ticipate.' With this in your ear
it is rather chilling to read, 'I do, then, with my friends as I do with
my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use
them. We must have society on our own terms, and admit or exclude it on
the slightest cause. I cannot afford to speak much with my friend.'
These are not genial terms.

For authors and books his affection, real as it was, was singularly
impersonal. In his treatment of literary subjects, we miss the purely
human touch, the grip of affection, the accent of scorn, that so
pleasantly characterize the writings of Mr. Lowell. Emerson, it is to be
feared, regarded a company of books but as a congeries of ideas. For one
idea he is indebted to Plato, for another to Dr. Channing. _Sartor
Resartus_, so Emerson writes, is a noble philosophical poem, but 'have
you read Sampson Read's _Growth of the Mind_?' We read somewhere of
'Pindar, Raphael, Angelo, Dryden, and De Stael.' Emerson's notions of
literary perspective are certainly 'very early.' Dr. Holmes himself is
every bit as bad. In this very book of his, speaking about the dangerous
liberty some poets--Emerson amongst the number--take of crowding a
redundant syllable into a line, he reminds us 'that Shakspeare and Milton
knew how to use it effectively; Shelley employed it freely: Bryant
indulged in it; Willis was fond of it.' One has heard of the _Republic
of Letters_, but this surely does not mean that one author is as good as
another. 'Willis was fond of it.' I dare say he was, but we are not
fond of Willis, and cannot help regarding the citation of his poetical
example as an outrage.

None the less, if we will have but a little patience, and bid our
occasional wonderment be still, and read Emerson at the right times and
in small quantities, we shall not remain strangers to his charm. He
bathes the universe in his thoughts. Nothing less than the Whole ever
contented Emerson. His was no parochial spirit. He cries out:

'From air and ocean bring me foods,
From all zones and altitudes.'

How beautiful, too, are some of his sentences! Here is a bit from his
essay on Shakspeare in _Representative Men_:

'It is the essence of poetry to spring like the rainbow daughter of
Wonder from the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse all
history. Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and Collier have wasted their life.
The famed theatres have vainly assisted. Betterton, Garrick, Kemble