Mr. Cabot, in his Memoir, says that just before Mr. Emerson sailed for
Europe in 1847, Theodore Parker, Dr. S. G. Howe and others (Mr. Cabot was
one of these) met to consider whether there could not be “a new quarterly
review which should be more alive than was the _North American_ to the
questions of the day.” Charles Sumner and Thoreau are mentioned as having
been present. Colonel Higginson says that Mr. Parker wished it to be “the
_Dial_ with a beard.” It was decided that the undertaking should be made.
Mr. Parker wished Mr. Emerson to be editor, but he declined. A committee
was chosen—Emerson, Parker and Howe—to draft a manifesto to the public.
Mr. Emerson wrote the paper here printed, but when the first number of
the Review came to him in England, was annoyed at finding his name set
down as one of the editors. I think that the only paper he ever wrote
for it, beyond the “Address to the Public,” was a notice of “Some Oxford
Poetry,”—the recently published poems of John Sterling and Arthur Hugh
Clough.
Theodore Parker was the real editor. During its three years of life the
_Massachusetts Quarterly_—now hard to obtain—was a brave, independent and
patriotic magazine, and, like the _Dial_, gives the advancing thought
of the time in literary and social matters, and also in religion and
politics.
[195] _Page 384, note 1._ Plutarch tells that Cineas, the wise counsellor
of Pyrrhus, king of the Epirots, asked his monarch when he set forth
to conquer Rome what he should do afterwards. Pyrrhus said he could
then become master of Sicily. “And then?” asked Cineas. The king told
of further dreams of conquest of Carthage and Libya. “But when we have
conquered all that, what are we to do then?” “Why then, my friend,” said
Pyrrhus, laughing, “we will take our ease, and drink and be merry.”
Cineas, having brought him thus far, replied, “And what hinders us from
drinking and taking our ease now, when we have already those things in
our hands at which we propose to arrive through seas of blood, through
infinite toils and dangers, innumerable calamities which we must both
cause and suffer?”
[196] _Page 386, note 1._ “To live without duties is
obscene.”—“Aristocracy,” _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_.
[197] _Page 389, note 1._ This was shortly after the annexation
of Texas, and during the successful progress of the Mexican War. The
slave power, although awakening opposition by its insatiable demands, was
still on the increase. Charles Sumner, though a rising statesman, had not
yet entered Congress.
[198] _Page 389, note 2._
For Destiny never swerves,
Nor yields to men the helm.
“The World-Soul,” _Poems_.