Part 2

Then he has chosen a proper time and manner for saying his good things; has spoken to almost every great interest as it rose. Nor has he let the good opportunities pass unheeded, or failed to make them for himself. He has taken discretion along as his constant attendant and ally; has shown how the gentlest temper ever deals the surest blows. His method is that of the sun against his rival for the cloak, and so he is free from any madness of those, who, forgetting the strength of the solar ray, go blustering against men’s prejudices, as if the wearers would run at once against these winds of opposition into their arms for shelter. What higher praise can we bestow on any one than to say of him, that he harbors another’s prejudices with a hospitality so cordial as to give him, for the time, the sympathy next best to, if, indeed, it be not edification in, charity itself? For what disturbs and distracts mankind more than the uncivil manners that cleave man from man? Yet for his amendment letters, love, Christianity, were all given!

How different is he in temper and manners from Carlyle, with whom he is popularly associated! but who, for the most part, is the polemic, the sophist, the scorner: whose books, opened anywhere, show him berating the wrong he sees, but seeing, shows never the means of removing. Ever the same melancholy advocacy of work to be done under the dread master; force of stroke, the right to rule and be ruled, ever the dismal burden. Doomsday books are all save his earliest—Rhadamanthus sitting and the arbiter. He rides his Leviathan as fiercely as did his countryman, Hobbes, and can be as truculent and abusive; the British Taurus, and a mad one. Were he not thus possessed and fearfully in earnest, we should take him for the harlequin he seems, nor see the sorrowing sadness playing off its load in this grotesque mirth, this scornful irony of his; he painting in spite of himself his portraits in the warmth of admiration, the fire of wrath, and giving mythology for history; all the while distorting the facts into grimace in his grim moods. Yet, what breadth of perspective, strength of outline! the realism how appalling, the egotism how enormous,—all history showing in the background of the one figure, Carlyle. Burns, Goethe, Richter, Mirabeau, Luther, Cromwell, Frederick,—all dashed from his flashing pen, heads of himself, alike in their unlikeness, prodigiously individual, willful, some of them monstrous; all Englishmen with their egregious prejudices and pride; no patience, no repose in any. He still brandishes his truncheon through his pages with an adroitness that renders it unsafe for any, save the few that wield weapons of celestial temper, to do battle against this Abaddon. Silenced he will not be; talking terribly against all talking but his own; agreeing, disagreeing, all the same; he, the Jove, permitting none, none to mount Olympus, till the god deigns silence and invites. Curious to see him, his chin aloft, the pent thunders rolling, lightnings darting from under the bold brows, words that tell of the wail within, accents not meant for music, yet made lyrical in the cadences of his Caledonian refrain; his mirth mad as Lear’s, his humor as willful as the wind’s. Not himself is approachable by himself even. And Emerson is the one only American deserving a moment’s consideration in his eyes. Him he honors and owns the better, giving him the precedence and the manners:

“Had wolves and lions seen but thee, They must have paused to learn civility.”

Of Emerson’s books I am not here designing to speak critically, but of his genius and personal influence rather. Yet, in passing, I may say, that his book of “Traits” deserves to be honored as one in which England, Old and New, may take honest pride, as being the liveliest portraiture of British genius and accomplishments,—a book, like Tacitus, to be quoted as a masterpiece of historical painting, and perpetuating the New Englander’s fame with that of his race. ’Tis a victory of eyes over hands, a triumph of ideas. Nor, in my judgment, has there been for some time any criticism of a people so characteristic and complete. It remains for him to do like justice to New England. Not a metaphysician, and rightly discarding any claims to systematic thinking; a poet in spirit, if not always in form; the consistent idealist, yet the realist none the less, he has illustrated the learning and thought of former times on the noblest themes, and come nearest of any to emancipating the mind of his own time from the errors and dreams of past ages.

Why nibble longer there, Where nothing fresh ye find, Upon those rocks?

Lo! meadows green and fair; Come pasture here your mind, Ye bleating flocks.

There is a virtuous curiosity felt by readers of remarkable books to learn something more of their author’s literary tastes, habits and dispositions than these ordinarily furnish. Yet, to gratify this is a task as difficult as delicate, requiring a diffidency akin to that with which one would accost the author himself, and without which graceful armor it were impertinent for a friend even to undertake it. We may venture but a stroke or two here.

All men love the country who love mankind with a wholesome love, and have poetry and company in them. Our essayist makes good this preference. If city bred, he has been for the best part of his life a villager and countryman. Only a traveller at times professionally, he prefers home-keeping; is a student of the landscape; is no recluse misanthrope, but a lover of his neighborhood, of mankind, of rugged strength wherever found; liking plain persons, plain ways, plain clothes; prefers earnest people, hates egotists, shuns publicity, likes solitude, and knows its uses. He courts society as a spectacle not less than a pleasure, and so carries off the spoils. Delighting in the broadest views of men and things, he seeks all accessible displays of both for draping his thoughts and works. And how is his page produced? Is it imaginable that he conceives his piece as a whole, and then sits down to execute his task at a heat? Is not this imaginable rather, and the key to the comprehension of his works? Living for composition as few authors can, and holding company, studies, sleep, exercise, affairs, subservient to thought, his products are gathered as they ripen, and stored in his commonplaces; the contents transcribed at intervals, and classified. The order of ideas, of imagination, is observed in the arrangement, not that of logical sequence. You may begin at the last paragraph and read backwards. ’Tis Iris-built. Each period is self-poised; there may be a chasm of years between the opening passage and the last written, and there is endless time in the composition. Jewels all! separate stars. You may have them in a galaxy, if you like, or view them separate and apart. But every one knows that, if he take an essay or verses, however the writer may have pleased himself with the cunning workmanship, ’tis all cloud-fashioned, and there is no pathway for any one else. Cross as you can, or not cross, it matters not; you may climb or leap, move in circles, turn somersaults;

“In sympathetic sorrow sweep the ground,”

like his swallow in Merlin. Dissolving views, projects, vistas open wide and far,—yet earth, sky, realities all, not illusions. Here is substance, sod, sun; much fair weather in the seer as in his leaves. The whole quarternion of the seasons, the sidereal year, has been poured into these periods. Afternoon walks furnished the perspectives, rounded and melodized them. These good things have all been talked and slept over, meditated standing and sitting, read and polished in the utterance, submitted to all various tests, and, so accepted, they pass into print. Light fancies, dreams, moods, refrains, were set on foot, and sent jaunting about the fields, along woodpaths, by Walden shores, by hill and brook-sides,—to come home and claim their rank and honors too in his pages. Composed of surrounding matters, populous with thoughts, brisk with images, these books are wholesome, homelike, and could have been written only in New England, in Concord, and by our poet.

“Because I was content with these poor fields, Low, open meads, slender and sluggish streams, And found a home in haunts which others scorned, The partial wood-gods overpaid my love, And granted me the freedom of their state; And in their secret senate have prevailed With the dear, dangerous lords that rule our life, Made moon and planets parties to their bond, And through my rock-like, solitary wont Shot million rays of thought and tenderness. For me, in showers, in sweeping showers, the spring, Visits the valley;—break away the clouds,— I bathe in the morn’s soft and silvered air, And loiter willing by yon loitering stream. Sparrows far off, and nearer, April’s bird, Blue-coated, flying before from tree to tree, Courageous, sing a delicate overture To lead the tardy concert of the year. Onward and nearer rides the sun of May; And wide around, the marriage of the plants Is sweetly solemnized. Then flows amain The surge of summer’s beauty; dell and crag, Hollow and lake, hillside, and pine arcade, Are touched with Genius. Yonder ragged cliff Has thousand faces in a thousand hours.

... The gentle deities Showed me the lore of colors and of sounds, The innumerable tenements of beauty, The miracle of generative force, Far-reaching concords of astronomy Felt in the plants and in the punctual birds; Better, the linked purpose of the whole, And, chiefest prize, found I true liberty In the glad home plain-dealing nature gave. The polite found me impolite; the great Would mortify me, but in vain; for still I am a willow of the wilderness, Loving the wind that bent me. All my hurts My garden spade can heal. A woodland walk, A quest of river-grapes, a mocking thrush, A wild rose, or rock-loving columbine, Salve my worst wounds. For thus the wood-gods murmured in my ear: ‘Dost love our manners? Canst thou silent lie? Canst thou, thy pride forgot, like nature pass Into the winter night’s extinguished mood? Canst thou shine now, then darkle, And being latent feel thyself no less? As, when the all-worshipped moon attracts the eye, The river, hill, stems, foliage, are obscure; Yet envies none, none are unenviable.’”

I know of but one subtraction from the pleasure the reading of his books—shall I say his conversation?—gives me, his pains to be impersonal or discrete, as if he feared any the least intrusion of himself were an offence offered to self-respect the courtesy due to intercourse and authorship; thus depriving his page, his company, of attractions the great masters of both knew how to insinuate into their text and talk, without overstepping the bounds of social or literary decorum. What is more delightful than personal magnetism? ’Tis the charm of good fellowship as of good writing. To get and to give the largest measures of satisfaction, to fill ourselves with the nectar of select experiences, not without some intertinctures of egotism so charming in a companion, is what we seek in books of the class of his, as in their authors. We associate diffidence properly with learning, frankness with fellowship, and owe a certain blushing reverence to both. For though our companion be a bashful man,—and he is the worse if wanting this grace,—we yet wish him to be an enthusiast behind all reserves, and capable of abandonment sometimes in his books. I know how rare this genial humor is, this frankness of the blood, and how surpassing is the gift of good spirits, especially here in cold New England, where, for the most part,

“Our virtues grow Beneath our humors, and at seasons show.”

And yet, under our east winds of reserve, there hides an obscure courtesy in the best natures, which neither temperament nor breeding can spoil. Sometimes manners the most distant are friendly foils for holding eager dispositions subject to the measure of right behavior. ’Tis not every New Englander that dares venture upon the frankness, the plain speaking, commended by the Greek poet.

“Caress me not with words, while far away Thy heart is absent, and thy feelings stray; But if thou love me with a faithful breast, Be that pure love with zeal sincere exprest; And if thou hate, the bold aversion show With open face avowed, and known my foe.”

Fortunate the visitor who is admitted of a morning for the high discourse, or permitted to join the poet in his afternoon walks to Walden, the Cliffs, or elsewhere,—hours likely to be remembered, as unlike any others in his calendar of experiences. I may say, for me they have made ideas possible, by hospitalities given to a fellowship so enjoyable. Shall I describe them as sallies oftenest into the cloud-lands, into scenes and intimacies ever new? none the less novel nor remote than when first experienced; colloquies, in favored moments, on themes, perchance

“Of fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute;”

nor yet

“In wand’ring mazes lost,”

as in Milton’s page;

But pathways plain through starry alcoves high, Or thence descending to the level plains.

Interviews, however, bringing their trail of perplexing thoughts, costing some days’ duties, several nights’ sleep oftentimes, to restore one to his place and poise for customary employment; half a dozen annually being full as many as the stoutest heads may well undertake without detriment.

Certainly safer not to venture without the sure credentials, unless one will have his pretensions pricked, his conceits reduced in their vague dimensions.

“Fools have no means to meet But by their feet.”

But to the modest, the ingenuous, the gifted, welcome! Nor can any bearing be more poetic and polite than his to all such, to youth and accomplished women especially. I may not intrude farther than to say, that, beyond any I have known, his is a faith approaching to superstition concerning admirable persons; the divinity of friendship come down from childhood, and surviving yet in memory if not in expectation; the rumor of excellence of any sort, being like the arrival of a new gift to mankind, and he the first to proffer his recognition and hope. His affection for conversation, for clubs, is a lively intimation of the religion of fellowship. He, shall we say? if any, must have taken the census of the admirable people of his time, numbering as many among his friends, perhaps, as most living Americans; while he is already recognized as the representative mind of his country, to whom distinguished foreigners are especially commended on visiting us.

Extraordinary persons may be forgiven some querulousness about their company, when we remember that ordinary people often complain of theirs. Impossible for such to comprehend the scholar’s code of civilities,—disposed as men are to hold all persons to their special standard. Yet dedicated to high labors, so much the more strict is the scholar with himself, as his hindrances are the less appreciable, and he has, besides, his own moods to humor.

“Askest how long thou shalt stay, Devastator of the day?”

“Heartily know, When half-gods go, The Gods arrive.”

Companionableness comes by nature. We meet magically, and pass with sounding manners; else we encounter repulses, strokes of fate; temperament telling against temperament, precipitating us into vortices from which the nimblest finds no escape. We pity the person who shows himself unequal to such occasions; the scholar, for example, whose intellect is so exacting, so precise, that he cannot meet his company otherwise than critically; cannot descend through the senses or the sentiments to that common level where intercourse is possible with men; but we pity him the more, who, from caprice or confusion, can meet through these only. Still worse the case of him who can meet men neither as sentimentalist nor idealist, or, rather not at all in a human way. Intellect interblends with sentiment in the companionable mind, and wit with humor. We detain the flowing tide at the cost of lapsing out of perception into memory, into the limbo of fools. Excellent people wonder why they cannot meet and converse. They cannot,—no—their wits have ebbed away, and left them helpless. Why, but because of hostile temperaments, different states of animation? The personal magnetism finds no conductor, when one is individual, and the other individual no less. Individuals repel; persons meet; and only as one’s personality is sufficiently overpowering to dissolve the other’s individualism, can the parties flow together and become one. But individuals have no power of this sort. They are two, not one, perhaps many. Prisoned within themselves by reason of their egotism, like animals, they stand aloof; are separate even when they touch; are solitary in any company, having no company in themselves. But the free personal mind meets all, is apprehended by all; by the least cultivated, the most gifted; magnetizes all; is the spell-binder, the liberator of every one. We speak of sympathies, antipathies, fascinations, fates, for this reason.

Here we have the key to literary composition, to eloquence, to fellowship. Let us apply it, for the moment, to Emerson’s genius. We forbear entering into the precincts of genesis, and complexions, wherein sleep the secrets of character and manners. Eloquent in trope and utterance when his vaulting intelligence frees itself for the instant, yet see his loaded eye, his volleyed period; jets of wit, sallies of sense, breaks, inconsequences, all betraying the pent personality from which his rare accomplishments have not yet liberated his gifts, nor given him unreservedly to the Muse and mankind.

Take his own account of the matter.

“When I was born, From all the seas of strength Fate filled a chalice, Saying: ‘This be thy portion, child: this chalice, Less than a lily’s, thou shalt daily draw From my great arteries,—not less nor more.’ All substances the cunning chemist, Time, Melts down into the liquor of my life,— Friends, foes, joys, fortunes, beauty and disgust; And whether I am angry or content, Indebted or insulted, loved or hurt, All he distils into sidereal wine, And brims my little cup, heedless, alas! Of all he sheds, how little it will hold, How much runs over on the desert sands. If a new Muse draw me with splendid ray, And I uplift myself into its heaven, The needs of the first sight absorb my blood; And all the following hours of the day Drag a ridiculous age. To-day, when friends approach, and every hour Brings book, or star-bright scroll of Genius, The little cup will hold not a bead more, And all the costly liquor runs to waste; Nor gives the jealous lord one diamond drop So to be husbanded for poorer days. Why need I volumes, if one word suffice? Why need I galleries, when a pupil’s draught, After the master’s sketch, fills and o’erfills My apprehension? Why seek Italy, Who cannot circumnavigate the sea Of thoughts and things at home, but still adjourn The nearest matter for a thousand days?”

Plutarch tells us that of old they were wont to call men Φῶτα, which imports light, not only for the vehement desire man has to know, but to communicate also. And the Platonists fancied that the gods, being above men, had something whereof man did not partake, pure intellect and knowledge, and thus kept on their way quietly. The beasts, being below men, had something whereof man had less, sense and growth, so they lived quietly in their way. While man had something in him whereof neither gods nor beasts had any trace, which gave him all the trouble, and made all the confusion in the world,—and that was egotism and opinion.

A finer discrimination of gifts might show that Genius ranges through this threefold dominion, partaking in turn of each essence and degree.

Was our poet planted so fast in intellect, so firmly rooted in the mind, so dazzled with light, yet so cleft withal by duplicity of gifts, that, thus forced to traverse the mid-world of contrast and contrariety, he was ever glancing forth from his coverts at life as reflected through his dividing prism,—resident never long in the tracts he surveyed, yet their persistent Muse nevertheless? And so, housed in the Mind, and thence sallying forth in quest of his game, whether of persons or things, he was the Mercury, the merchantman of ideas to his century. Nor was he left alone in life and thinking. Beside him stood his townsman,[1] whose sylvan intelligence, fast rooted in sense and Nature, was yet armed with a sagacity, a subtlety and strength, that penetrated while divining the essences of the creatures and things he studied, and of which he seemed both Atlas and Head.

Footnote 1:

Thoreau.

Forcible protestants against the materialism of their own, as of preceding times, these masterly Idealists substantiated beyond all question their right to the empires they swayed,—the rich estates of an original genius.

ION: A MONODY.

By A. BRONSON ALCOTT.

READ BEFORE THE CONCORD SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY, JULY 22, 1882.

I.

Why, oh, ye willows, and ye pastures bare, Why will ye thus your bloom so late delay, Wrap in chill weeds the sere and sullen day, And cheerless greet me wandering in despair? Tell me, ah, tell me!—ye of old could tell,— Whither my vanished Ion now doth fare. Say, have ye seen him lately pass this way, Ye who his wonted haunts did know full well? Heard ye his voice forth from the thicket swell, Where midst the drooping ferns he loved to stray? Caught ye no glimpses of my truant there? Tell me, oh, tell me, whither he hath flown— Beloved Ion flown, and left ye sad and lone, Whilst I through wood and field his loss bemoan.

II.

Early through field and wood each Spring we sped, Young Ion leading o’er the reedy pass; How fleet his footsteps and how sure his tread! His converse deep and weighty;—where, alas! Like force of thought with subtlest beauty wed? The bee and bird and flower, the pile of grass, The lore of stars, the azure sky o’erhead, The eye’s warm glance, the Fates of love and dread,— All mirrored were in his prismatic glass; For endless Being’s myriad-minded race Had in his thought their registry and place,— Bright with intelligence, or drugged with sleep, Hid in dark cave, aloft on mountain steep, In seas immersed, ensouled in starry keep.

III.