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[174] and “a university in less volume.” Emerson's books appeared in rapid succession, and his fame extended far beyond his native land. It is probable that no writer of the English tongue had more influence in England thirty years ago, before the all-absorbing interest of the new theories of evolution threw all the so-called transcendental philosophy into temporary shade. This influence has now plainly revived, since the stress of the Darwinian period has passed, and one is sure to see one of Emerson's books on any English or American list of republished classics. As a master of language, it may be fearlessly said that within the limits of a single sentence no man who ever wrote the English tongue has put more meaning into words than Emerson. In his hands, to adopt Ben Jonson's phrase, “words are rammed with thought.” In all literature you will find no man who has better fulfilled that aspiration stated in such condensed phrase by Joubert: “To put a whole book into a page, a whole page into a phrase and that phrase into a word.” Emerson himself said of the Greeks that they “anticipated by their very language what the best orator could say;” and
Boston, New York and Chicago. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1903.
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