The rash and the audacious are not the same. Audacity means boldness,
but to be rash often means to be imprudent or foolhardy. When a little
dog attacks a big dog, as so often happens, his boldness becomes
rashness. When Charles Kingsley attacked Newman, his boldness turned
out to be rashness.

* * * * *

Little wonder that in his essay on "Books" Emerson recommends Thomas a
Kempis's "Imitation of Christ." Substitute the word Nature for God and
Christ and much of it will sound very Emersonian. Emerson was a kind
of New England Thomas a Kempis. His spirit and attitude of mind were
essentially the same, only directed to Nature and the modern world.
Humble yourself, keep yourself in the background, and let the
over-soul speak. "I desire no consolation which taketh from me
compunction." "I love no contemplation which leads to pride." "For all
that which is high is not holy, nor everything that is sweet, good."
"I had rather feel contrition, than be skilled in the definition of
it." "All Scripture ought to be read in the spirit in which it was
written." How Emersonian all this sounds!

* * * * *

In a fat volume of forty thousand quotations from the literature of
all times and countries, compiled by some patient and industrious
person, at least half of it is not worth the paper on which it is
printed. There seem to be more quotations in it from Shakespeare than
from any other poet, which is as it should be. There seem to be more
from Emerson than from any other American poet, which again is as it
should be. Those from the great names of antiquity--the Bible, Sadi,
Cicero, AEschylus, Euripides, Aristotle, and others--are all worth
while, and the quotations from Bacon, Newton, Addison, Locke, Chaucer,
Johnson, Carlyle, Huxley, Tennyson, Goethe are welcome. But the
quotations from women writers and poets,--Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Sigourney,
Jean Ingelow, and others,--what are they worth? Who would expect
anything profound from J. G. Holland or Chapin, O. W. Holmes, or
Alger, or Alcott, or Helps, or Dickens, or Lewes, or Froude, or
Lowell? I certainly should not.

Such a selection is good to leaf over. Your thought may be kindled or
fanned here and there. The subjects are arranged alphabetically, and
embrace nearly all themes of human interest from ability to zephyrs.
There is very little from Whitman, and, I think, only one quotation
from Thoreau.

*