heaviness and halting, but the beauty of the thought atones for missing symmetry and freshness of rhyme, and Emerson as a poet will always have an audience of admirers and some worshippers, oblivious of his verse's fault. Once when some one praised his poetry Emerson interrupted, "You forget; we are damned for poetry." And he wrote to Carlyle that he was "not a poet, but a lover of poetry and poets"—a sort of harbinger of the poets to come. Emerson's influence was always exerted in the line of the loftiest aspirations. Consequently he will always be dear to thinkers and to poets, and an inspiration to the young. His whole life, however closely examined, shows no flaw of temper or of foi ble. It was serene and lovely to the end. NATHAN HASKELL DOLE. |