"Another lecture from Emerson--'Poetry, Religion, Love'--'superna
respicit amor.' His whole discourse was a storehouse of delights and
inspirations. There was a fine contribution from Goethe; a passage
where he bravely recounts his indebtedness to the great of all ages.
Varnhagen von Ense, Jacob Böhmen, Swedenborg, and the poets brought
their share.
"There was an interlude upon domestic life, 'where alone the true man
could be revealed,' which was full of beauty.
"He came in to-day to see ----. He flouts the idea of 'that preacher,
Horace Greeley,' being put up as candidate for president. 'If it had
been Charles Francis Adams, now, we should all have voted for him. To
be sure, it would be his father and his grandfather for whom we were
voting, but we should all believe in him.'
"We think this present course of lectures more satisfactory than the
last. One thing is certain, he flings his whole spirit into them. He
reads the poems he loves best in literature, and infuses into their
rendering the pure essence of his own poetic life. We can never forget
his reading of 'The Wind,' a Welsh poem by Taliesin--the very rush of
the elements was in it."
Emerson was perfectly natural and at ease in manner and speech during
these readings. He would sometimes bend his brows and shut his eyes,
endeavoring to recall a favorite passage, as if he were at his own
library table. One day, after searching thus in vain for a passage
from Ben Jonson, he said: "It is all the more provoking as I do not
doubt many a friend here might help me out with it."
When away from home on his lecture tours, Emerson did not fail to have
his share of disasters. He wrote from Albany, in 1865, to Mr. Fields:
--An unlucky accident drives me here to make a draft on you for fifty
dollars, which I hope will not annoy you. The truth is that I lost my
wallet--I fear to some pickpocket--in Fairhaven, Vermont, night before
last (some $70 or $80 in it), and had to borrow money of a Samaritan
lady to come here. I pray you do not whisper it to the swallows for
fear it should go to ----, and he should print it in "Fraser." I am
going instantly to the best book-shop to find some correspondent of
yours to make me good. I was to have read a lecture here last night,
but the train _walked_ all the way through the ice, sixty miles,
from six in the morning, and arrived here at _ten_ at night. I
hope still that Albany will entreat me on its knees to read to-night.
One other piece of bad news if you have not already learned it. Can
you not burn down the Boston Athenaeum to-night? for I learned by
chance that they have a duplicate of the "Liber Amoris." I hope for
great prosperity on my journey as the necessary recoil of such
adversities, and specially to pay my debts in twenty days. Yours, with
constant regard,