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Napoleon (search for this): chapter 6
ooks, eloquence, Old age, exhibit a shrewd prudential wisdom, a sort of Yankee instinct for the milk in the pan, that reminds one of Ben Franklin. Like most of the greater New England writers, he could be, on occasion, an admirable local historian. See his essays on Life and letters in New England, New England reformers, politics, and the successive entries in his Journal relating to Daniel Webster. He had the happiest gift of portraiture, as is witnessed by his sketches of Montaigne, of Napoleon, of Socrates (in the essay on Plato), of his aunt Mary Moody Emerson, of Thoreau, and of various types of Englishmen in his English traits. But the great essays, no doubt, are those like Self-Reliance, compensation, the over-soul, fate, power, culture, worship, and Illusions. These will puzzle no one who has read carefully that first book on Nature. They all preach the gospel of intuition, instinctive trust in the Universe, faith in the ecstatic moment of vision into the things that
Bayard Taylor (search for this): chapter 6
in 1826, and he entered decorously upon the profession of his ancestors, as associate minister of the Second Church in Boston. His Journals, which are a priceless record of his inner life, at this and later periods, reveal the rigid self-scrutiny, the tender idealism, with which he began his ministerial career. But as a scheme of life for Ralph Waldo Emerson this vocation would not satisfy. The sexton of the Second Church thought that the young man was not at his best at funerals. Father Taylor, the eccentric Methodist, whom Emerson assisted at a sailor's Bethel near Long Wharf, considered him one of the sweetest souls God ever made, but as ignorant of the principles of the New Testament as Balaam's ass was of Hebrew grammar. By and by came an open difference with his congregation over the question of administering the Communion. I am not interested in it, Emerson admitted, and he wrote in his Journal the noble words: It is my desire, in the office of a Christian minister, to
Christopher P. Cranch (search for this): chapter 6
save meekness. He died at fifty, worn out, in Italy. But while these three figures were, after Emerson and Thoreau, the most representative of the group, the student of the Transcendental period will be equally interested in watching its influence upon many other types of young men: upon future journalists and publicists like George William Curtis, Charles A. Dana, and George Ripley; upon religionists like Orestes Brownson, Father Hecker, and James Freeman Clarke; and upon poets like Jones Very, Christopher P. Cranch, and Ellery Channing. There was a sunny side of the whole movement, as T. W. Higginson and F. B. Sanborn, two of the latest survivors of the ferment, loved to emphasize in their talk and in their books; and it was shadowed also by tragedy and the pathos of unfulfilled desires. But as one looks back at it, in the perspective of threequarters of a century, it seems chiefly something touchingly fine. For all these men and women tried to hitch their wagon to a star.
George Eliot (search for this): chapter 6
at last his apotheosis in the Concord School of Philosophy, but was chiefly known for the twenty years before his death in 1888 as the father of the Louisa Alcott who wrote Little women. A tedious archangel, was Emerson's verdict, and it is likely to stand. Margaret Fuller, though sketched by Hawthorne, analyzed by Emerson, and painted at full length by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, is now a fading figure — a remarkable woman, no doubt, one of the first of American feminists, suggesting George Eliot in her physical unattractiveness, her clear brain, her touch of sensuousness. She was an early-ripe, over-crammed scholar in the classics and in modern European languages. She did loyal, unpaid work as the editor of the Dial, which from 1840 to 1844 was the organ of Transcendentalism. She joined the community at Brook Farm, whose story has been so well told by Lindsay Swift. For a while she served as literary editor of the New York Tribune under Horace Greeley. Then she went abroad,
Don Quixote (search for this): chapter 6
well aware of their seductiveness, but the stubborn energy of the will. The scope of the present book prevents more than a glimpse at the other members of the New England Transcendental group. They are a very mixed company, noble, whimsical, queer, impossible. The good Alcott, wrote Carlyle, with his long, lean face and figure, with his gray worn temples and mild radiant eyes; all bent on saving the world by a return to acorns and the golden age; he comes before one like a venerable Don Quixote, whom nobody can laugh at without loving. These words paint a whole company, as well as a single man. The good Alcott still awaits an adequate biographer. Connecticut Yankee, peddler in the South, school-teacher in Boston and elsewhere, he descended upon Concord, flitted to the queer community of Fruitlands, was starved back to Concord, inspired and bored the patient Emerson, talked endlessly, wrote ineffective books, and had at last his apotheosis in the Concord School of Philosophy,
Margaret Fuller (search for this): chapter 6
e new zeal for science and pseudo-science, and by the unrest of a fermenting age. Our present concern is with the impact of this cosmopolitan current upon the mind and character of a few New England writers. Channing and Theodore Parker, Margaret Fuller and Alcott, Thoreau and Emerson, are all representative of the best thought and the noblest ethical impulses of their generation. Let us choose first the greatest name: a sunward-gazing spirit, and, it may be, one of the very Sun-Gods. Tsis in the Concord School of Philosophy, but was chiefly known for the twenty years before his death in 1888 as the father of the Louisa Alcott who wrote Little women. A tedious archangel, was Emerson's verdict, and it is likely to stand. Margaret Fuller, though sketched by Hawthorne, analyzed by Emerson, and painted at full length by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, is now a fading figure — a remarkable woman, no doubt, one of the first of American feminists, suggesting George Eliot in her physi
Wordsworth (search for this): chapter 6
ich I cannot do with my whole heart. His resignation was accepted in 1832. His young wife had died of consumption in the same year. He now sailed for Italy, France, and England, a memorable journey which gave him an acquaintance with Landor, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle, but which was even more significant in sending him, as he says, back to himself, to the resources of his own nature. When shows break up, wrote Whitman afterward, what but oneself is sure? In 1834 and 1835 we find Emearily a naturalist, an observer, of the White of Selborne school; to others an elemental man, a lover of the wild, a hermit of the woods. He has been called the poet-naturalist, to indicate that his powers of observation were accompanied, like Wordsworth's, by a gift of emotional interpretation of the meaning of phenomena. Lovers of literature celebrate his sheer force and penetration of phrase. But to the student of American thought Thoreau's prime value lies in the courage and consistency w
George William Curtis (search for this): chapter 6
was a Lexington farmer's son, with the temperament of a blacksmith, with enormous, restless energy, a good hater, a passionate lover of all excellent things save meekness. He died at fifty, worn out, in Italy. But while these three figures were, after Emerson and Thoreau, the most representative of the group, the student of the Transcendental period will be equally interested in watching its influence upon many other types of young men: upon future journalists and publicists like George William Curtis, Charles A. Dana, and George Ripley; upon religionists like Orestes Brownson, Father Hecker, and James Freeman Clarke; and upon poets like Jones Very, Christopher P. Cranch, and Ellery Channing. There was a sunny side of the whole movement, as T. W. Higginson and F. B. Sanborn, two of the latest survivors of the ferment, loved to emphasize in their talk and in their books; and it was shadowed also by tragedy and the pathos of unfulfilled desires. But as one looks back at it, in th
Thomas Carlyle (search for this): chapter 6
n our literature was Ralph Waldo Emerson, as its chief exponents in England were Coleridge and Carlyle. We must understand its meaning if we would perceive the quality of much of the most noble andl words like senses, experience, fact, logic to lower-case type, one may do it because he is a Carlyle or an Emerson, but the chances are that he is neither. Transcendentalism, like all idealistic and, a memorable journey which gave him an acquaintance with Landor, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Carlyle, but which was even more significant in sending him, as he says, back to himself, to the resourvinity School, he roused a storm of disapproval. A tempest in our washbowl, he wrote coolly to Carlyle, but it was more than that. The great sentence of the Divinity School address, God is, not wasp. They are a very mixed company, noble, whimsical, queer, impossible. The good Alcott, wrote Carlyle, with his long, lean face and figure, with his gray worn temples and mild radiant eyes; all ben
Nathaniel Hawthorne (search for this): chapter 6
e north, close to the rude bridge of the famous Concord fight in 1775, is the Old Manse, once tenanted and described by Hawthorne. It was built by Emerson's grandfather, a patriot chaplain in the Revolution, who died of camp-fever at Ticonderoga. on the wall. Over the ridge to the north lies the Sleepy Hollow cemetery where the poet rests, with the gravestones of Hawthorne and the Alcotts, Thoreau and William James close by. But although Concord is the Emerson shrine, he was born in Bostof his most loyal admirers will admit that such a quest is bound, by the very conditions of the problem, to be futile. Hawthorne allegorized it in Ethan Brand, and his quaint illustration of the folly of romantic expansion of the self apart from thle women. A tedious archangel, was Emerson's verdict, and it is likely to stand. Margaret Fuller, though sketched by Hawthorne, analyzed by Emerson, and painted at full length by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, is now a fading figure — a remarkable w
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