Although Mr. Emerson, in the period between 1838 and 1848 especially,
when considering the higher powers of poetry, spoke slightingly of
Scott,—in the _Dial_ papers as “objective” and “the poet of society, of
patrician and conventional Europe,” or in _English Traits_ as a writer
of “a rhymed travellers’ guide to Scotland,”—he had always honor for
the noble man, and affectionate remembrance for the poems as well as
the novels. In the poem “The Harp,” when enumerating poets, he calls
Scott “the delight of generous boys,” but the _generosus puer_ was his
own delight; the hope of the generation lay in him, and his own best
audience was made up of such. In the essay “Illusions,” he says that the
boy “has no better friend than Scott, Shakspeare, Plutarch and Homer. The
man lives to other objects, but who dare affirm that they are more real?”
In the essay “Aristocracy,” he names among the claims of a superior
class, “Genius, the power to affect the Imagination,” and presently
speaks of “those who think and paint and laugh and weep in their eloquent
closets, and then convert the world into a huge whispering-gallery,
to report the tale to all men and win smiles and tears from many
generations,” and gives Scott and Burns among the high company whom he
instances.
Mr. Emerson’s children can testify how with regard to Scott he always was
ready to become a boy again. As we walked in the woods, he would show us
the cellar-holes of the Irish colony that came to Concord to build the
railroad, and he named these deserted villages Derncleugh and Ellangowan.
The sight recalled Meg Merrilies’ pathetic lament to the laird at the
eviction of the gypsies, which he would then recite. “Alice Brand,” the
“Sair Field o’ Harlaw,” which old Elspeth sings to the children in _The
Antiquary_, and “Helvellyn” were again and again repeated to us with
pleasure on both sides. With special affection in later years when we
walked in Walden woods he would croon the lines from “The Dying Bard,”—
“Dinas Emlinn, lament, for the moment is nigh,
When mute in the woodlands thine echoes shall die.”
Perhaps he had foreboding for his loved woods, beginning to be desecrated
with rude city picnics, and since burned over repeatedly by the fires
from the railroad,—
“When half of their charms with Cadwallon shall die.”