been noticed, and the frequent change from one to the other has now
become an established historical fact. Of this principle there is a
curious illustration in Emerson's political opinions. He was in theory a
pure democratist, but he would now and then make a remark which showed
that he also believed in the rule of the strong hand. In his prose
writings may be found two distinct lines of political thought emanating
from these opposite views. He wrote a poem on Cromwell, and an essay on
Napoleon, and evidently admired them both. In his "Boston Hymn" and in
several other poems he comes very close to socialism. In "Woodnotes" he
says:
"The lord is the peasant that was;
The peasant the lord that shall be,
The lord is the hay, the peasant the grass;
One dry, and one the living tree."
Democracy is limited in America by the conservative structure of our
government and the good sense of the community. During Jackson's
administration we came rather close to pure democracy, and nearly as
close also to absolute despotism. Emerson was far from knowing this, but
he felt that something was wrong. He wrote to Carlyle, "We have a most
unfit man for President." On another occasion he wrote, "Politics are
now in such a condition that the best principles are in one party, and
the best men in the other." He appears to have voted with the best men.
Again he would say, "If we can only once get the best man at the head of
affairs we should be only too glad to turn everything over to him."
Emerson, however, did not allow these theories to affect his practice.
He always voted the whig ticket till 1844, and after that the free-soil
and republican tickets.
It was the same with his doctrine of living according to nature. He
never thought of doing this himself, except so far as a sensible mode of
life and unaffected behavior may be considered so. He was the most
conventional man in Concord, and as scrupulous of etiquette as an
English clergyman. He was oftener seen with a silk-hat--what Mr. Howells
calls a cylinder-hat--than any other person in the town. In his later
years he declined to wear a wig, because it was not according to nature;
but neither had he formerly worn a beard, which was quite as little
according to nature.
In his earlier writings he celebrates the advantages of living in the
country, but at sixty he concludes that the city is after all the best,
if one has sufficient means,--especially for women, who require a
current of human life to keep their minds healthy and cheerful. This
reminds one of Thorwaldsen's four seasons; in which spring and summer
are represented by an out-of-door life, in autumn the corner of a house
appears, and winter is wholly within doors. We expect a certain change
of opinion in the course of years: it is the sign of a veracious
character. Neither is it inconsistent for a practical man to sometimes
deviate from the rules he has laid down for himself.
Emerson's real fault, if he may be said to have had one, was his
optimism. Because he had been born with genius and was otherwise
fortunate he thought every one else might succeed as easily as he had.
In this way he often did people great injustice. If they were
unfortunate he concluded that it must be their own fault. "Wherever
there is failure," he said, "there is some giddiness, some lack of
adaptation of means to ends." If he heard of anyone who could not obtain
work he would say there is always plenty to do for willing hands. Those
who were incapacitated by nature from earning their own living fared no
better. He thought there was something which every one could do better
than anybody else--which might possibly be true if there were as many
professions as individuals. When some one spoke of a young German poet,
whom it was thought but for his untimely death might have been the rival
of Schiller, he said, "Yes, but he died: that was against him."
This line of thought logically resulted also in a kind of pessimism. He
seemed at times to despise human nature. Somewhere about 1860 he wrote
to a friend, "There is not one man in twenty that is worth the ground he
stands on"; and speaking of Napoleon he affirms that, in the well-nigh
universal negligence and inefficiency of mankind, we cannot be too
thankful for this prompt and ready actor. No one who realizes the hard
and bitter struggle for daily bread with which three-fourths of the
human race are constantly occupied, would have written such a sentence.
The transition from optimism to pessimism is very much like that from
democracy to imperialism. [Footnote: The peculiar type of Emerson's
optimism is illustrated in his poem called "Sea Shore" where he makes a
fine catalogue of the gifts and advantages which the ocean brings to
mankind, but says nothing of the terrible destructive power of the sea.
He forgot that his old friend the Greek represented Neptune as even more
cruel than the god of war. Did this man of heroic nature lack the
courage to face tragedy?]
We regret to see him deciding the discovery of etherization in favor of
his brother-in-law, Dr. Jackson; a question which a Congressional
committee found itself unable to determine.
He had one trait of character which his biographers have not mentioned,
and which might pass by the name of incredulity. He was the most
difficult of men to persuade of any strange and remarkable event.
Neither did he take the least pains to conceal his disbelief; and when
you were telling him the living truth this was rather difficult to bear.
When we said that a woodpecker had been seen in Walden woods nearly as
large as a crow and quite as black, he shook his head and looked up at
the pine trees. That was not according to his idea of a woodpecker.
Neither did he like to hear anything which tended to prove the depravity
of human nature. Stories of fraud and corruption in commercial or
political life were not pleasant to his ears; and if the perpetrators
escaped punishment he was evidently much annoyed. He liked to tell the
truth better than he did to hear it.
When nearly sixty years of age both Emerson and Alcott fell in love with
a charming young school-teacher of the transcendental sort, and it is
rather pleasant to think that there was so much human nature still left
in those grave old philosophers.
He was the most famous American of his time; not so celebrated perhaps
in his own country as President Lincoln, but in foreign countries he
surpassed all others,--such is the deep impression which a great writer
makes on the minds of men. In Europe he was looked upon as the best
representative of our Western Hemisphere. Carlyle celebrated him in
England, and Grimm in Germany. The latter said, "There is no other
living writer to whom I feel that I owe so much."
He had no public receptions in foreign cities, but everywhere the finest
people united to honor him. On his second visit to England he complained
that his time was almost consumed in answering letters of invitation. An
English guest at the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa dinner said that when he
returned home he would be asked two questions,--if he had seen Niagara
Falls, and if he had met Emerson. He was a particular favorite with the
English nobility, and whenever we saw a glittering carriage rolling down
Concord turn-pike we felt sure it contained some earl or viscount who
was paying his compliments to the poet of the pines. Emerson liked to
entertain these distinguished visitors in his modest little parlor, but
he never slighted his old friends for them; for he lived the wisdom that
he taught, and the final virtue of this man was the religious humility
of his nature.
MATTHEW ARNOLD'S LECTURE.
During the earlier part of Emerson's career his religious philosophy met
with such decided opposition that his friends were, very properly, all
the more enthusiastic in his defence; and when the tide turned in his
favor, and his fame rose continually higher and higher, the enthusiasm
of his admirers reached a climax, and, like Webster before him, he
became a veritable subject of idolization. His opponents, finding the
current too strong for them, retreated into smooth water, waiting, like
a defeated political party, for a favorable change of the tide. When,
therefore, Matthew Arnold came to America in the autumn of 1883
expressly to lecture on Emerson, as a writer and thinker, there was
great expectation on both sides, and both were equally disappointed. His
friends who knew that he liked Emerson, thought he had found too much
fault with him, and the other party considered he had praised him too
highly.
Few men have ever done so much good in England as Matthew Arnold.
Somewhere about the year 1830 Goethe remarked, that Englishmen, as such,
were without reflection; party politics and the interests of trade
interfered to prevent it; but they were great as practical men. This
continued to be the order of the day, in spite of an occasional warning
from Macaulay, for thirty years more, until finally Matthew Arnold came
forward and said, "Do not be blinded any longer by the prejudices of
self-interest, but endeavor to see things as they actually are." This
was the continual chant of his life, repeated in a hundred different
forms. He made use of the popularity he had gained by his fine, classic
poetry, to teach his countrymen a lesson in culture. [Footnote: Lowell
also made an excellent point when he warned Englishmen, at the Coleridge
memorial, that if they were to regain the intellectual altitude of their
ancestors, they must give up the adoration of common-sense, and pay more
respect to imagination and ideality.]
Never did Demosthenes expose their faults to the Athenians more frankly
and fearlessly, and with such manliness that at the time of his death
there was no person in the British Islands more generally respected. On
a trial vote that was taken by a London newspaper for membership to a
proposed British Academy, Gladstone received the largest number of
ballots, Tennyson the next and Matthew Arnold came third. He was
considered the best literary critic in England, and if he had outlived
Tennyson he would have succeeded him as laureate. He showed a dignified
reserve in only publishing a very few books. Two small volumes of
poetry, his "Essays in Criticism", which has become a standard work, and
his American essays, are all that I know of. For all that, few writers
were more celebrated in his own time, and it may be said that he fully
deserved his monument in Westminster Abbey.
However, it must be admitted that as a critic he had certain
peculiarities. He was, perhaps, too sensitive and impressible; too
easily thrown off his guard by qualities in a writer for which he had an
aversion. He would not only mention them once, but again and again. He
ignored Schiller, who was at least one of the world's greatest
dramatists; he was dissatisfied with Tennyson and could not endure
Shelley at all. His attack on Francis Newman's translation of the
"Iliad" was so severe that he finally discovered the fact himself. His
preference for the classic style in literature was rather too decided;
for we must never forget that Shakespeare himself was chiefly romantic.
He liked poetry which was like his own, and seems to have unconsciously
judged other poets by that standard. He had no patience with idiomatic
writing like that of Carlyle or Jean Paul; and he made incessant warfare
on the subjective method. It is true that subjectivity may be called the
peculiar vice of the nineteenth century, and yet it is a vice like the
self-consciousness of the early Christians, that ought finally to end in
virtue. There are thousands of readers whose minds cannot be reached in
any other way.
Allowances must sometimes be made also for the physical condition of a
writer. Not always; for Carlyle wrote the greatest of dramatic histories
while he was suffering from dyspepsia in the most distressing manner.
However, I think in Matthew Arnold's case something may be conceded to
him. He came to lecture in America for a double purpose--to tell the
truth and to repair his fortunes. It was a sad story. His son had failed
in business; his father, of course, had endorsed his notes, and he found
himself at the threshold of old age as poor as in the beginning. Such a
shock is felt severely enough by tough, hard-fisted men of the world,
but to the tender sensibility of a poet it must have been a crushing
blow. There can be as little doubt that it brought on the malady that
abbreviated his life, as that it gave a melancholic tone to his thought
and filled his mind with gloomy forebodings.
The opening of his address was very beautiful. He recalls the impression
made upon him in his youth by the writing of Carlyle, Goethe, Emerson
and Francis Newman, and says:
"Forty years ago, when I was an undergraduate at Oxford, voices were in
the air which haunt my memory still. Happy the man who in that
susceptible season of youth hears such voices! they are a possession to
him forever. No such voices are there now. Oxford has more criticism
now, more knowledge, more light; but such voices as those of our youth
it has no longer. The name of Cardinal Newman is a great name to the
imagination still; his genius and his style are things of power..... A
greater voice still,--the greatest voice of the century,--came to us in
those youthful years through Carlyle: the voice of Goethe. To this
day,--such is the force of youthful associations,--I read his 'Wilhelm
Meister' with more pleasure in Carlyle's translation than in the
original. The large, liberal view of human life in 'Wilhelm Meister,'
how novel it was to the Englishman in those days! and it was salutary,
too, and educative for him, doubtless, as well as novel..... And besides
those voices, there came to us in that old Oxford time a voice also from
this side of the Atlantic,--a clear and pure voice, which for my ear, at
any rate, brought a strain as new, and moving, and unforgettable, as the
strain of Newman, or Carlyle, or Goethe.... He was your Newman, your man
of soul and genius visible to you in the flesh, speaking to your bodily
ears, a present object for your heart and imagination. That is surely
the most potent of all influences!"
I confess I enjoy these clear classic sentences so full of tenderness,
and yet with the latent fire of manhood in them, much better than
Emerson's weird, concentrated epigrams, wonderful as those sometimes
are. Comparatively speaking it is like the difference between a living
elm and oak timber. But the writer does not long maintain this elevated
tone. He soon becomes despondent, and his glorious sunrise, like that in
Shakespeare's sonnet, is lost to him again.
"For out alack, he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath veiled him from me now."
He remembers that Francis Newman is now Cardinal Newman; that Carlyle's
career had ended with his furious "Latter-day Pamphlets," and even in
Emerson he had found a certain kind of disappointment.
Yet there may be a deeper reason in this;--the reason that sometimes
underlies a coincidence. We too in early life were strengthened and
filled with enthusiasm by the earnest voice of Emerson, the trenchant
eloquence of Wendell Phillips, and the brilliant wit and penetrating
humor of Lowell; but the public activity of Emerson soon afterwards
ceased; Phillips became a socialist and ultimately a demagogue; while
Lowell changed his verses for foreign missions and after-dinner
speeches. There is a prevalent feeling that the nineteenth century,
which was ushered in to the sound of Napoleon's cannon and is now going
rather tamely out in a discussion of the laws of economics, has not more
than half accomplished the work that was assigned it. There is
everywhere among thinking men a feeling of distrust and half
disappointment. Lowell felt it here, George Eliot in England; and Herman
Grimm in Germany, a sanguine man, speaks of the deep-seated unrest which
almost drives us to despair.
As I turn from my desk to the morning's newspaper I find in it the
following extract from one of Emerson's earlier essays:
"Trust the time. What a fatal prodigality to condemn our age--we cannot
overvalue it--it is our all. As the wandering sea-bird which, crossing
the ocean, alights on some rock or islet to rest for a moment its wings,
and to look back on the wilderness of waves behind, and onward to the
wilderness of waters before--so stand we perched on this rock or shoal
of time, arrived out of the immensity of the past, bound and road-ready
to plunge into immensity again. Not for nothing it dawns out of
everlasting peace, this great discontent, this self-accusing reflection.
The very time sees for us, thinks for us. It is a microscope such as
philosophy never had. Insight is for us which was never for any, and
doubt not, the moment and the opportunity are divine. Wondering we come
into this lodge of watchmen, this office of espial; let us not retreat
astonished and ashamed. Let us go out of the hall door, and doubt never
but a good genius brought us in and will carry us out."
Now this is a prose poem, so beautiful that it seems hardly to need the
help of rhyme and metre to make it sing; and, as high art always must,
it covers a profound truth,--truth that lies at the foundation of all
tragedy,--namely, that we are obliged to trust time though time destroys
us; that we must trust our fellow men though they often deceive us; that
we must trust the ground we stand on though the earthquake devour us.
But Emerson does not say this, and I doubt if he anywhere says it. He
was too much of an optimist to perceive it. He wished all the stories he
read to turn out fortunately, and if they did not so much the worse for
them. Gladstone is the same kind of a man. He believes that the right
will always finally conquer; and so it may when the day of judgment
arrives and the affairs of the universe are at last wound up. It gives
him, as it did Emerson, a tremendous energy,--almost like fanaticism,
but it must in the nature of things affect his political judgment. The
lives of these two stretch nearly across the nineteenth century, and
their popularity is evidence that they represent their own time better
than most others.
What does Emerson intend by trusting the time? Does he mean the spirit
of the age? If we replace the word time by Divine Providence, the
passage becomes intelligible and notably significant; but if he meant
the prevailing spirit of the time, the earlier part of Emerson's career
is a perfect contradiction of it. If in his youth he had trusted the
prevailing tendency of his time he would have become a conservative
formalist, and never heard of as an independent thinker. It might even
be said that few men have ever trusted their own time less. Like
Gladstone, he was dissatisfied with the present and looked toward the
future. They both exerted themselves with all their might to
revolutionize public opinion and give to the future the stamp of their
own ideas. The old Hebrew prophets whom Emerson so much resembled did
not trust their own time, but were constantly complaining of it. So
Cicero cried out, "O tempora, O mores!" and Savonarola, and many others.
It would seem as if in this poetic rhapsody the writer had lost sight of
his subject almost immediately upon stating it, and had substituted
Providence for it in his mind. This was not unfrequently the case with
him, and may account for those vague aerial flights which his
commentators have referred to. Hawthorne says, "Mr. Emerson is a great
searcher for facts, but they seem to melt away and become unsubstantial
in his grasp." However, it was not facts but ideas that he was in quest
of.
The whole of Matthew Arnold's essay is thoughtful and interesting, but
it has one grand defect. After saying that Emerson's writings
constituted the most important prose work of the nineteenth century, he
fails to support the statement by sufficient arguments. If he had
developed this point to such a length as its importance deserved, and
then finished his discourse with a glowing tribute to Emerson as a man,
his audience might have found slight cause to complain of him; but after
simply stating the fact, he proceeded to a lengthy discussion of
Emerson's stoical philosophy, and finally branched off on a criticism of
Carlyle and the consideration of happiness as the true end of life. We
will only pause here to remark that the true end of life does not seem
to us to be happiness so much as development, and the evolution of such
characters as Emerson and Matthew Arnold.
His condemnation of Emerson's poetry was a still severer blow. Emerson's
friends had endured enough already on that score. Nothing was ever made
so much fun of by parodists and other small wits. In any social company,
if Emerson's poetry was mentioned somebody was sure to raise a laugh;
and there was nothing that could be done about it. It was hoped that
Matthew Arnold's prestige would put a final end to this nonsense, which
was nothing but a fashionable habit; but he added the weight of his
position as professor of literature to the other side of the scale. He
praised certain portions very highly, but averred that these were
exceptional, and concluded with what seems to be a "reductio ad
absurdum," namely, that Longfellow's poem of "The Bridge" or Whittier's
"School Days" was worth the whole body of Emerson's verse. As these were
anything but the best of Longfellow and Whittier it seemed rather
inconsistent in Matthew Arnold to have praised Emerson's poetry at all;
and this was the more surprising after his courageous defence of
Wadsworth a short time before. Those who like Emerson's poetry usually
like Wordsworth's and _vice versa_.
But Emerson's poetry is a peculiar subject. Carlyle and Lowell, both
eminent critics, did not condemn it, but at the same time they were slow
to praise it. Dr. F. H. Hedge, who probably knew more about literature
than either of them, considered it poetry of a very high order, and Rev.
William Furness of Philadelphia, when some one spoke slightingly of
Emerson as a poet, exclaimed, "He is heaven high above our other poets!"
In many obituary notices at the time of his death, he was mentioned as
being easily the first of American poets. Professor Tyndall has a great
admiration for his poetry; and so has another professor we know of whom
we will not mention, but who is an equally good chemist. Dr. O. W.
Holmes' life of Emerson was dreaded by many for fear of the position he
might assume on this question, but to the general surprise of the
public, he took strong grounds in favor of it; so that since that time,
whenever people laugh at Emerson's poetry it is only necessary to ask
them if they have read Dr. Holmes' biography of him.
Immediately after the lecture, a lively discussion began about it in the
newspapers, in which leading writers, scholars and professors took an
active part. How much soever they might disagree in regard to Emerson,
they all united in a disapproval of the lecturer's estimate of him.
Matthew Arnold did not seem to have a partisan in the country. The
discussion was renewed a year later when his book of discourses in
America was published, and then David A. Wasson wrote the following
letter which was published in the "Christian Register":
ARNOLD ON EMERSON.