... Miss Constance Fennimore Woolson is studying the pictures of Florence. common it is for us, in reviewing our lives, to observe past errors and weaknesses, although at .. Mrs. Muloch-Craik has been ending the time, under the impulse of passion, or the her visit in Rome with the measles. force of favouring circumstances, our conduct ... Mr. and Mrs. Howells have been visit-appeared to us not only free from fault, but the ing the President, at Washington. SHAKESPEARIANA. [EDITED BY W. J. ROLFE, CAMBRIDGEPORT, MASS.] Editions of Shakespeare. We are indebted to Mr. Crosby for corrections of some little errors in our article on this subject in the World of April 24. The ". 'Cambridge" edition was published at 10s. 6d. a volume, not 9s., as we stated from memory. The present price puts it out of the reach of ordinary students. A friend of Mr. Crosby's paid a hundred dollars, three years ago, for a second-hand set in cloth; and a leading bookseller asks $175 for a set now. best thing we could possibly do. Has this sim- JOSEPH CROSBY. [If any change is to be made in the old text, DIED. Blomfield. At 12 Comberton Terrace, Upper-Clapton, of The Farmer's Boy, and the widow of his son Charles. April 19, Hannah Blomfield, 71 years; niece of the author Flaubert. In Paris, about May 10, Gustave Flaubert, about 60 years; novelist, author of Madame de Bovary, Salammbo, L'Education Sentimentale, and Histoire d'un Jeune Homme; and a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Mr. Crosby has known a good sound copy of the "Variorum of 1821" to be bought in New York for $38. The only copy we ever happened to see in Boston was held at a hundred dollars; but Quaritch, or any other London dealer would probably furnish as good a one for forty, or less. Fournier. In Paris, about May 10, Edouard Fournier, 61 years; an industrious, voluminous, and versatile author, If one cannot afford to buy it even at that figure, editor of several reviews, and a frequent contributor to the Singer's "Chiswick" edition, of which a new periodicals. His writings were largely connected with music and the drama, but covered also some historical subedition in ten volumes, at 3s. 6d. (about a dollar) jects. He was a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. each, was lately published by Geo. Bell & Sons Fortune. The death is announced of Robert Fortune, of Scotland, a famous Oriental traveler, botanist, and (London) is a very tolerable substitute- an author, at the age of 69 He began life in the Royal "excellent" one, in our friend's opinion. Botanic Gardens at Edinburgh, and was sent out to China by the Royal Botanic Society in 1842, to make a profesHe is surprised, by the way, that we did not sional exploration of that country. His chief publications are Three Years' Wanderings in Northern China; Two mention Dyce's and Grant White's editions. We Visits to the Tea Countries of China; Residence among did not profess to give a list of all the best edi- the Chinese, Inland and on the Coast, and at Sea; and Yedo and Pekin: A Narrative of a Journey to the Capitions, but only "a few brief hints" on the sub-tals of Japan and China. ject. "Grant White's excellent edition," Mr. Crosby says, "is too well known to need any eulogium from me"- or from us, we may add. In the preface to our edition of the Merchant of Venice, ten years ago, we said: "Of recent editors we have been most indebted to White and Dyce." The second edition of Dyce (9 vols., London, 1864–67) is for all practical purposes as good as the third, which is little more than a reprint of it, and it can be got at a much lower price. The 9th volume is devoted to the Glos sary, of which we shall speak more at length hereafter, in connection with books of reference. When first published, this volume could be bought separately, and we have often recommended it to teachers and others who could not afford to buy the complete edition. We fear it may not be possible now to get it without the NEWS AND NOTES. the past few years, and which we shall all expect to see win fresh laurels in the new lease of life now given to it. James R. Osgood & Co. will not confine themselves to the heliotype branch of the business, but will do the work of general publishers for a select circle of authors. The new firm's announcements will not be ready until June 1st; but one item upon it will be the new Memorial History of Boston, in four volumes. It will interest many of our readers to know that Mr. M. F. Sweetser and his admirable "Artist Biographies" go with J. R. Osgood & Co. - Mr. Peter G. Thomson, the Cincinnati publisher, received his training in the large house of Robert Clarke & Co., of that city, and is setting forward his business with a good deal of energy. He has already issued a Book-Buyer's Guide, which is warmly spoken of; and he has been at work for many years on a Bibliography of Ohio, in behalf of which he has visited every public library from Boston to St. Paul. He has accumulated for it some 1,400 titles, and expects to publish the work in the fall. Mr. Thomson has also in press a volume of reminiscences of the bench and bar of Cincinnati, by Judge Carter. George Routledge & Sons are about to republish Capt. Marryat's novels, in seventeen volumes. In current numbers of the London Athenæum will be found a series of "Milton Notes," of great interest and value to students of the life and works of that poet. -Robert Browning is soon to bring out a companion volume to the Dramatic Idyls which he published last season. - Victor Hugo's new work, Religion and Relig ions, is out-a very suggestive title. - Bohemian literature is being enriched by translations of Dante's Divina Commedia, Shakespeare's Othello and Merchant of Venice, and Longfellow's Hiawatha and Evangeline. -- which Miss Woolsey has edited, and which she commends to our reading in the strongest terms. -The venerable John G. Palfrey, now in his -J. W. Bouton will shortly publish Freemaeighty-fifth year, is busily engaged, at his Cam- sonary, Older than Obelisks, Pyramids and bridge home, upon the fifth and concluding vol- Mounds, by John A. Weisse, M. D., with three ume of his History of New England. - Roberts full page chromo-lithographic plates, and numer Bros. have just published Lewis Morris's new ous cuts throughout the text.-G. D. Abbott poem, The Ode of Life, and a new and complete and J. N. Williams, of Lake Village, New edition of Baring Gould's Myths of the Middle Hampshire, have begun the publication of The Ages.-L. Prang & Co., of Boston, have offered Silent People, a fortnightly journal devoted to the prizes amounting to $2,000 for the best designs interests of deaf-mutes. It is very well edited for Christmas cards for the next season.-A for its special field, and deserves ample success. party of sixty or seventy men from the great-Roberts Brothers, of Boston, publish this week London publishing house of Cassell, Petter, Gal- the Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay, pin & Co. was recently conducted through Westminster Abbey, of an afternoon, by Dean Stanley himself, who explained all the objects of interest, and afterwards gave them a tea in the "Jerusalem Chamber."-The five meetings of the forthcoming literary congress at Lisbon, postponed to September, will be occupied with the discussion of the following topics: Translations; National - Jansen, McClurg & Co., a well-known pubThe last line of this passage has troubled the Legislation as affecting Literature; Interna- lishing firm in Chicago, have begun the publicacommentators to explain, and is obelized in the tional Legislation and Diplomatic Conventions; tion of a monthly journal of literary news and Globe edition; several emendations having been and the Organization of National Committees.- criticism, to be called The Dial. They have proposed that need not be mentioned here, as Miss Helen Stanley, of Paris, has completed a recently brought out an American edition of the none of them seems to me very satisfactory. And translation of Madam Adam's Studies of Contem- German Life of Mozart by Louis Nohl, and it yet one would suppose the word "remembrances "porary Greek Poets.-Prof. Seeley's Life and will be followed immediately by the same auof the preceding line should have suggested the Times of Stein continues to receive warm praise thor's lives of Beethoven and Haydn. obvious correction. One letter added, that might in Germany. easily have dropped out in printing, sets all right. Read: other volumes. All's Well, i. 3. 140: By our remembrances of days foregone, The list of spring announcements of Houghton, Mifflin & Co. is a long and brilliant one, including works by Longfellow, Holmes, Aldrich, Howells, Harte, Hawthorne, Macaulay, Joseph Cook, and Norah Perry. -R. Worthington announces a new Hand-The important change in the great Boston Book of Pottery and Porcelain, by Hodder M. publishing house on Winthrop square has one Westropp, author of Hand-Book of Archæology, Such were our faults; for then we thought them none; pleasant feature which should be emphasized, Manual of Precious Stones, etc., etc., with nui.e., “Such were our faults, as we now look back namely: the restoration to use of the old and merous illustrations. The work contains a comupon them; for, at the time, we regarded them honored firm name of James R. Osgood & Co.; plete list of the marks of the different manuas anything but faults." The reflection of the an imprint which has been borne upon some of factories of pottery, and porcelain, and a useful good old lady is as true as it is natural. How the most popular and valuable publications of index. The Literary World. expressed in his face, intoned in his voice, tal; from extreme radicals he recoils, can be BOSTON, MAY 22, 1880. Thy actions to thy words accord; thy words Emerson. MAY 25, 1880. The Mount of Vision. A SONNET For the 77th Birthday of Ralph Waldo Emerson. - Wrapped in thy rare, unworldly atmosphere, Or sweeps the horizon's far infinity? A cloud-led, vatic pathway bravely trod, — A Bethlehem brightness o'er the forward track, That gleams, glows, broadens to the 'Hinder Sea'! MARGARET J. PRESTON. Lexington, Va. A Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Man. and radiant in his manners, so alike genial used by no party to become a partisan, But, being challenged, in however poor fashion, to set him forth, I shall denominate him an observer; to be which originally and indeed was, in his friend, Louis Agassiz's estimation, of all mental merits the crown, although Emerson's observation be mainly in a different from the great naturalist's sphere. Bifrontal in his aspect, while in his perfect simplicity never two-faced, he is open - even an openness, unobstructed by any private will, both ways to Nature and to the Over-Soul. There is a perfect balance in him of musing and of sturdy sense. A more wondrous telescope is his than that in the Cambridge observatory, whose weight of many tons will turn at a child's touch; and his look through it is, like a child's, disinterested and clear. "I am a transparent eye-ball: I am nothing, I see all;" has he not, as do experts with the pencil and brush, in these words painted himself? He never gets into his instrument to obscure the object-glass with that mote of egotism which is an eclipse of the stars, although some suspect it is "the cold light of stars" he is watching, and that light occasionally gets the better of life; while with Father Taylor, that other friend of his, the process was reversed, the life abounding and the light perhaps for moments choked. been! He is nothing if not independent; but, as I am summoned to the witnessstand, I will testify that I know not whether he be most faithful or free. He is obedient to the oracles, serves the Muses, runs on every errand, delivers like the telegraph his message, and abides by what he says. As The beauty of integrity is his. He is whole. With nothing inconsistent or contradictory in his career, only in its accent has Mr. Emerson's teaching changed, and his last emphasis is his best. But it is not less ideal in being more warm. A true preacher, he wears no robe. Not eloquent so much as penetrating and memorable is his word. His tongue is an incarnate temperance, and a prophecy is in his pen. He impresses without raising his voice. genuine a reformer as Martin Luther, he remains loyal, as Luther was reabsorbed into the civil and religious commonwealth whose corruptions he would cure and lay its errors bare. But he reverts only to resume and proceed. If he has not discovered the secret of the universe, yet this perceiver or apperceiver tells frankly what he finds, and is himself in harmony with the Most High. He speculates little; he adores much. He withdraws now from the arena of strife. He does not longer contend or challenge; but he rests, with a repose which no man has better earned, and on laurels that will never fade. RALPH WALDO EMERSON is a name which this country will cherish as worth more than any crown-jewel or Koh-i-noor diamond, grateful for virtues as well as gifts which are not surpassed. N artist, with a quiet sitter in a chair for a portrait, has no doubt of the willingness of his living subject; and how everybody presumes, for his or her own pleasure, to draw that likeness which art is also often summoned to take of the dead! In whose mind are not many distinguished deceased persons-Cæsar, Napoleon, Washington, Lincoln, Moses, Jesus, and Paulmore or less faithfully sketched? But there is, in pictures in print of surviving men, a presumption which, however common, only friendship and some fair and decent hitting of the features can excuse. For venturing to draw the traits of Emerson, nearly a halfcentury's acquaintance of love and honor is my only plea. I cannot do it on a large canvas, and scarce in miniature or cabinet size. I have but to say he is only partially given in any or all the representations I have yet seen. He is called a Transcendentalist; a name which he never adopted, submits to, if or Goethe be the Mont Blanc, he is a serve his tall, slender, angular, yet supple at all, with ingenuous surprise, and certainly does not affect or give color to in his sensuous style. He is considered an enthusiast; a term which for him, so sober and often silent, is, in its common acceptation, even less fit. He is regarded as a Mystic; in part so indeed he is. But the spiritual haze, clinging like fog to a hillside, of this determinate character, how few of his usually so clear-cut, breezy, and sunny sentences will hint or bear out. Yet to wonder in this world he has never ceased. He is held to be a saint; and all that is implied in the virtue of sanctity is comprised in his life, Emerson is an intellectual priest. He beholds and reports all, be it secular or sacred, in his field of view. If Shakspeare Of so much power where is the hidingplace? In Mr. Emerson's head and face the lines signify more than the mass. The nose shows a long and bony strength, seconded by the ample hand and foot that body, which seems Indian, Persian, and Yankee by turns. A friend, gazing on his countenance in sleep, so felt a strange organic force and swiftness in his form and look, that he was afraid to wake him up, not knowing what he would do! But only by yielding himself an instrument of the Spirit has he done what both he and It meant. neighboring Aiguille, of lesser breadth but to my own idea, far less equal to the truth. But should its subject, as do those who sit for a likeness in color or in light and shade, turn for a moment to glance at it, he will pardon it; for he is one who forgives all. What a step or stride, of fifty years, from the day when his own church declined to hear him, to an audience which not Boston, New England or Old England, only the civilized world, can contain! It is an arch of beauty with which, for millions to walk after him as on a bridge, he has spanned the gulf of time. C. A. BARTOL. Emerson as the Founder of a Literature. SYDNEY SMITH Wrote to Lord Grey, in 1818, "There does not appear to be in America, at this time, one man of any consider. able talents." So far as the pursuits of literature were concerned, there was certainly some ground for the remark. In 1818, there had been but one professional author, properly so called, in the United States, and heCharles Brockden Brown - had died in obscurity. In 1818, the largest public library in this country, that of Harvard College, contained less than twenty-five thousand volumes; the North American Review was but three years old; Channing had published only a sermon, Bancroft had just left college, Emerson was a sophomore, Hawthorne and Longfellow were school-boys. Bryant published "Thanatopsis" in 1817; Irving his Sketch-Book in 181820; Cooper his Spy in 1822. The short-lived "Knickerbocker school" rose and fell, about that time, in New York; and Goodrich, who in those days edited the Token, says of the five years beginning in 1820: "During this period we began to have confidence in American genius, and to dream of literary ambition." But the dream was not at once fulfilled. Even where the themes chosen were American, the treatment was apt to be timid and conventional; if a writer spoke of song-birds, he usually meant the lark and the nightingale, which he had never heard; if he alluded to flowers, it was to the foxglove and heather, which he had never seen. When this early literature attracted European attention, it was mainly as an interesting phenomenon; and Irving accounted for his own popularity in England by saying that the English were amazed to find an American holding a quill in his fingers instead of wearing it on his head. was distinctly recognizable in American literature. In 1836, however, the impulse came, in the publication of Emerson's Nature; it took twelve years, to be sure, to sell an edition of five hundred copies, yet the new and guiding force was there. It was a conscious and deliberate force, moreover; there was no disguise about it; those ninety pages were a challenge, from beginning to end. In the opening words we find the author complaining that our age is too retrospective, and writes biographies alone. "Why should not we enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition?" Thus the book RALPH WALDO EMERSON. He was content to fall into the track of vulgar poets, and spend on common aims his splendid endowments, and has declined the office proffered to now and then a man in many centuries, in the power of his genius, of a redeemer of the human mind.... Let him pass. Humanity must wait for his physician yet. And again : He who doubts whether this age or this country can yield any contribution to the literature of the world, only betrays his blindness to the necessities of the human soul.... What shall thought? It cannot be silent, if it would. It hinder the Genius of the time from speaking its will write in a higher spirit, and a wider knowledge, and with a grander practical aim than ever From the forthcoming Concord Guide-Book. By permission of D. Lothrop & Co. Nearly twenty years passed, after the profane remark of Sydney Smith, before any new impulse begins, and on the very last pages it ends "Build, therefore, your own world"; and, accordingly, the author went on to build it. In four years more the Dial was established, and in the very second number (October, 1840) we find the bold attempt resumed, in the form of "Thoughts on Modern Literature." Goethe was then the object of especial enthusiasm, for all cultivated persons; but Emerson, in this essay, tries him and finds him wanting. yet guided the pen of poet. And again, having made this prediction, he proceeded to take personal part in the fulfilment. It is not necessary, now that the intellectual movement thus introduced has had its course, to criticize too closely the result. All that is necessary to say is that the food then offered was heroic diet, and was greatly needed. Those who, like myself, grew up just in time to see the so-called "Transcendental" movement in its afterglow can perhaps do it more complete justice than those who came earlier or later-than those who actually had part in it, or those to whom it was but a piece of history. For one, I shall always be grateful to have seen the heavens and the earth made more tender and beauteous by that receding light. Happening, as this movement did-if it was merely a happening-to coincide in time with the great anti-slavery agitation, it certainly gave us a group of men and women whom no contemporary nation could surpass. "To make habitually a new estimate," says Emerson, "that is elevation," and of this elevation he was personally the most complete and satisfying example. There is no doubt that this attitude, this impulse, this tendency, formed the great gift of Emerson to his country and to the world. It was a greater contribution than if he had given it a system; and it left him a poet instead of a philosopher. Besides this provocative impulse, he has made mankind his debtor for a thousand aphorisms, a thousand well-defined crystallizations of thought. Not the founder, in a strict sense, of any school, he has furnished the foundation stones for many schools. But, after all, his great service was in setting an example of intellectual self-reliance. Plutarch says that when Cicero, as a young man, visited the oracle at Delphi, the advice given him was to make his own genius, not the opinions of others, the guide of his life; and Niebuhr thinks that, if so, this is one of the answers which might in Let me say, then, that Emerson, in my judgment, stands at the head of American literature in two of its most important functions: as philosophical essayist, and as lyric poet. THE PHILOSOPHER. duce us to believe in the actual inspiration of the priestess. Emerson received and transmitted this same oracle, and though it undoubtedly led to some follies, it is certain that it gave us a fresh and creative period. He and his compeers accomplished their work because they had faith in their period and their place and themselves; they did not waste time in discussing the philosophy of environment, or in moaning over provincialism, but were content to accept the conditions they found, and to make their provincialism classic. If what they did was out of all proportion mary fact, and to state in terms of his own what perial strain in his ethic. What more Antoninian philosophy in his academic years; but the whole being of the youth inclined in the opposite direction, and though not directly, and at first hand, conversant with the new German philosophy, he welcomed the first breathings of its spirit, which solute sincerity, independent judgment, and the As philosophical essayist he is marked by ab- saluted him through Coleridge, and he found the fundamental principles of "transcendentalism" freshness of original thought. His aim is not to relation to the conduct of life, as the "Meditain his own mind. And, on the other hand, in set forth in conventional phrase the prevailing tions" of Antoninus were the favorite study of sentiment of his time, not to voice the accepted his youth, so he echoes and reproduces that imdoctrine of "good society," but to face the pri to their apparent opportunities, so much the bet- Bards who died content on pleasant sward "the brooding soul" has revealed to him of the he does not strain or strive to see and under " Not a thinker, as that term is applied to analytic philosophers, but a seer, he reminds the reader of stand; he does not worry to detect the truth of All the remarkable prose-writers of that period, in America — Emerson in his serene calms, Haw things, but trustingly accepts what comes to the open sense and the waiting mind. "Stand aside thorne in his lonely dreams, Poe amid his exand let God think' - his own memorable saycesses, Thoreau in his asceticism - belonged essentially to the same intellectual impulse, how-ing-expresses the mental process by which he ever far they seemed removed from one another. gained his insight and reached his conclusions. All employed the material that lay around them, whatever it was; all followed the wise counsel of the spectator in the prologue to Faust: "Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Every one lives it; to not many is it known; and seize it where you will, it is interesting." Under their influence literature itself assumed a new aspect of wealth and vigor, making the smooth Irving suddenly seem shallow, and the purely ethical treatment of Channing appear colorless and inadequate. Europe at once receded, and a new world was born. It is difficult to say in case of Emerson,― as it is hard with every conspicuous man, how far he is the creator of the phase he represents, and how far he is its mere index and exponent. The gratitude of the world usually gives the leader the benefit of this doubt. Thus much is certain, that in American literature there was a priceless impulse of new hope and life, forty years ago, and that the glory of that impulse will always be inseparable from the name of Emerson. T. W. HIGGINSON. R. W. E. Doors hast thou opened for us, thinker, seer, Thou beckonest onward, as in earlier days: - . With hints of unexplored eternities Stirring the sluggish soul new paths to trace:- It was not love of singularity, as hostile critics alleged, but plain sincerity, that made his views and his writing so unconventional, and that here and there shocked propriety with some startling contradiction. It might be his misfortune, but was not his fault, that he could not see things as others saw them. He must state them as he saw them himself. And the different view took on, as nearest his meaning, the unwonted phrase. than this: "To find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of and wise and our own to-day. I settle myself good hours, is wisdom. . . . Let us be poised ever firmer in the creed that we should not postpone and refer and wish, but do broad justice where we are." A Stoic he is in the emphasis with which he affirms right to be the absolute good, right for its own sake, not for any foreign benefit. "There incoming of God himself, or absolute existence is no tax on the good of virtue, for that is the without any comparative." "In a virtuous action I properly am." And what a triumphant optimism in his view of human nature! "Nothing shall warp me from the belief that every man is a lover of truth. There is no pure lie, no pure malignity in nature. The entertainment of the proposition of depravity is the last profligacy and profanation. Could it be received into the common belief, suicide would unpeople the planet." No writer is so quotable. Scarcely a page, especially of the earlier essays, but supplies some terse and pregnant saying, worthy to be inscribed No writer among us has incurred more ridicule in a golden treasury of portable wisdom. And and encountered more abuse than this, our joy this is the signal merit of his philosophy; it and our pride, in his earlier utterances. "What gives us results instead of processes, sharp statewill this babbler say?" His speech was charac-ments of weighty truths instead of long disquisiterized as "the most amazing nonsense"; as the tions. One pungent saying, one compact axiom raving of one who could "not put two ideas that proves itself, is better than pages of laboritogether"; as sheer "blasphemy" by the Areopous demonstration. Demonstrations we forget, agites of the day, the self-constituted guardians but wise and witty sayings we remember; they of right thinking and good taste. The angry score themselves in the brain. Force of stateinvectives launched against him by his censors ment, the surprise of fitness, the hitting of the might grieve one who prized as dearly as an- nail on the head, is of Emerson's writing the disother the good will of his kind, but they could tinguishing trait. No moral teacher has been so not turn him from his orbit, nor baffle his serene instructive to his generation. self-possession, nor extort one syllable of wrath in reply. "Has nature covenanted with me that I should never appear to disadvantage, never make a ridiculous figure?" "I see not any road of perfect peace which a man can travel but to take counsel of his own bosom." With such sentiments as these he steeled himself against the shafts of his adversaries, and steered "right onward." THE POEТ. I place Emerson at the head of the lyric poets of America. In this judgment I anticipate wide dissent; but the dissent, I think, will be less when I explain the sense in which the affirmation is intended. I do not mean that Mr. Emerson excels his competitors in poetic art. On the contrary, the want of art in his poetry may once for all be conceded. The verses often halt, the And now, what a change! Who names him conclusion sometimes flags, and metrical propribut to praise? He has created his own public. ety is recklessly violated. But this defect is He has formed, as Wordsworth did, the taste by closely connected with the characteristic merit of which he is enjoyed. Did he write: "Greatness, the poet, and springs from the same root - his once and forever, has done with opinion"? He utter spontaneity. And this spontaneity is perhas conquered opinion. So truly he prophesied :haps but a mode of that sincerity which I have My acquaintance with Mr. Emerson extends "Let a man plant himself indomitably on his own noted in his prose. More than those of any of through a period of more than fifty years, and instincts and there abide, and the huge world will his contemporaries his poems for the most part but that one shrinks from public exposition of a come round to him." are inspirations. They are not made, but given; living personality—I would like to speak of his Two streams of tendency appear in his essays. they come of themselves. They are not medipersonal qualities, of the Man as I have known As a philosopher he is both Platonist and Stoic. tated, but burst from the soul with an irrepressihim in the intercourse of friendship and private A Platonist in his contemplation of nature, a ble necessity of utterance- sometimes with a life. But the Author belongs to the public, and Stoic in his practical view of life. Locke still rush which defies the shaping intellect. What a may be discussed, even during his lifetime, with- held sway when he began his career. The Es- burst, like the going up of a rocket, in the opensay on the Understanding was the text-book of ing stanza of "The World-Soul": Emerson the Philosopher and the Poet. out reserve. Thanks to the morning light, Thanks to the foaming sea, To the uplands of New Hampshire, To the boy with his games undaunted The inspiration is not always continuous or equal throughout; often the beginning of the poem is better than what follows. It seems as if it were not the man himself that speaks, but a power behind call it Dæmon or Muse. Where the muse flags it is her fault, not his; he is not going to help her out with willful elaboration or emendation. There is no trace, as in most poetry, of joiner-work, and no mark of the file. I think our other best poets, our Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier, and the rest, whatever else they may blame, will concede to their great brother this boldness of wing, this splendid daring. They will concede to him the fullest measure of the lyric soul. I am speaking only of those of his poems which are most characteristic, most truly Emersonian. What I have said is not true of all. It is not true of the three poems made to order the Hymn at the completion of the Concord Monument, the Ode sung in the Town Hall, and the Boston Hymn. In these we miss the inspiration and detect the labor. And still, even here, the master shows himself in that one line of the first: And fired the shot heard round the world, and in the opening stanza of the second: O! tenderly the haughty day, ... It is noticeable that the earliest of Emerson's poems, "The Rhodora," "Each and All," "Goodbye," and "The Humble-Bee," have less of this lyric quality than those of his riper years. But they have a peculiar charm of their own, and are, perhaps especially "The Humble-Bee" and "The Rhodora"-among the most popular things he has written. One purely descriptive poem, "The Snow-Storm," exhibits an unsurpassed power in that kind. The most quiet, the least inspired of the poems, those which display the least poetic talent, have yet a subtle something which absolves them from the charge of commonplace, and stamps them as original. Wholly unique, and transcending all contemporary verse in grandeur of style, is the piece entitled "The Problem." When first it appeared in the Dial, forty years ago come July, I said: "There has been nothing done in English rhyme like this since Milton." All between it and Milton seemed tame in comparison. Some of its verses have been found worthy of a place in Westminster Abbey, the spirit of whose architecture and that of kindred temples they so fitly express. What was said of Emerson's prose is equally true of his poetry; it is eminently quotable. More than those of any other poet of our time his lines establish themselves in the memory. Our author is not voluminous, considering the length of his literary life. But much has flowed from his pen which is not contained in his published volumes, as appears from the fact that he read this year his hundredth lecture to the Concord Lyceum. From the mass of his MSS. that have not yet seen the light, selections will be made which a competent editor will one day give to the world. F. H. HEDGE. Upon the Hight. Serene, upon the highest hight, To thee so easeful of ascending, In youth, as to that lofty peak, From off the plain, thy footsteps wended, Philosophy did quick bespeak To be thy guide, - as quickly, eke Fair Poesy, and both attended; Content this compromise to make: That thou shouldst follow each at pleasure; But that, for their and mankind's sake, Thy song should key from Wisdom take, Thy speech be set to rhythmic measure. Thus thou didst pass from hight to hight, New opened pathways broadly blazing,— That who would follow, follow might,Thy step assured, in open sight Of Gods and men, nor feared their gazing! On all thy way, no backward pace! Not once thy poise or purpose losing, Thou hast not needed to retrace, Nor of thy steps need'st now efface One print, on pathway of thy choosing. But from each newly mounted peak, To those who toiled below thee turning, Dost thou, a higher still beholding, Await the wings for thee unfolding? At wonders that transcend thy showing,Thy subtle sense, erewhile so skilled, Abashed and awed, — subdued and stilled, Approached so near the perfect knowing? Howe'er it be, full sure, afar Thou hearest, rising and descending, From all lands where Truth's allies are And from thy waiting destined star, Acclaims to thee, harmonious blending! WILLIAM S. SHURTLEFF. ing that I am not insensible to his deepest lessons. I will consider his books from a Democratic and western point of view. I will specify the shadows on these sunny expanses. Somebody has said of heroic character that "wherever the tallest peaks are present must inevitably be deep chasms and valleys." Mine be the ungracious task (for reasons) of leaving unmentioned both sunny expanses and sky-reaching heights, to dwell on the bare spots and darknesses. I have a theory that no artist or work of the very first class may be or can be without them. First, then, these pages are perhaps too perfect-too concentrated. (How good, for in stance, is good butter, good sugar. But to be eating nothing but sugar and butter all the time ! even if ever so good.) And though the author has much to say of freedom and wildness and simplicity and spontaneity, no performance was ever more based on artificial scholarships and decorums at third or fourth removes, (he calls it culture,) and built up from them. It is always a make, never an unconscious growth. It is the porcelain figure or statuette of lion, or stag, or Indian hunter-and a very choice statuette too -appropriate for the rosewood or marble bracket of parlor or library; never the animal itself, or the hunter himself. Indeed who wants the real animal or hunter? What would that do amid astral and bric-a-brac and tapestry, and ladies and gentlemen talking in subdued tones of Browning and Longfellow and art? The least suspicion of such actual bull, or Indian, or of Nature carrying out itself, would put all those good people to instant terror and flight. Emerson, in my opinion, is not most eminent as poet or artist or teacher, though valuable in all those. He is best as Critic, or Diagnoser. Not passion or imagination or warp or weakness, or any pronounced cause or specialty, dominates him. Cold and bloodless intellectuality dominates him. (I know the fires, emotions, love, egotisms, glow deep, perennial, as in all New Englanders-but the façade hides them well they give no sign.) He does not see or take one side, one presentation only or mainly, (as all the poets, or most of the fine writers any how,) he sees all sides. His final influence is to make his students cease to worship anything -almost cease to believe in anything, outside of themselves. These books will fill, and well fill, certain stretches of life, certain stages of developement—are (like the tenets or theology the Springfield, Mass., May, 1880. IN the regions we call Nature, towering beyond all measurement, with infinite spread, infinite depth and height-in those vast regions, including Man, socially and historically, with his moral-emotional influences-how small a part, (it came in my mind to-day,) has Literature really depicted-even summing up all of it, all ages. Seems at its best but some little fleet of boats, hugging the shores of a boundless sea, and never venturing, exploring the unmapp'd-never, Columbus-like, sailing out for New Worlds, and to complete the orb's rondure. Emerson writes frequently in the atmosphere of this thought, and his books report one or two things from that very ocean and air, and more legibly address'd to our age and American polity than by any man yet. But I will begin by scarifying him- thus prov unspeakably serviceable and precious as a stage. But in old or nervous or solemnest or dying hours, when one needs the impalpably soothing and vitalizing influences of abysmic Nature, or its affinities in literature or human society, and the Soul resents the keenest mere intellection, they will not be sought for. For a philosopher Emerson possesses a singularly dandified theory of Manners. He seems to have no notion at all that manners are simply the signs by which the chemist or metallurgist knows his metals. To the profound scientist, all metals are profound, as they really are. The little one, like the conventional world, will make much of gold and silver only. Then to the real artist in humanity, what are call'd bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all. Suppose these books becoming absorbed, the |