w
A momentary music."

The reader will find a similar image in one of Burns's letters, again in
one of Coleridge's poetical fragments, and long before any of them, in a
letter of Leibnitz.

"He builded better than he knew"

is the most frequently quoted line of Emerson. The thought is constantly
recurring in our literature. It helps out the minister's sermon; and a
Fourth of July Oration which does not borrow it is like the "Address
without a Phoenix" among the Drury Lane mock poems. Can we find any
trace of this idea elsewhere?

In a little poem of Coleridge's, "William Tell," are these two lines:

"On wind and wave the boy would toss
Was great, nor knew how great he was."

The thought is fully worked out in the celebrated Essay of Carlyle
called "Characteristics." It reappears in Emerson's poem "Fate."

"Unknown to Cromwell as to me
Was Cromwell's measure and degree;
Unknown to him as to his horse,
If he than his groom is better or worse."

It is unnecessary to illustrate this point any further in this
connection. In dealing with his poetry other resemblances will suggest
themselves. All the best poetry the world has known is full of such
resemblances. If we find Emerson's wonderful picture, "Initial Love"
prefigured in the "Symposium" of Plato, we have only to look in the
"Phaedrus" and we we shall find an earlier sketch of Shakespeare's
famous group,--

"The lunatic, the lover, and the poet."

Sometimes these resemblances are nothing more than accidental
coincidences; sometimes the similar passages are unconsciously borrowed
from another; sometimes they are paraphrases, variations, embellished
copies, _editions de luxe_ of sayings that all the world knows are old,
but which it seems to the writer worth his while to say over again.
The more improved versions of the world's great thoughts we have, the
better, and we look to the great minds for them. The larger the river
the more streams flow into it. The wide flood of Emerson's discourse has
a hundred rivers and thousands of streamlets for its tributaries.

It was not from books only that he gathered food for thought and for his
lectures and essays. He was always on the lookout in conversation for
things to be remembered. He picked up facts one would not have expected
him to care for. He once corrected me in giving Flora Temple's time at
Kalamazoo. I made a mistake of a quarter of a second, and he set me
right. He was not always so ex