Chapter VII: Latest Books

Five volumes remain to be commented on. The first, _Society and Solitude_ (so called after the initial paper), is a group of twelve essays entitled ‘Civilization,’ ‘Art,’ ‘Eloquence,’ ‘Domestic Life,’ ‘Farming,’ ‘Works and Days,’ ‘Books,’ ‘Clubs,’ ‘Courage,’ ‘Success,’ and ‘Old Age.’ They have mostly a practical bent. That on ‘Books’ doubtless gives an account of Emerson’s own reading, adequate as far as it expresses his literary preferences, inadequate respecting completeness. For example, Emerson must have read George Borrow, of an acquaintance with whom he repeatedly gives proof, but these lists contain no mention of _Lavengro_ or _Romany Rye_. Here too will be found his famous heresy about the value of translations, but not so radically stated by Emerson as it is sometimes stated by those who propose to attack Emerson’s position.

_Letters and Social Aims_ (a volume forced from him by the rumor that an English house proposed to reprint his early papers from ‘The Dial’) covers topics as diverse as, on the one hand, ‘Social Aims,’ ‘Quotation and Originality,’ ‘The Comic,’ and on the other, ‘Poetry and Imagination,’ ‘Inspiration,’ ‘Greatness,’ ‘Immortality.’ There are also essays on ‘Eloquence,’ ‘Resources,’ ‘Progress of Culture,’ and ‘Persian Poetry.’

_Lectures and Biographical Sketches_ consists of nineteen pieces, among which will be found ‘Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England,’ ‘The Superlative,’ and the brilliant sketches of Thoreau, of Ezra Ripley, and of Carlyle.

_Miscellanies_ (not to be confounded with the volume of 1849 bearing the same title) contains a number of papers and addresses on political topics, and is indispensable to the student of Emerson’s life. Here will be found his speeches on John Brown, on the Fugitive Slave Law, on Emancipation in the West Indies, on American Civilization, on Lincoln, and that inspiring lecture, ‘The Fortune of the Republic.’

_Natural History of Intellect and Other Papers_ is made up of lectures from the Harvard University course (1870–71) and earlier courses, and a sheaf of papers from ‘The Dial,’ mostly on ‘Modern Literature.’ He who deplores the curtness of the note on Tennyson in _English Traits_ will be glad to seek comfort in this earlier tribute. Yet the comfort may prove to be less than he would like.

* * * * *

Emerson’s audience is large and varied. Let us consider a few among the varieties of those who are attracted by his genius and the charm of his personality.

To certain hardy investigators Emerson is not a mere man of letters whose thought, radiantly clothed, takes the philosophical form, he is a philosopher almost in the strict sense. They find a place for him in their classification. They know exactly what ideas, derived from what pundits, have come out with what new inflection in his writings. They have done for Emerson more than he could do, or perhaps cared to do, for himself; they have given him a system.

All this is important and valuable. No little praise is due to results worked out with so much courage and critical acumen. Whether the conclusions are quite true is another question.

Doubtless, too, there are readers who, taking their cue from the class just mentioned, find their self-love flattered as they turn the pages of the _Essays_ and the _Conduct of Life_. Not only, in spite of dark sayings here and there, does ‘philosophy’ prove easier and more delightful than they were wont to think, but their estimate of their own mental powers is immensely enlarged.

There are the critics of letters whose function is interpretative, and whose influence is restraining. Solicitous to do their author justice, they are above all solicitous that injustice shall not be done him by overpraise. They bring proof that Emerson was not a precursor of Darwin, that he was inferior to Carlyle, that he was not a poet, that he was never a great and not always a good writer, that he was apt to impose on his reader as a new truth an old error in ‘a novel and fascinating dress,’ that he was even capable of writing words without ideas.

But the motives which draw and bind to him the great majority of Emerson’s readers are connected with literature rather than philosophy or criticism. A prerogative of the man of letters is to be read both for what he says and for the way he says it. In the case of Emerson his thought may not be divided from the verbal setting. ‘He can never get beyond the English language.’ ‘No merely French, or German, or Italian reader will have the least notion of the magic of his diction.’[24]

Perhaps in the long run they get the most out of Emerson who read him not for stimulus, for his militant optimism, for the shock his fine-phrased audacities give their humdrum opinions, for his uplifting idealism (all of which they are sure to get and profit by), but who read him for literary pleasure, for downright good-fellowship, and for the humor that is in him. That he attracts a large audience of this (seemingly) unimportant class is enough to show how little danger there is that Emerson will be handed over to the keeping of the merely erudite and bookish part of the public.

It is well to remember that he had no intention of being so disposed of. When he said, ‘My own habitual view is to the well being of students or scholars,’ he was careful immediately to explain that he used the word ‘student’ in no restricted sense. ‘The class of scholars or students ... is a class that comprises in some sort all mankind, comprises every man in the best hours of his life.’ He pictures the newsboy entering a train filled with men going to business. The morning papers are bought, and ‘instantly the entire rectangular assembly, fresh from their breakfast, are bending as one man to their second breakfast.’ This was Emerson’s student body, this was the audience he aimed to reach.

Did he reach this body? It is believed that he did, if not always directly, then vicariously. He was compelled as a matter of course to speak in his own way--the impossible thing for him was to do violence to his genius. Emerson invented the phrase, ‘the man in the street.’ Now it is notorious that the man in the street cares little about the ‘over-soul.’ The mere juxtaposition of the two expressions is comic. But Emerson did not talk of the over-soul all the time. He had a Franklin-like common-sense and a pithiness of speech which are captivating. Perhaps in magnifying his idealism we have neglected to do justice to his mundane philosophy.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Ellen (Tucker) Emerson was but twenty years of age at the
time of her death. Emerson first saw her in December, 1827.
They were married about two years later.

[20] Cabot: _Emerson_, i, 244.

[21] G. W. Cooke: _An Historical and Biographical Introduction to
accompany_ THE DIAL _as reprinted in numbers for The Rowfant
Club_ [Cleveland], 1902.

[22] Emerson to Carlyle, Oct. 30, 1840.

[23] ‘The Poet,’ printed in the appendix of the definitive edition
of Emerson’s _Poems_.

[24] Richard Garnett.

VII

_Edgar Allan Poe_

REFERENCES:

=R. W. Griswold=: ‘Memoir of the Author’ prefixed to the _Works
of Edgar A. Poe_, vol. iii, 1850.

=E. C. Stedman=: _Edgar Allan Poe_, 1881.

=J. H. Ingram=: _Edgar Allan Poe, his Life, Letters, and
Opinions_, 1880.

=G. E. Woodberry=: _Edgar Allan Poe_, ‘American Men of Letters,’
fourth edition, 1888.

=J. A. Harrison=: _Life and Letters of Edgar Allan Poe_ [1902–03].

=Emile Lauvrière=: _Edgar Poe, sa Vie et son Œuvre, étude de
psychologie pathologique_, 1904.