"He shall aye climb
For his rhyme."

Notwithstanding his marvelous powers, nay, because of them, he must be ranked among the Amateurs and Artists on Parnassus; he is not a heaven-born heir. Poems like "the Humble-Bee" and "Problem" belong to that class which a true critic who knows the essence and the laws of of poetry, and can command the deepest resources of language, would produce. They are built; they do not grow. They are poetic and musical statements, rather than poems. They are not master-pieces of painting, but rather splendid specimens of mosaic. We do not desire to cancel a single expression in relation to "The Humble-Bee," either as to its beauty, melody, or compactness, but let any one compare it with Shelley's "Sky-Lark," or Keats' "Nightingale," and he will learn the difference between the natural gush of poetic inspiration, and the finest triumphs of an artist.

Besides a lack of breadth in his topics and a wearisome sameness of manner, Mr. Emerson's vision is too keen to write easily and at much length in verse. The natural expression of his mind is the prose of "Compensation" and "The Method of Nature." For the sharpness and brilliancy of his ideas require a pointed and epigrammatic dress. His imagery is created not to satisfy and appease a craving for beauty, but is held in strict subordination to the intellect, as a clearer medium of expression. It does not take the form of symbols as is the case with the highest poetry, but rather of foci for condensing the intellectual rays into an intenser stream. And thus, by his very mental constitution, Mr. Emerson is not a poet, but a seer. We cannot say that his genius is analytic, for there is no logical process in the movement of his thought. He never dissects; but his glance naturally detects the minutest mystery of every object on which it is thrown. By a more penetrative vision, he reports what other men can only disclose by digging and laborious meditative toil. In reading his pieces we feel as though we were for the first time quite wide awake. No man, probably, ever exhibited, in a higher degree, reach of intellect united with acuteness of vision. Subtile as sun-rays, his thought never discovers its track, but proves its power by showing you the distant

discs in the universe of mind, which its light discloses and upon which its beams impinge. In the intellectual world his eye has at once a space-penetrating and a magnifying power, uniting telescopic and microscopic virtues, as though Lord Ross's reflector could reveal the structure and the vegetation of Uranus. Instead of being creative and plastic, Mr. Emerson's power is interpretative and critical. It is an error, or an abuse of language, we think, to attribute to him great vigor of imagination. He has little imagination, using the word in the sense in which we apply it to Shakspeare and Milton. His power of language results from keenness of intellectual perception, and the charm of his style consists in the fresh analogies and natural correspondences through which his subtile conceptions are conveyed. Every figure which adorns his page has a sharp physiognomy, and is the natural body of a brilliant, nervous thought. The temper of his wit is so pure that it will cut through adamant, and its edge so fine, that, like the blade of Saladdin, it will sever gauze.

But we shall look in vain, throughout the list of his longer poems, for exhibitions of that fusing fire which solves the elements of experience and of nature, to recast them into purer shapes. They are all theories and statements; they are reports not poems. We recognise in "Uriel," "Saadi," "Monadnoc," merely rhymed expressions of many familiar views which are better stated, because more naturally and freely stated, in the "Essays." And besides, Mr. Emerson's volume does not display any signs of that unconsciousness which always characterizes a poet of the upper rank. Exact self-knowledge and a microscopic eye are essential to a great Essayist, are admirable for prose, but they are withering and fatal to the life of poetry. There is poetry in science, and poetry in philosophy; but it is not Herschel, nor Hazlitt that shall embody it in form. They may appreciate it better than others, and may dissect its structure, but it must come with a natural unconscious flow from a spontaneous fountain in an inspired breast. We may apppeal to our author for testimony that the "poet speaks adequately, only when he speaks somewhat wildly, or, 'with the flower of the mind;' not with the intellect, used as an organ, but with the intel

lect released from all service, and suffered to take its direction from its celestial life; or, as the ancients were wont to express themselves, not with intellect alone, but with the intellect inebriated by nectar." This is a perfect statement, but we do not believe that Mr. Emerson's spirit is capable of this divine intoxication. His brain never reels, and the "fine frenzy" cannot unsettle the steady vision of his piercing eye. No one has stated better the omnipresent action of the "Over-soul," but it is through some peasant Burns, or modest Shakspeare, that the Over-soul flows freest, rather than through Schiller who counts and measures the pulses as they come. Mr. Emerson's volume more than any other poems we have ever read, is characterised by a lack of this unconsciousness. Like Uriel, the beauty of the bard seems parched by a "sad self-knowledge." Truth is always his aim; and the finest passages he has ever produced fall naturally into measured prose, like that at the close of the Cambridge "Address," and also at the conclusion of "The Method of Nature." And these passages move us because they are the powerful utterance of far-reaching moral vision. They come from a spirit quivering with a prophetic, rather than with a poetic, thrill. Poetry demands an unconscious calmness and more repose. But there is little of this repose in Mr. Emerson's volume. We find no relief of shadows in his poems, no rich and mellow radiance even, no healthy mystery, no religious gloom, but an all-illuminating, cloudless, burning glare, as of the sun in an Arabian sky. Even in dealing with the Infinite, he must reveal the whole secret; he must be an engraver, not a painter; he must express, not suggest.

And here, we think, lies the explanation of that enigmatic dress, in which his longer poems are enveloped. The highest poetic expression of beauty is symbolic and flowing. It would be robed in a mystic veil. "A beauty not explicable, is dearer than a beauty which we can see to the end of." And therefore its proper medium, as in Milton's descriptive passages, is analogous to the Autumn haze which softens, and spiritualizes, and throws a witching mystery around the commonest objects and the most irregular outlines. But Mr. Emerson has not this power. His convex eye would shave the twinkle from the star to

give us the disc; and we believe that the ambiguous and enigmatic statement of the "World-Soul," and "Merlin," and "Mithridates," is a resource of art, to conceal the angularity and unpoetic sharpness of the thought involved. As though the formulas of science acquired an æsthetic virtue by being stated in cipher.

But we have written double what we intended upon Mr. Emerson's volume, and must still regret that we have not been able to elucidate and defend our criticism by an analysis of some of his longer poems. Our objection to them is, not that they are not studded with splendid imagery, and sparkling gems, but that they lack the unction of poetry, and could better have been conveyed in his terse and brilliant prose. They were produced from the intellect alone. That inspiration from which they were created was not.the "ebb of the individual rivulet before the flowing surges of the sea of life." And they suggest and illustrate, what we are confident is true, that the author has not one of those liquid souls, which, like Homer's and Shakspeare's, melt into, and mix with, and lose themselves in nature, but is rather a diamond gem, insoluble in any fire, which retains unharmed its stubborn personality, and flashes back the light at every angle, in a cold, but dazzling intellectual ray. We must close the volume, with the confession that, with all its faults as poetry, it contains some pieces of the highest artistic merit, and that we have derived from it more pleasure, and we may say perhaps, deeper views, than from any other literary production we have ever read. And it is certainly some compensation to ourselves for the estimate we have felt compelled, reluctantly enough, to make of the poet, that we have risen from the study of his verse with a higher reverence for the Philosopher, and a deeper love for the Essayist.

T. S. K.

ART. XI.

Absurdities of Philological Hypercriticism.

1

Letter to the Editor.

All-Bauen, (in Hanover,) Dec. 4th, 1846.

DEAR SIR, I add a few words on the queerest of all curiosities I have met with, in my tour, that little company of monomaniac philologers, who have gathered, from va rious parts of Germany, into this wild, secluded village, among the Hartz Mountains, and formed a Society, called the Wörterklauber-Vereinigung. I forgot to give you the name, in my last; or, rather, I had not then learned it. My friend, honest Herr Ludwig, has since taken me to one of their sittings, in the old Amthaus. They meet here, every month, and read Essays, which are written by the members in turn. Never was I so amused, diverted almost into convulsions, by the incredible mixture of great learning with stone-blind ignorance of things and of the world. You must know that their only science is that of words, and of verbal interpretation. Whithersoever this leads them, thither they go, as unconscious of any possible absurdity, as a machine would be. Their library (how they got it, with their scanty means, Heaven only knows!) fills five large rooms, one of which is wholly occupied by American books, pamphlets, newspapers, &c. I found about thirty members present, listening to a dissertation, by Prof. Schwärmer, on the government of ancient Athens, as gathered from the force of the Greek particles. Though astonished at the extent of the author's reading, and, I may add, ingenuity, I was often near bursting with suppressed laughter, at the whimsicality of the inferences which he drew, and which were proposed, and received, with an unsuspecting gravity that defies all description. The truth is, neither he, nor his associates, have an idea, but what they have derived through some philological process; and they are, therefore, incapable of comparing their ludicrous conclusions with facts or with general principles, which would serve to correct them. Straight-forward interpretation is their only guide. At the close, friend Ludwig introduced me, as an American, to some of the older Professors. Dr. Ausleger, the President, immediately inquired, "Which side do you take, my dear Sir, on the great question between the