reference to churches or churchmen, he was a person of a rare, tender
and absolute religion, a person incapable of any profanation, by act
or by thought. Of course, the same isolation which belonged to his
original thinking and living detached him from the social religious
forms. This is neither to be censured nor regretted. Aristotle long ago
explained it when he said, “One who surpasses his fellow-citizens in
virtue is no longer a part of the city. Their law is not for him, since
he is a law to himself.”
Thoreau was sincerity itself, and might fortify the convictions of
prophets in the ethical laws by his holy living. It was an affirmative
experience which refused to be set aside. A truth-speaker he, capable
of the most deep and strict conversation; a physician to the wounds
of any soul; a friend, knowing not only the secret of friendship, but
almost worshipped by those few persons who resorted to him as their
confessor and prophet, and knew the deep value of his mind and great
heart. He thought that without religion or devotion of some kind
nothing great was ever accomplished: and he thought that the bigoted
sectarian had better bear this in mind.
His virtues, of course, sometimes ran into extremes. It was easy to
trace to the inexorable demand on all for exact truth that austerity
which made this willing hermit more solitary even than he wished.
Himself of a perfect probity, he required not less of others. He
had a disgust at crime, and no worldly success would cover it. He
detected paltering as readily in dignified and prosperous persons as
in beggars, and with equal scorn. Such dangerous frankness was in his
dealing that his admirers called him “that terrible Thoreau,” as if
he spoke when silent, and was still present when he had departed. I
think the severity of his ideal interfered to deprive him of a healthy
sufficiency of human society.
The habit of a realist to find things the reverse of their appearance
inclined him to put every statement in a paradox. A certain habit of
antagonism defaced his earlier writings,--a trick of rhetoric not quite
outgrown in his later, of substituting for the obvious word and thought
its diametrical opposite. He praised wild mountains and winter forests
for their domestic air, in snow and ice he would find sultriness, and
commended the wilderness for resembling Rome and Paris. “It was so dry,
that you might call it wet.”
The tendency to magnify the moment, to read all the laws of Nature in
the one object or one combination under your eye, is of course comic
to those who do not share the philosopher’s perception of identity.
To him there was no such thing as size. The pond was a small ocean;
the Atlantic, a large Walden Pond. He referred every minute fact
to cosmical laws. Though he meant to be just, he seemed haunted by
a certain chronic assumption that the science of the day pretended
completeness, and he had just found out that the _savans_ had
neglected to discriminate a particular botanical variety, had failed to
describe the seeds or count the sepals. “That is to say,” we replied,
“the blockheads were not born in Concord; but who said they were? It
was their unspeakable misfortune to be born in London, or Paris, or
Rome; but, poor fellows, they did what they could, considering that
they never saw Bateman’s Pond, or Nine-Acre Corner, or Becky Stow’s
Swamp; besides, what were you sent into the world for, but to add this
observation?”
Had his genius been only contemplative, he had been fitted to his life,
but with his energy and practical ability he seemed born for great
enterprise and for command; and I so much regret the loss of his rare
powers of action, that I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he
had no ambition. Wanting this, instead of engineering for all America,
he was the captain of a huckleberry-party. Pounding beans is good to
the end of pounding empires one of these days; but if, at the end of
years, it is still only beans!
But these foibles, real or apparent, were fast vanishing in the
incessant growth of a spirit so robust and wise, and which effaced its
defeats with new triumphs. His study of Nature was a perpetual ornament
to him, and inspired his friends with curiosity to see the world
through his eyes, and to hear his adventures. They possessed every kind
of interest.
He had many elegancies of his own, whilst he scoffed at conventional
elegance. Thus, he could not bear to hear the sound of his own steps,
the grit of gravel; and therefore never willingly walked in the road,
but in the grass, on mountains and in woods. His senses were acute,
and he remarked that by night every dwelling-house gives out bad
air, like a slaughter-house. He liked the pure fragrance of melilot.
He honored certain plants with special regard, and, over all, the
pond-lily,--then, the gentian, and the _Mikania scandens_, and
“life-everlasting,” and a bass-tree which he visited every year when it
bloomed, in the middle of July. He thought the scent a more oracular
inquisition than the sight,--more oracular and trustworthy. The scent,
of course, reveals what is concealed from the other senses. By it he
detected earthiness. He delighted in echoes, and said they were almost
the only kind of kindred voices that he heard. He loved Nature so well,
was so happy in her solitude, that he became very jealous of cities and
the sad work which their refinements and artifices made with man and
his dwelling. The axe was always destroying his forest. “Thank God,”
he said, “they cannot cut down the clouds!” “All kinds of figures are
drawn on the blue ground with this fibrous white paint.”
I subjoin a few sentences taken from his unpublished manuscripts, not
only as records of his thought and feeling, but for their power of
description and literary excellence:--
“Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout
in the milk.”
“The chub is a soft fish, and tastes like boiled brown paper salted.”
“The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon,
or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length the
middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them.”
“The locust z-ing.”
“Devil’s-needles zigzagging along the Nut-Meadow brook.”
“Sugar is not so sweet to the palate as sound to the healthy ear.”
“I put on some hemlock-boughs, and the rich salt crackling of their
leaves was like mustard to the ear, the crackling of uncountable
regiments. Dead trees love the fire.”
“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.”
“The tanager flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the
leaves.”
“If I wish for a horse-hair for my compass-sight I must go to the
stable; but the hair-bird, with her sharp eyes, goes to the road.”
“Immortal water, alive even to the superficies.”
“Fire is the most tolerable third party.”
“Nature made ferns for pure leaves, to show what she could do in that
line.”
“No tree has so fair a bole and so handsome an instep as the beech.”
“How did these beautiful rainbow-tints get into the shell of the
fresh-water clam, buried in the mud at the bottom of our dark river?”
“Hard are the times when the infant’s shoes are second-foot.”
“We are strictly confined to our men to whom we give liberty.”
“Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be
popular with God himself.”
“Of what significance the things you can forget? A little thought is
sexton to all the world.”
“How can we expect a harvest of thought who have not had a seed-time of
character?”
“Only he can be trusted with gifts who can present a face of bronze to
expectations.”
“I ask to be melted. You can only ask of the metals that they be tender
to the fire that melts them. To nought else can they be tender.”
There is a flower known to botanists, one of the same genus with our
summer plant called “Life-Everlasting,” a _Gnaphalium_ like that,
which grows on the most inaccessible cliffs of the Tyrolese mountains,
where the chamois dare hardly venture, and which the hunter, tempted by
its beauty, and by his love (for it is immensely valued by the Swiss
maidens), climbs the cliffs to gather, and is sometimes found dead at
the foot, with the flower in his hand. It is called by botanists the
_Gnaphalium leontopodium_, but by the Swiss _Edelweisse_,
which signifies _Noble Purity_. Thoreau seemed to me living in the
hope to gather this plant, which belonged to him of right. The scale
on which his studies proceeded was so large as to require longevity,
and we were the less prepared for his sudden disappearance. The country
knows not yet, or in the least part, how great a son it has lost. It
seems an injury that he should leave in the midst his broken task which
none else can finish, a kind of indignity to so noble a soul that he
should depart out of Nature before yet he has been really shown to
his peers for what he is. But he, at least, is content. His soul was
made for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted the
capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowledge, wherever there
is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 15: Part of this paper was the Address delivered by Mr.
Emerson at the funeral of Mr. Thoreau, in May, 1862. In the following
summer it was enlarged and printed in the “Atlantic Monthly” in its
present form.]
[Footnote 16: _Walden_: p. 20.]
CARLYLE.
HOLD with the Maker, not the Made,
Sit with the Cause, or grim or glad.
CARLYLE.[17]
THOMAS CARLYLE is an immense talker, as extraordinary in his
conversation as in his writing,--I think even more so.
He is not mainly a scholar, like the most of my acquaintances, but
a practical Scotchman, such as you would find in any saddler’s or
iron-dealer’s shop, and then only accidentally and by a surprising
addition, the admirable scholar and writer he is. If you would know
precisely how he talks, just suppose Hugh Whelan (the gardener) had
found leisure enough in addition to all his daily work to read Plato
and Shakspeare, Augustine and Calvin, and, remaining Hugh Whelan all
the time, should talk scornfully of all this nonsense of books that
he had been bothered with, and you shall have just the tone and talk
and laughter of Carlyle. I called him a trip-hammer with “an Æolian
attachment.” He has, too, the strong religious tinge you sometimes
find in burly people. That, and all his qualities, have a certain
virulence, coupled though it be in his case with the utmost impatience
of Christendom and Jewdom and all existing presentments of the good
old story. He talks like a very unhappy man,--profoundly solitary,
displeased and hindered by all men and things about him, and, biding
his time, meditating how to undermine and explode the whole world of
nonsense which torments him. He is obviously greatly respected by all
sorts of people, understands his own value quite as well as Webster, of
whom his behavior sometimes reminds me, and can see society on his own
terms.
And, though no mortal in America could pretend to talk with Carlyle,
who is also as remarkable in England as the Tower of London, yet
neither would he in any manner satisfy us (Americans), or begin to
answer the questions which we ask. He is a very national figure, and
would by no means bear transplantation. They keep Carlyle as a sort of
portable cathedral-bell, which they like to produce in companies where
he is unknown, and set a-swinging, to the surprise and consternation
of all persons,--bishops, courtiers, scholars, writers,--and, as in
companies here (in England) no man is named or introduced, great is
the effect and great the inquiry. Forster of Rawdon described to me
a dinner at the _table d’hôte_ of some provincial hotel where
he carried Carlyle, and where an Irish canon had uttered something.
Carlyle began to talk, first to the waiters, and then to the walls, and
then, lastly, unmistakably to the priest, in a manner that frightened
the whole company.
Young men, especially those holding liberal opinions, press to see
him, but it strikes me like being hot to see the mathematical or
Greek professor before they have got their lesson. It needs something
more than a clean shirt and reading German to visit him. He treats
them with contempt; they profess freedom and he stands for slavery;
they praise republics and he likes the Russian Czar; they admire
Cobden and free trade and he is a protectionist in political economy;
they will eat vegetables and drink water, and he is a Scotchman who
thinks English national character has a pure enthusiasm for beef
and mutton,--describes with gusto the crowds of people who gaze at
the sirloins in the dealer’s shop-window, and even likes the Scotch
night-cap; they praise moral suasion, he goes for murder, money,
capital punishment, and other pretty abominations of English law. They
wish freedom of the press, and he thinks the first thing he would do,
if he got into Parliament, would be to turn out the reporters, and stop
all manner of mischievous speaking to Buncombe, and wind-bags. “In the
Long Parliament,” he says, “the only great Parliament, they sat secret
and silent, grave as an ecumenical council, and I know not what they
would have done to anybody that had got in there and attempted to tell
out of doors what they did.” They go for free institutions, for letting
things alone, and only giving opportunity and motive to every man;
he for a stringent government, that shows people what they must do,
and makes them do it. “Here,” he says, “the Parliament gathers up six
millions of pounds every year to give to the poor, and yet the people
starve. I think if they would give it to me, to provide the poor with
labor, and with authority to make them work or shoot them,--and I to be
hanged if I did not do it,--I could find them in plenty of Indian meal.”
He throws himself readily on the other side. If you urge free trade, he
remembers that every laborer is a monopolist. The navigation laws of
England made its commerce. “St. John was insulted by the Dutch; he came
home, got the law passed that foreign vessels should pay high fees, and
it cut the throat of the Dutch, and made the English trade.” If you
boast of the growth of the country, and show him the wonderful results
of the census, he finds nothing so depressing as the sight of a great
mob. He saw once, as he told me, three or four miles of human beings,
and fancied that “the airth was some great cheese, and these were
mites.” If a tory takes heart at his hatred of stump-oratory and model
republics, he replies, “Yes, the idea of a pig-headed soldier who will
obey orders, and fire on his own father at the command of his officer,
is a great comfort to the aristocratic mind.” It is not so much that
Carlyle cares for this or that dogma, as that he likes genuineness (the
source of all strength) in his companions.
If a scholar goes into a camp of lumbermen or a gang of riggers,
those men will quickly detect any fault of character. Nothing will
pass with them but what is real and sound. So this man is a hammer
that crushes mediocrity and retention. He detects weakness on the
instant, and touches it. He has a vivacious, aggressive temperament,
and unimpressionable. The literary, the fashionable, the political man,
each fresh from triumphs in his own sphere, comes eagerly to see this
man, whose fun they have heartily enjoyed, sure of a welcome, and are
struck with despair at the first onset. His firm, victorious, scoffing
vituperation strikes them with chill and hesitation. His talk often
reminds you of what was said of Johnson: “If his pistol missed fire he
would knock you down with the butt-end.”
Mere intellectual partisanship wearies him; he detects in an instant
if a man stands for any cause to which he is not born and organically
committed. A natural defender of anything, a lover who will live and
die for that which he speaks for, and who does not care for him or for
anything but his own business, he respects; and the nobler this object,
of course, the better. He hates a literary trifler, and if, after
Guizot had been a tool of Louis Philippe for years, he is now to come
and write essays on the character of Washington, on “The Beautiful,”
and on “Philosophy of History,” he thinks that nothing.
Great is his reverence for realities,--for all such traits as spring
from the intrinsic nature of the actor. He humors this into the
idolatry of strength. A strong nature has a charm for him, previous,
it would seem, to all inquiry whether the force be divine or diabolic.
He preaches, as by cannonade, the doctrine that every noble nature
was made by God, and contains, if savage passions, also fit checks
and grand impulses, and, however extravagant, will keep its orbit and
return from far.
Nor can that decorum which is the idol of the Englishman, and in
attaining which the Englishman exceeds all nations, win from him any
obeisance. He is eaten up with indignation against such as desire to
make a fair show in the flesh.
Combined with this warfare on respectabilities, and, indeed, pointing
all his satire, is the severity of his moral sentiment. In proportion
to the peals of laughter amid which he strips the plumes of a pretender
and shows the lean hypocrisy to every vantage of ridicule, does he
worship whatever enthusiasm, fortitude, love, or other sign of a good
nature is in a man.
There is nothing deeper in his constitution than his humor, than the
considerate, condescending good-nature with which he looks at every
object in existence, as a man might look at a mouse. He feels that the
perfection of health is sportiveness, and will not look grave even at
dullness or tragedy.
His guiding genius is his moral sense, his perception of the sole
importance of truth and justice; but that is a truth of character, not
of catechisms. He says, “There is properly no religion in England.
These idle nobles at Tattersall’s--there is no work or word of serious
purpose in them; they have this great lying Church; and life is a
humbug.” He prefers Cambridge to Oxford, but he thinks Oxford and
Cambridge education indurates the young men, as the Styx hardened
Achilles, so that when they come forth of them, they say, “Now we are
proof; we have gone through all the degrees, and are case-hardened
against the veracities of the Universe; nor man nor God can penetrate
us.”
Wellington he respects as real and honest, and as having made up his
mind, once for all, that he will not have to do with any kind of a lie.
Edwin Chadwick is one of his heroes,--who proposes to provide every
house in London with pure water, sixty gallons to every head, at a
penny a week; and in the decay and downfall of all religions, Carlyle
thinks that the only religious act which a man nowadays can securely
perform is to wash himself well.
Of course the new French revolution of 1848 was the best thing he
had seen, and the teaching this great swindler, Louis Philippe, that
there is a God’s justice in the Universe, after all, was a great
satisfaction. Czar Nicholas was his hero; for in the ignominy of
Europe, when all thrones fell like card-houses, and no man was found
with conscience enough to fire a gun for his crown, but every one ran
away in a _coucou_, with his head shaved, through the Barrière de
Passy, one man remained who believed he was put there by God Almighty
to govern his empire, and, by the help of God, had resolved to stand
there.
He was very serious about the bad times; he had seen this evil coming,
but thought it would not come in his time. But now ’tis coming, and
the only good he sees in it is the visible appearance of the gods.
He thinks it the only question for wise men, instead of art and fine
fancies and poetry and such things, to address themselves to the
problem of society. This confusion is the inevitable end of such
falsehoods and nonsense as they have been embroiled with.
Carlyle has, best of all men in England, kept the manly attitude in
his time. He has stood for scholars, asking no scholar what he should
say. Holding an honored place in the best society, he has stood for the
people, for the Chartist, for the pauper, intrepidly and scornfully
teaching the nobles their peremptory duties.
His errors of opinion are as nothing in comparison with this merit, in
my judgment. This _aplomb_ cannot be mimicked; it is the speaking
to the heart of the thing. And in England, where the _morgue_ of
aristocracy has very slowly admitted scholars into society,--a very
few houses only in the high circles being ever opened to them,--he has
carried himself erect, made himself a power confessed by all men, and
taught scholars their lofty duty. He never feared the face of man.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 17: From a letter written soon after Mr. Emerson’s visit to
Carlyle in 1848. Read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at
their meeting after the death of Carlyle, February, 1881. Published in
their Proceedings, and also in “Scribner’s Magazine,” May, 1881.]
=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=
Simple typographical errors have been silently corrected; unbalanced
quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and
otherwise left unbalanced.
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not
changed.
Inconsistent hyphens left as printed.