." In a place where there were no Quarterly Journals, the veracious historian, Sir Walter Scott, relates that Claud Halcro, ambitious of fame, asked his fortune of an Orcadian soothsayer: "Tell me, shall my lays be sung, Like Hacon's of the golden tongue, She answers, that as things work after their kind, the result is after the same kind: "The eaglo mounts the polar sky, When seal and sea-dog list his song." We are warned by the fate of our predecessors, when their example does not guide us; wo confess not only our inferiority to Mr Emerson, but our consciousness of the fact, and believe that they should "judge others who themselves excel," and that authors, liko others on trial, should be judged by their peers. So we will not call this a criticism, which we are about to write on Mr Emerson, only an attempt at a contribution towards a criticism, hoping that, in due time, some one will come and do faithfully and completely, what it is not yet time to accomplish, still less within our power to do. All of Mr Emerson's literary works, with the exception of the Poems, were published before they were printed; delivered by word of mouth to audiences. In frequently reading his pieces, he had an opportunity to see any defect of form and amend it. Mr Emerson has won by his writings a more desirable reputation than any other man of letters in America has yet attained. It is not the reputation which bring him money or academic honours, or membership of learned societies; nor does it appear conspicuously in the literary journals as yet. But he has a high place among thinking men, on both sides of the water; we think no man who writes the English tongue has now so much influence in forming the opinions and character of young men and women. His audience steadily increases, at home and abroad, more rapidly in Engand than America. It is now with him as it was, at first, with Dr Channing; the fairest criticism has como from the other sido of tho water; tho reason is that ho, liko his predecessor, offended the sectarian and party spirit, tho personal prejudices of the mon about him; his life was n reproach to them, his words an offonce, or his doctrines. alarmed their sectarian, their party, or their personal pride, and they accordingly condemned the man. er who should bear the same relation to the English mind as Emerson to ours, for the same reason would be more acceptable here than at home. Emerson is neither a sectarian nor a partisan, no man less so; yet few men in America have been visited with more hatred,-private personal hatred, which the authors poorly endeavoured te conceal, and perhaps did hide from themselves. spite we have heard expressed against him, by men of the common morality, would strike a stranger with amazement, especially when it is remembered that his personal character and daily life are of such extraordinary loveliThis hatred has not proceeded merely from ignorant men, in whom it could easily be excused; but moro ness. A writ The often from men who have had opportunities of obtaining as good a culture as men commonly get in this country. Yet while he has been the theme of vulgar abuse, of sneers and ridicule in public and in private; while critics, more remarkable for the venom of their poison than the strength of their bow, have shot at him their little shafts, barbed more than pointed, he has also drawn about him some of what old Drayton called "the idle smoke of praise." Let us see what he has thrown into the public fire to cause this incense; what he has done to provoke the immedicable rage of certain other men; let us see what there is in his works, of old or new, true or false, what American and what cosmopolitan; let us weigh his works with such imperfect scales as we have, weigh them by the universal standard of beauty, truth, and love, and make an attempt to see what he is worth. American literaturo may bo distributed into two grand divisions: namely, the permanent litoraturo, consisting of books not written for a special occasion, books which are bound between hard covers; and the transient literature, written for some special occasion and not designed to last beyond that. Our permanent literature is almost wholly an imitation of old models. The substance is old, and the form old. There is nothing American about it. But as our writers are commonly quite deficient in literary culture and scientific discipline, their productions seem poor when compared with the imitative portion of the permanent literature in older countries, where the writers start with a better discipline and a better acquaintance with letters. and art. This inferiority of culture is one of the misfortunes incident to a new country, especially to one where practical talent is so much and so justly preferred to merely literary accomplishment and skill. This lack of culture is yet more apparent, in general, in tho transiont literature which is produced mainly by men who have had fow advantages for intellectual disciplino in carly life, and few to make acquaintance with books at a later period. That portion of our literature is commonly stronger and more American, but it is often coarse and rude. The permanent literature is imitative; the other is rowdy. But we have now no time to dwell upon this theme, which demands a separate paper. Mr Emerson is the most American of our writers. The idea of America, which lies at the bottom of our original institutions, appears in him with great prominenco., We mean the idea of personal freedom, of the dignity and value of human nature, the superiority of a man to the accidents of a man. Emerson is the most republican of republicans, the most protostant of the dissontors. Serono as a July sun, he is equally fearless. He looks everything in the face modestly, but with earnest scrutiny, and passes judgment upon its merits. Nothing is too high for his examination; nothing too sacred. On earth only one thing he finds which is thoroughly venerable, and that is the nature of man; not the accidents, which make a man rich or famous, but the substance, which makes him a man. The man is before the institutions of man; his nature superior to his history. All finite things are only appondages of man, useful, convenient, or beautiful. Man is master, and nature his slave, serving for many a varied use. The results of human experience-the State, the Church, society, the family, business, literature, science, art-all of these are subordinate to man: if they serve the individual, he is to foster them, if not, to abandon them and seek better things. He looks at all things, the past and the present, tho Stato and tho Church, Christianity and the market-house, in the daylight of the intellect. Nothing is allowed to stand between him and his manhood. Hence there is an apparent irreverence; he does not bow to any hat which Gessler has set up for public adoration, but to every man, canonical or profane, who bears the mark of native manliness. He eats show-bread, if he is hungry. While he is the most American, he is almost the most cosmopolitan of our writers, the least restrained and belittled by the popular follies of the nation or the age. men. In America, writers are commonly kept in awe and subdued by fear of the richer class, or that of the mass of Mr Emerson has small respect for either; would bow as low to a lackey as a lord, to a clown as a scholar, to one man as a million. He spurns all constitutions but the law of his own nature, rejecting them with manly scorn. The traditions of the churches are no hindrances to his thought; Jesus or Judas were the same to him, if either |