It is pleasant to be able to let Dr. Holmes, who was present at the Burns
Festival, speak for himself and Lowell and Judge Hoar of Mr. Emerson’s
speech on that day. I have heard the Judge tell the story of his friend’s
success with the same delight.
“On the 25th of January, 1859, Emerson attended the Burns Festival, held
at the Parker House in Boston, on the Centennial Anniversary of the
poet’s birth. He spoke, after the dinner, to the great audience with
such beauty and eloquence that all who listened to him have remembered
it as one of the most delightful addresses they ever heard. Among his
hearers was Mr. Lowell, who says of it that ‘every word seemed to have
just dropped down to him from the clouds.’ Judge Hoar, who was another
of his hearers, says that, though he has heard many of the chief orators
of his time, he never witnessed such an effect of speech upon men. I was
myself present on that occasion, and underwent the same fascination that
these gentlemen and the varied audience before the speaker experienced.
His words had a passion in them not usual in the calm, pure flow most
natural to his uttered thoughts; white-hot iron we are familiar with, but
white-hot silver is what we do not often look upon, and his inspiring
address glowed like silver fresh from the cupel.”
The strange part of all the accounts given by the hearers is that Mr.
Emerson seemed to speak _extempore_, which can hardly have been so.
No account of the Festival, or Mr. Emerson’s part therein, appears in
the journals, except a short page of praise of the felicitous anecdotes
introduced by other after-dinner speakers.
[210] _Page 440, note 1._ Here comes out that respect for labor which
affected all Mr. Emerson’s relations to the humblest people he met. In
the Appendix to the _Poems_ it appears in the verses beginning,—
Said Saadi, When I stood before
Hassan the camel-driver’s door.
[211] _Page 441, note 1._ Thomas Carlyle.
[212] _Page 441, note 2._ Mr. Emerson here recalls his childhood and that
of his brothers, as in the passage in “Domestic Life,” in _Society and
Solitude_, that has been often referred to in these notes.
[213] _Page 443, note 1._ Among some stray lecture-sheets was the
following on the scholar or poet:—
“Given the insight, and he will find as many beauties and heroes and
strokes of genius close by him as Dante or Shakspeare beheld. It was in
a cold moor farm, in a dingy country inn, that Burns found his fancy so
sprightly. You find the times and places mean. Stretch a few threads over
an Æolian harp, and put it in the window and listen to what it says of
the times and of the heart of Nature. You shall not believe the miracle
of Nature is less, the chemical power worn out. Watch the breaking
morning, or the enchantments of the sunset.”