conjecture from the rapturous praises bestowed on him by his friends,
even during his lifetime. A friend of his who had watched Emerson and
his work and his ever-increasing influence, declares without hesitation
that “the American nation is more indebted to his teaching than to any
other person who has spoken or written on his themes during the last
twenty years.” He calls his genius “the measure and present expansion of
the American mind.” And his influence was not confined to the American
mind. I have watched it growing in England. I still remember the time
when even experienced literary judges spoke of his essays as mere
declamations, as poetical rhapsodies, as poor imitations of Carlyle.
Then gradually one man after another found something in Emerson which
was not to be found in Carlyle, particularly his loving heart, his
tolerant spirit, his comprehensive sympathy with all that was or was
meant to be good and true, even though to his own mind it was neither
the one nor the other.
After a time some more searching critics were amazed at sentences which
spoke volumes, and showed that Emerson, though he had never written a
systematic treatise on philosophy, stood on a firm foundation of the
accumulated philosophic thought of centuries. Let us take such a
sentence as “_Generalisation is always a new influx of divinity into the
mind—hence the thrill that attends_.” To the ordinary reader such a
sentence can convey very little; it might seem, in fact, a mere
exaggeration. But to those who know the long history of thought
connected with the question of the origin of conceptual thought as the
result of ceaseless generalisation, Emerson’s words convey the outcome
of profound thought. They show that he had recognised in general ideas,
which are to us merely the result of a never-ceasing synthesis, the
original thoughts or logoi underlying the immense variety of created
things; that he had traced them back to their only possible source, the
Divine Mind, and that he saw how the human mind, by rising from
particulars to the general, was in reality approaching the source of
those divine thoughts, and thus becoming conscious, as it were, of the
influx of divinity. Other philosophers have expressed similar thoughts
by saying that induction is the light that leads us up, deduction the
light that leads us down. Mill thought that generalisation is a mere
process of mother-wit, of the shrewd and untaught intelligence; and
that, from one narrow point of view, it is so, has been fully proved
since by an analysis of language. Every word is a generalisation, and
contains in itself a general idea, the so-called root. These first
generalisations are, no doubt, at first the work of mother-wit and
untaught intelligence only, and hence the necessity of constantly
correcting them, whether by experience or by philosophy. But these words
are nevertheless the foundation of all later thought, and if they have
not reached as yet the fulness of the Divine Logoi, they represent at
least the advancing steps by which alone the human mind could reach, and
will reach at last, the ideas of the Divine Mind.
Thus one pregnant sentence of Emerson’s shows, when we examine it more
closely, that he had seen deeper into the mysteries of nature, and of
the human mind, than thousands of philosophers, call them evolutionists
(realists) or nominalists. Evolutionists imagine that they have
explained everything that requires explanation in nature if they have
shown a more or less continuous development from the moneres to man,
from the thrills of the moneres to the thoughts of man. Nominalists
again think that by ascending from the single to the general, and by
comprehending the single under a general name, they have solved all the
questions involved in nature, that is, in our comprehension of nature.
They never seem to remember that there was a time when all that we call
either single or general, but particularly all that is general, had for
the first time to be conceived or created. Before there was a single
tree, some one must have thought the tree or treehood. Before there was
a single ape, or a single man, some one must have thought that apehood
or that manhood which we see realised in every ape and in every man,
unless we can bring ourselves to believe in a thoughtless world. If that
first thought was the concept of a mere moneres, still in that thought
there must have been the distant perspective of ape or man, and it is
that first thought alone which to the present day keeps the ape an ape,
and a man a man. Divine is hardly a name good enough for that first
Thinker of Thoughts. Still, it is that Divinity which Emerson meant when
he said that generalisation is always a new influx of divinity into the
mind because it reveals to the mind the first thoughts, the Divine
Logoi, of the universe. The thrill of which he speaks is the thrill
arising from the nearness of the Divine, the sense of the presence of
those Divine Logoi, or that Divine Logos, which in the beginning was
with God, and without which not anything was made that was made.
Evolution can never be more than the second act; the first act is the
Volition or the Thought of the universe, unless we hold that there can
be effect without a cause, or a Kosmos without a Logos.
Such utterances, lost almost in the exuberance of Emerson’s thoughts,
mark the distinction between a thoughtful and a shallow writer, between
a scarred veteran and a smooth recruit. They will give permanence to
Emerson’s influence both at home and abroad, and place him in the ranks
of those who have not lived or thought in vain. When he left my house, I
knew, of course, that we should never meet again in this life, but I
felt that I had gained something that could never be taken from me.
Another eminent American who often honoured my quiet home at Oxford was
James Russell Lowell, for a time United States Minister in England. He
was a Professor and at the same time a politician and a man of the
world. Few essays are so brimful of interesting facts and original
reflections as his essays entitled “Among my Books.” His “Biglow
Papers,” which made him one of the leading men in the United States,
appeal naturally to American rather than to Cosmopolitan readers. But in
society he was at home in England as much as in America, in Spain as
well as in Holland.
I came to know him first as a sparkling correspondent, and then as a
delightful friend.
Here is the letter which began our intimacy:—
LEGACION DE NOS ESTADOS UNIDOS
DE AMERICA EN ESPANA.
_18th Jan. 1880._
I read with great satisfaction what you wrote about _jade_.[12] One is
tempted to cry out, with Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, “How now, ye pampered
jades of Asia!” One thing in the discussion has struck me a good deal,
and that is, the crude notion which intelligent men have of the
migration of tribes. I think most men’s conception of distance is very
much a creature of maps—which make Crim Tartary and England not more
than a foot apart, so that the feat of the old rhyme—“to dance out of
Ireland into France,” looks easy. They seem to think that the shifting
of habitation was accomplished like a modern journey by rail, and that
the emigrants wouldn’t need tools by the way or would buy them at the
nearest shop after their arrival. There is nothing the ignorant and
the poor cling to so tenaciously as their familiar household utensils.
Incredible things are brought every day to America in the luggage of
emigrants—things often most cumbrous to carry and utterly useless in
the new home. Families that went from our seaboard to the West a
century ago, through an almost impenetrable wilderness, carried with
them all their domestic pots and pans—even those, I should be willing
to wager, that needed the tinker. I remember very well the starting of
an expedition from my native town of Cambridge in 1831, for Oregon,
under the lead of a captain of great energy and resource. They started
in waggons ingeniously contrived so as to be taken to pieces, the body
forming a boat for crossing rivers. They carried everything they could
think of with them, and got safely to the other side of the continent,
as hard a job, I fancy, as our Aryan ancestors had to do. There is
hardly a family of English descent in New England that doesn’t
cherish, as an heirloom, something brought over by the first ancestors
two hundred and fifty years ago. And besides the motive of utility
there is that also of sentiment—particularly strong in the case of an
old tool.
Faithfully yours, J. R. LOWELL.
Lowell’s conversation was inexhaustible, his information astonishing.
Pleasant as he was, even as an antagonist, he would occasionally lose
his temper and use very emphatic language. I was once sitting next to
him when I heard him stagger his neighbour, a young lady, by bursting
out with: “But, madam, I do not accept your major premiss!”
Poor thing, she evidently was not accustomed to such language, and not
acquainted with that terrible term. She collapsed, evidently quite at a
loss as to what gift on her part Mr. Lowell declined to accept.
Sometimes even the most harmless remark about America would call forth
very sharp replies from him. Everybody knows that the salaries paid by
America to her diplomatic staff are insufficient, and no one knew it
better than he himself. But when the remark was made in his presence
that the United States treated their diplomatic representatives
stingily, he fired up, and discoursed most eloquently on the advantages
of high thoughts and humble living. His cleverness and readiness in
writing occasional verses have become proverbial, and I am glad to be
able to add two more to the many _jeux d’esprit_ of this brilliant and
amiable guest.
Had I all tongues Max Müller knows,
I could not with them altogether
Tell half the debt a stranger owes
Who Oxford sees in pleasant weather.
The halls, the gardens, and the quads,
There’s nought can match them on this planet,
Smiled on by all the partial gods
Since Alfred (if ’twas he) began it;
But more than all the welcomes warm,
Thrown thick as lavish hands could toss ’em,
Why, they’d have wooed in winter-storm
One’s very umbrella-stick to blossom!
Bring me a cup of All Souls’ ale,
Better than e’er was bought with siller,
To drink (Oh, may the vow prevail)
The health of Max[13] and Mrs. Müller!
Abundant as was his wit in the true sense of that word, his kindness was
equally so. After he had written the above verses for my wife, my young
daughter Beatrice (now Mrs. Colyer Fergusson) asked him, as young ladies
are wont to do, for a few lines for herself. He at once resumed his pen
and wrote:—
O’er the wet sands an insect crept
Ages ere man on earth was known—
And patient Time, while Nature slept,
The slender tracing turned to stone.
’Twas the first autograph: and ours?
Prithee, how much of prose or song,
In league with the Creative powers,
Shall ’scape Oblivion’s broom so long?
In great haste,
Faithfully yours,
J. R. LOWELL.
_24th June, 1886._
I lost the pleasure of shaking hands with Longfellow during his stay in
England. Though I have been more of a fixture at Oxford than most
professors, I was away during the vacation when he paid his visit to our
University, and thus lost seeing a poet to whom I felt strongly
attracted, not only by the general spirit of his poetry, which was
steeped in German thought, but as the translator of several of my
father’s poems.
I was more fortunate with Dr. Wendell Holmes. His arrival in England had
been proclaimed beforehand, and one naturally remained at home in order
to be allowed to receive him. His hundred days in England were one
uninterrupted triumphal progress. When he arrived at Liverpool he found
about three hundred invitations waiting for him. Though he was
accompanied by a most active and efficient daughter, he had at once to
engage a secretary to answer this deluge of letters. And though he was
past eighty, he never spared himself, and was always ready to see and to
be seen. He was not only an old, but a ripe and mellow man.
There was no subject on which one could touch which was not familiar to
the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. His thoughts and his words were
ready, and one felt that it was not for the first time that the subject
had been carefully thought out and talked out by him. That he should
have been able to stand all the fatigue of his journey and the constant
claims on his ready wit seemed to me marvellous. I had the pleasure of
showing him the old buildings of Oxford. He seemed to know them all, and
had something to ask and to say about every one.
When we came to Magdalen College, he wanted to see and to measure the
elms. He was very proud of some elms in America, and he had actually
brought some string with which he had measured the largest tree he knew
in his own country. He proceeded to measure one of our finest elms in
Magdalen College, and when he found that it was larger than his American
giant, he stood before it admiring it, without a single word of envy or
disappointment.
I had, however, a great fright while he was staying at our house. He had
evidently done too much, and after our first dinner party he had
feverish shivering fits, and the doctor whom I sent for declared at once
that he must keep perfectly quiet in bed, and attend no more parties of
any kind. This was a great disappointment to myself and to many of my
friends. But at his time of life the doctor’s warning could not be
disregarded, and I had, at all events, the satisfaction of sending him
off to Cambridge safe and sound. I had him several days quite to myself,
and there were few subjects which we did not discuss. We mostly agreed,
but even where we did not, it was a real pleasure to differ from him. We
discussed the greatest and the smallest questions, and on every one he
had some wise and telling remarks to pour out. I remember one long
conversation while we were sitting in an old wainscoted room at All
Souls’, ornamented with the arms of former fellows. It had been at first
the library of the college, then one of the fellows’ rooms, and lastly a
lecture-room. We were deep in the old question of the true relation
between the Divine and the Human in man, and here again, as on all other
questions, everything seemed to be clear and evident to his mind.
Perhaps I ought not to repeat what he said to me when we parted: “I have
had much talk with people in England; with you I have had a real
conversation.” We understood each other, and wondered how it was that
men so often misunderstood one another. I told him that it was the
badness of our language, he thought it was the badness of our tempers.
Perhaps we were both right. With him again good-bye was good-bye for
life, and at such moments one wonders indeed how kindred souls became
separated, and one feels startled and repelled at the thought that, such
as they were on earth, they can never meet again. And yet there is
continuity in the world, there is no flaw, no break anywhere, and what
has been will surely be again, though how it will be we cannot know, and
if only we trust in the Wisdom that pervades and overshadows the whole
Universe, we need not know.
Were I to write down my more or less casual meetings with men of
literary eminence, I should have much more to say, much that was of deep
interest and value to myself, but would hardly be of interest to others.
I felt greatly flattered, for instance, when years ago Macaulay invited
me to see him at the Albany, and to discuss with him the new regulations
for the Indian Civil Service. This must have been in about 1854. I was
quite a young and unknown man at the time, but I had already made his
acquaintance at Bunsen’s house, where he had been asked to meet Herr von
Radowitz, for a short time Prime Minister in Prussia, and the most
famous talker in Germany. It was indeed a tournament to watch, but as it
was in English, which Radowitz spoke well, yet not well enough for such
a contest, Macaulay carried the day, though Radowitz excelled in
repartee, in anecdotes, and in a certain elegance more telling in French
than in English.
I went to call on Macaulay in London, well provided as I thought with
facts and arguments in support of the necessity of Oriental studies,
which I knew he had always discouraged, in the preparation and
examination of candidates for the Indian Civil Service. He began by
telling me that he knew nothing of Indian languages and literature, and
that he wanted to know all I had to say on the real advantages to be
derived by young civilians from a study of Sanskrit. I had already
published several letters in _The Times_ on the subject, and had carried
on a long controversy with Sir Charles Trevelyan, afterwards published
in a pamphlet, entitled “Correspondence relating to the Establishment of
an Oriental College in London.”
Macaulay, after sitting down, asked me a number of questions, but before
I had time to answer any one of them, he began to relate his own
experiences in India, dilating on the difference between a scholar and a
man of business, giving a full account of his controversy, while in
India, with men like Professor Wilson and others, who maintained that
English would never become the language of India, expressing his own
strong conviction to the contrary, and relating a number of anecdotes,
showing that the natives learnt English far more easily than the English
could ever learn Hindustani or Sanskrit. Then he branched off into some
disparaging remarks about Sanskrit literature, particularly about their
legal literature, entering minutely into the question of what authority
could be assigned to the Laws of Manu, and of what possible use they
could be in determining lawsuits between natives, ending up with the
usual diatribes about the untruthfulness of the natives of India, and
their untrustworthiness as witnesses in a court of law.
This went on for nearly an hour and was very pleasant to listen to, but
most disappointing to a young man who had come well primed with facts to
meet all these arguments, and who tried in vain to find a chance to put
in a single word. At the end of this so-called conversation Macaulay
thanked me for the useful information I had given him, and I went back
to Oxford a sadder and I hope a wiser man. What I had chiefly wished to
impress on him was that Haileybury should not be suppressed, but should
be improved, should not be ended, but mended. But it was easier and more
popular to suppress it, and suppressed it was, so that in England, which
has the largest Oriental Empire in the world, there is now not a single
school or seminary for the teaching of Oriental languages, whereas
France, Italy, Prussia, Austria and Russia have all found it expedient
to have such establishments and to support them by liberal grants.
Everybody now begins to see that these governments are reaping their
rewards, but in England the old argument remains the same: “We can
always find interpreters if we pay them well, and if we only speak loud
enough the natives never fail to understand what we mean.”
This is no doubt much the same as what Mr. Layard meant when he
explained to me how he managed to keep his diggers in order: “I speak
English to them; if they do not understand I shout at them,” he said;
“if they won’t obey, I knock them down; and if they show fight, I shoot
them down.” No doubt this was an exaggeration, but it certainly does not
prove the uselessness of a thorough knowledge of Oriental languages for
those who are sent to the East to govern millions, and not to shout at
them, or to knock them down.
Another true friend of mine was Arthur Helps, the author of “Friends in
Council,” and for a long time clerk to the Privy Council. He often paid
us a visit on his way to or from Blenheim, where he used to stay with
the then Duke of Marlborough. He had a very high opinion of the Duke’s
ability as President of the Council, and considered his personal
influence most important. “At the time of a change of Ministry, you
should see the members of the Cabinet,” he said. “People imagine they
are miserable and disheartened. The fact is they are like a pack of
schoolboys going home for their holidays, and scrambling out of the
Council Chamber as fast as ever they can.”
Once when he came to stay with us on his return from Blenheim, he told
me how the Duke had left the day before for London, and that on that
very day the emu had laid an egg. The Duke had taken the greatest
interest in his emus and had long looked forward to this event. A
telegram was sent to the Duke, which, when shown to Mr. Helps, ran as
follows: “The emu has laid an egg, and, in the absence of your Grace, we
have taken the largest goose we could find to hatch it.”
Helps was a most sensible and thoroughly honest man; yet the last years
of his life were dreadfully embittered by some ill-advised speculations
of his which brought severe losses not only on himself, but, what he
felt far more keenly, on several of his friends whom he had induced to
share in his undertaking.
I missed the pleasure of knowing Lord Lytton. But this illustrious
writer, Lord Lytton, or in earlier days, Sir Lytton Bulwer Lytton, whose
“Last Days of Pompeii” had been the delight of my youth, paid me a great
and quite undeserved compliment by dedicating to me one of his last, if
not his very last work, “The Coming Race,” 1871. The book was published
anonymously, and as it was dedicated to me, I tried very hard to
discover the author of it, but in vain. It was only after his death that
Lord Lytton’s authorship became known. The book itself could hardly be
called a novel, nor was there anything very striking or sensational in
it. Yet, to the honour of the English public be it said, it was
discovered at once that it could not be the work of an ordinary writer.
It went through edition after edition, and, to the great delight of the
anonymous author, was received with universal applause. _Vril_ was the
name given by the author to the fluid which in the hands of a _Vrilya_
was raised into the mightiest agency over all forms of matter, animate
or inanimate. It destroyed like the flash of lightning, yet, differently
applied, it replenished or invigorated life. With it a way could be rent
through the most solid substances, and from it a light was extracted,
steadier, softer, and healthier than from all other inflammable
materials. The fire lodged in the hollow of a reed, and directed by the
hand of a child, could shatter the strongest fortress, or cleave its
burning way from the van to the rear of an embattled host. All this
reads almost like a prophecy of the electric fluid in its application to
engines of war and engines of peace, but its name now survives chiefly
in the powerful and invigorating fluid extracted from beef, and
advertised on every wall as _Bo-vril_—unless I am quite mistaken in my
etymology.
There are many more of the most eminent men in England from whom I have
received kindness, and with whom, even as a young man, I had some
interesting intercourse. But I become more and more doubtful whether I
can trust my memory, and whether, in writing down my recollections, I am
doing my friends full justice. When I gave my first lectures at the
Royal Institution (in 1861), I came into frequent contact with Faraday.
He was then what I thought an old man, and though it was quite beyond my
power to estimate his greatness, he was one of those men who at once
gave one the impression that they are really great. There was dignity
and composure in his conversation, and at the same time a kindly welcome
in his dark bright eyes which made one feel at home with him from the
very first meeting. Though the subject I had to lecture on was quite new
to him, he took the liveliest interest in my lectures. I told him how
disappointed his assistant had been—I believe his name was Anderson or
Robertson—when he offered me his services for my lectures, and I had to
tell him that I wanted nothing, no gas, no light, no magnets, that there
would be no experiments, not even diagrams to pull up and down. “O yes,”
said Faraday, “I know how he tells his friends that he does all the hard
work at my lectures, all the experiments, but that he lets me do the
talking.” He seemed much amused when I told him that I had had just the
same experience, and that one of my compositors was fully convinced that
he was really responsible for my books, and told his fellow-compositors
that I could not have brought out a single book without him.