Ralph Waldo Emerson Part 20

Miss Mary A. Tappan.

Mr. T.G. Appleton.

Mrs. Henry Edwards.

Miss Susan E. Dorr.

Misses Wigglesworth.

Mr. Edward Wigglesworth.

Mr. J. Elliot Cabot.

Mrs. Sarah S. Russell.

Friends in New York and Philadelphia, through Mr. Williams.

Mr. William Whiting.

Mr. Frederick Beck.

Mr. H.P. Kidder.

Mrs. Abel Adams.

Mrs. George Faulkner.

Hon. E.R. h.o.a.r.

Mr. James B. Thayer.

Mr. John M. Forbes.

Mr. James H. Beal.

Mrs. Anna C. Lodge.

Mr. T. Jefferson Coolidge.

Mr. H.H. Hunnewell.

Mrs. S. Cabot.

Mr. James A. Dupee.

Mrs. Anna C. Lowell.

Mrs. M.F. Sayles.

Miss Helen L. Appleton.

J.R. Osgood & Co.

Mr. Richard Soule.

Mr. Francis Geo. Shaw.

Dr. R.W. Hooper.

Mr. William P. Mason.

Mr. William Gray.

Mr. Sam'l G. Ward.

Mr. J.I. Bowditch.

Mr. Geo. C. Ward.

Mrs. Luicia J. Briggs.

Mr. John E. Williams.

Dr. Le Baron Russell.

In May, 1873, Emerson returned to Concord. His friends and fellow-citizens received him with every token of affection and reverence. A set of signals was arranged to announce his arrival.

Carriages were in readiness for him and his family, a band greeted him with music, and pa.s.sing under a triumphal arch, he was driven to his renewed old home amidst the welcomes and the blessings of his loving and admiring friends and neighbors.

CHAPTER XII.

1873-1878. AET. 70-75.

Publication of "Parna.s.sus."--Emerson Nominated as Candidate for the Office of Lord Rector of Glasgow University.--Publication of "Letters and Social Aims." Contents: Poetry and Imagination.--Social Aims.--Eloquence.--Resources.--The Comic.--Quotation and Originality.--Progress of Culture.--Persian Poetry.--Inspiration.-- Greatness.--Immortality.--Address at the Unveiling of the Statue of "The Minute-Man" at Concord.--Publication of Collected Poems.

In December, 1874, Emerson published "Parna.s.sus," a Collection of Poems by British and American authors. Many readers may like to see his subdivisions and arrangement of the pieces he has brought together.

They are as follows: "Nature."--"Human Life."--"Intellectual."

--"Contemplation."--"Moral and Religious."--"Heroic."--"Personal."

--"Pictures."--"Narrative Poems and Ballads."--"Songs."--"Dirges and Pathetic Poems."--"Comic and Humorous."--"Poetry of Terror."--"Oracles and Counsels."

I have borrowed so sparingly from the rich mine of Mr. George Willis Cooke's "Ralph Waldo Emerson, His Life, Writings, and Philosophy," that I am pleased to pay him the respectful tribute of taking a leaf from his excellent work.

"This collection," he says,

"was the result of his habit, pursued for many years, of copying into his commonplace book any poem which specially pleased him. Many of these favorites had been read to ill.u.s.trate his lectures on the English poets. The book has no worthless selections, almost everything it contains bearing the stamp of genius and worth. Yet Emerson's personality is seen in its many intellectual and serious poems, and in the small number of its purely religious selections.

With two or three exceptions he copies none of those devotional poems which have attracted devout souls.--His poetical sympathies are shown in the fact that one third of the selections are from the seventeenth century. Shakespeare is drawn on more largely than any other, no less than eighty-eight selections being made from him. The names of George Herbert, Herrick, Ben Jonson, and Milton frequently appear. Wordsworth appears forty-three times, and stands next to Shakespeare; while Burns, Byron, Scott, Tennyson, and Chaucer make up the list of favorites. Many little known pieces are included, and some whose merit is other than poetical.--This selection of poems is eminently that of a poet of keen intellectual tastes. I not popular in character, omitting many public favorites, and introducing very much which can never be acceptable to the general reader. The Preface is full of interest for its comments on many of the poems and poets appearing in these selections."

I will only add to Mr. Cooke's criticism these two remarks: First, that I have found it impossible to know under which of his divisions to look for many of the poems I was in search of; and as, in the earlier copies at least, there was no paged index where each author's pieces were collected together, one had to hunt up his fragments with no little loss of time and patience, under various heads, "imitating the careful search that Isis made for the mangled body of Osiris." The other remark is that each one of Emerson's American fellow-poets from whom he has quoted would gladly have spared almost any of the extracts from the poems of his brother-bards, if the editor would only have favored us with some specimens of his own poetry, with a single line of which he has not seen fit to indulge us.

In 1874 Emerson received the nomination by the independent party among the students of Glasgow University for the office of Lord Rector. He received five hundred votes against seven hundred for Disraeli, who was elected. He says in a letter to Dr. J. Hutchinson Sterling:--

"I count that vote as quite the fairest laurel that has ever fallen on me; and I cannot but feel deeply grateful to my young friends in the University, and to yourself, who have been my counsellor and my too partial advocate."

Mr. Cabot informs us in his Prefatory Note to "Letters and Social Aims,"

that the proof sheets of this volume, now forming the eighth of the collected works, showed even before the burning of his house and the illness which followed from the shock, that his loss of memory and of mental grasp was such as to make it unlikely that he would in any case have been able to accomplish what he had undertaken. Sentences, even whole pages, were repeated, and there was a want of order beyond what even he would have tolerated:--

"There is nothing here that he did not write, and he gave his full approval to whatever was done in the way of selection and arrangement; but I cannot say that he applied his mind very closely to the matter."

This volume contains eleven Essays, the subjects of which, as just enumerated, are very various. The longest and most elaborate paper is that ent.i.tled "Poetry and Imagination." I have room for little more than the enumeration of the different headings of this long Essay. By these it will be seen how wide a ground it covers. They are "Introductory;"

"Poetry;" "Imagination;" "Veracity;" "Creation;" "Melody, Rhythm, Form;"

"Bards and Trouveurs;" "Morals;" "Transcendency." Many thoughts with which we are familiar are reproduced, expanded, and ill.u.s.trated in this Essay. Unity in multiplicity, the symbolism of nature, and others of his leading ideas appear in new phrases, not unwelcome, for they look fresh in every restatement. It would be easy to select a score of pointed sayings, striking images, large generalizations. Some of these we find repeated in his verse. Thus:--

"Michael Angelo is largely filled with the Creator that made and makes men. How much of the original craft remains in him, and he a mortal man!"

And so in the well remembered lines of "The Problem":--

"Himself from G.o.d he could not free."

"He knows that he did not make his thought,--no, his thought made him, and made the sun and stars."

"Art might obey but not surpa.s.s.

The pa.s.sive Master lent his hand To the vast soul that o'er him planned."

Hope is at the bottom of every Essay of Emerson's as it was at the bottom of Pandora's box:--

"I never doubt the riches of nature, the gifts of the future, the immense wealth of the mind. O yes, poets we shall have, mythology, symbols, religion of our own.

--"Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song."

Under the t.i.tle "Social Aims" he gives some wise counsel concerning manners and conversation. One of these precepts will serve as a specimen--if we have met with it before it is none the worse for wear:--

"Shun the negative side. Never worry people with; your contritions, nor with dismal views of politics or society. Never name sickness; even if you could trust yourself on that perilous topic, beware of unmuzzling a valetudinarian, who will give you enough of it."