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CHAPTER 5—Political Parties

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. Functions of a political party include all the following except

a. passing and enforcing legislation.
b. educating voters.
c. mobilizing voters.
d. running the government.
e. nominating and electing public officials.
ANS: A REF: 94 NOT: Factual

2. All of the following are common activities of political parties except

a. door-to-door canvassing during elections.
b. vetoing legislation that doesn’t fit the philosophy of the party.
c. providing voters with cues on how to vote.
d. running phone banks on behalf of candidates.
e. contributing money to campaigns.
ANS: B REF: 94 NOT: Conceptual

3. A pragmatist politician does all but which of the following?

a. Judges policies on the basis of results rather than principles
b. Compromises on basic principles to appeal to voters
c. Remains true to a consistent political philosophy
d. Stresses broad, emotional campaign themes rather than issues
e. Takes unfocused positions on issues rather than risk alienating voters
ANS: C REF: 95 NOT: Applied

4. Since the 1960s

a. political parties have become more pragmatic.
b. the ideological divide between the parties has diminished.
c. compromise between Democrats and Republicans has become easier to accomplish.
d. liberal Republicans have become extinct.
e. the most conservative Democrats are now to the right on the ideological spectrum of the
most moderate Republicans.
ANS: D REF: 95 NOT: Applied

5. National party ideological unity today gains impetus from outside individuals and groups. The
Republican Party, for example, is influenced by all of the following except
a. the Club for Growth.
b. Republican officeholders.
c. Populist organizations.
 d. the Tea party.
e. Fox News.
ANS: C REF: 95 | 96 NOT: Applied

6. The national parties have raised millions of dollars and assumed a greater role by providing assistance
to state parties and candidates. Which of the following is considered a form of assistance?
a. Public opinion polling
b. Production of radio and TV commercials
c. Campaign funding
d. Candidate recruitment
e. All of the above are true.
ANS: E REF: 96 NOT: Conceptual

7. The single-member district system encourages

a. pragmatic voter behavior.
b. ideological divisiveness between the political parties.
c. third party voting.
d. the growth of Populism.
e. wide dispersion of campaign contributions.
ANS: A REF: 96 NOT: Applied

8. In the Republic of Texas, political differences revolved around

a. support of or opposition to the confederacy.
b. the Republican Party.
c. those who supported or opposed reunification with Mexico.
d. support of or opposition to Sam Houston.
e. the Democratic Party.
ANS: D REF: 97 NOT: Applied

9. Starting with the end of Reconstruction, political control was in the hands of __________ for over a
century.
a. Republicans
b. Democrats
c. Federalists
d. Confederates
e. evangelicals
ANS: B REF: 97 NOT: Applied

10. “The People’s Party” making up the Populist Revolt, consisted largely of all but which of the
following groups?
a. Sharecroppers
b. African Americans
c. Small farmers
d. Laborers
e. Most segments of the Republican Party
ANS: E REF: 97 NOT: Factual

11. Which of the following was not a significant contributor to the Democratic Party’s solidification of
political power in Texas?
a. Support for the Union in the Civil War
 b. Political fallout from the Great Depression
c. Co-opting issues of the Populist Revolt
d. Disenfranchisement of African Americans and poor whites through the poll tax
e. Institution of the direct primary
ANS: A REF: 97 NOT: Applied

12. Persons who argue for an unfettered free market, personal initiative, and government action to preserve
moral values are known as
a. liberals.
b. Populists.
c. evangelicals.
d. conservatives.
e. Libertarians.
ANS: D REF: 97 NOT: Conceptual

13. While conservatives support the values of individualism and personal initiative, they also tend to
support all but which of the following?
a. Tax incentives for investment
b. Health care assistance and unemployment compensation
c. Government funding to promote business activity
d. Government action to preserve “moral values”
e. Capital punishment
ANS: B REF: 97 | 98 NOT: Conceptual

14. Persons who argue for a more-or-less completely hands-off philosophy of government, including
opposition to Social Security, gun control, foreign involvement, and campaign finance reform are
known as
a. conservatives.
b. evangelicals.
c. Populists.
d. liberals.
e. Libertarians.
ANS: E REF: 98 NOT: Conceptual

15. Persons who support government spending to protect the disadvantaged and promote equality,
including such things as wage and hour laws, federal unemployment and health care insurance are
known as
a. liberals.
b. Libertarians.
c. conservatives.
d. evangelicals.
e. Populists.
ANS: A REF: 98 NOT: Conceptual

16. If a person rejects attempts to “legislate morality” and is chiefly concerned with protecting civil rights
and liberties of individuals, that person is most likely a(n)
a. conservative.
b. evangelical.
c. Populist.
d. liberal.
 e. Libertarian.
ANS: D REF: 98 NOT: Conceptual

17. For many years, until the 1970s, __________ controlled the state government.
a. liberal Republicans
b. conservative Democrats’
c. conservative Republicans
d. liberal Democrats
e. Libertarians
ANS: B REF: 99 NOT: Conceptual

18. Growth of the conservative wing of the Democratic Party was initially, at least in large part, a response
to the
a. Presidency of Dwight Eisenhower.
b. Fair Deal.
c. New Deal.
d. activities of the AFL-CIO.
e. increasing influence of the NAACP.
ANS: C REF: 99 NOT: Conceptual

19. Which of the following were historically strong contributors to the success and influence of
conservative Democrats in Texas?
a. The oil and gas industry
b. Large farm and ranch owners
c. Owners and publishers of large newspapers
d. Veterans
e. All of the above are true.
ANS: E REF: 99 NOT: Conceptual

20. Strong supporters of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party include all except which of the
following?
a. Organized labor
b. Environmental groups
c. Trial lawyers
d. Large business groups
e. African American and Latino groups
ANS: D REF: 99 NOT: Conceptual

21. The most important reason for the failure of the Texas Republican Party to gain influence and win
elections until the last couple of decades was
a. they fielded uniformly weak candidates.
b. the bitter memory of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
c. the strong influence of African-American voters.
d. the fact that their presidential candidates were unpopular.
e. the Texas Election Code restricted voter registration to Democrats.
ANS: B REF: 100 NOT: Conceptual

22. In 2004, largely as a result of __________, Republicans gained a majority in the Texas delegation to
the U.S. House of Representatives.
a. redistricting
 b. a gubernatorial election
c. a U.S. Supreme Court decision
d. a ruling by the Texas Secretary of State
e. a large number of Democratic retirements
ANS: A REF: 100 NOT: Conceptual

23. The first major step in the building of the Texas Republican Party was
a. the end of the Civil War.
b. the election of Ronald Reagan.
c. the election of John Tower.
d. the election of Bill Clements.
e. passage of the Twenty-fourth Amendment.
ANS: C REF: 100 | 101 NOT: Factual

24. Primary areas of Republican voting strength in the last several elections include all but which of the
following?
a. The Houston suburbs
b. The Fort Worth area
c. The Northern Panhandle
d. South Central Texas
e. Rural East Texas
ANS: D REF: 102 NOT: Factual

25. Primary areas of Democratic Party voting strength in the last several elections include all but which of
the following?
a. South Texas
b. The Hill Country
c. The Dallas central city
d. Far West Texas
e. San Antonio
ANS: B REF: 102 NOT: Factual

26. Population groups making up the bulk of the Republican Party voting coalition include all except
which of the following?
a. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants
b. Upper middle-class suburbanites
c. Military, active and retired
d. Rural and small town Texans
e. Lower income urban dwellers
ANS: E REF: 102 NOT: Applied

27. In recent years __________ has come to dominate the Republican Party.
a. a large contingent of “moderates”
b. a group of former Democrats
c. a bloc of conservative Christians
d. leadership from the national party
e. the resurgent “Liberal” wing of the party
ANS: C REF: 102 NOT: Applied
Another document from Scribd.com that is
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 Besides the gift of eloquence, William Emerson inherited from his
father (the Reverend Joseph Emerson of Maiden) a love of literature. This
he apparently bequeathed to his son, William, who in turn transmitted it to
his son, the author of Conduct of Life and Representative Men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston on May 25, 1803. His
father, minister of the First Church of that city, was a man of vigorous
intellect, fond of society, and, judging from one of his letters, endowed with
a caustic wit. His mother, Ruth (Haskins) Emerson, was distinguished for
her high-bred manners and tender thoughtfulness.
Severity on the part of parents was thought good for boys in that day.
Ralph never forgot how his father ‘twice or thrice put me in mortal terror by
forcing me into the salt water, off some wharf or bathing-house; and I still
recall the fright with which, after some of these salt experiences, I heard his
voice one day (as Adam that of the Lord God in the garden) summoning me
to a new bath, and I vainly endeavoring to hide myself.’
Left a widow in 1811, with five boys to educate, Mrs. Emerson was
forced to heroic exertions. Her sacrifices made a deep impress on the mind
of the most famous of those boys.
From the Boston Latin School, Emerson went to Harvard College and
was graduated in 1821 ‘with ambitions to be a professor of rhetoric and
elocution.’ After a period of school-teaching, a profession towards which
his attitude was unequivocal (‘Better saw wood, better sow hemp, better
hang with it after it is sown, than sow the seeds of instruction’), he began
his theological studies at Harvard and in due time was ‘approbated to
preach.’ Ill health drove him South for a winter (1826–27), where he saw
novel sights, and made the acquaintance of Achille Murat, son of the
quondam King of Naples. Emerson had Murat for a fellow traveller from
St. Augustine to Charleston: ‘I blessed my stars for my fine companion, and
we talked incessantly.’
On March 11, 1829, Emerson was ordained as colleague of Henry Ware
in the Second Church of Boston and a little later ‘became the sole
incumbent.’ He resigned this advantageous post of labor (September, 1832)
because of doubts about the rite of the Lord’s Supper and the offering of
public prayer. To many observers his career seemed wilfully spoiled by
himself.
With impaired health and in despondency and grief (he had but recently
19
lost his young wife) Emerson tried the effect of a year abroad. He sailed
from Boston and arrived at Malta on February 2, 1833. Thence he
proceeded to Syracuse, Taormina, Messina, Palermo, and Naples. After
visiting the other chief cities of Italy, he journeyed to Paris, which he
admired none the less because he felt out of place there; ‘Pray what brought
you here, grave Sir?’ the moving Boulevard seemed to say. But he had the
opportunity of hearing Jouffroy at the Sorbonne, and of paying his respects
to Lafayette. In London he saw Coleridge. At Edinburgh he learned
Carlyle’s whereabouts, visited him, and found him, ‘good and wise and
pleasant.’ He was unfortunate in his trip to the Highlands (‘the scenery of a
shower-bath must be always much the same’). He called on Wordsworth at
Rydal Mount. In early October he was back at home.
The future was uncertain. Emerson was reluctant to give up the
ministry, and preached from time to time as the chance presented itself. For
some weeks he supplied Orville Dewey’s church in New Bedford, but when
it was intimated that on Dewey’s resignation he might be invited to succeed
him, Emerson made the impossible conditions that he should neither
administer the Communion, nor offer prayer ‘unless he felt moved to do
so.’ He supplied the pulpit of the Unitarian church in Concord during three
months of the pastor’s illness and for three years preached to the little
congregation in East Lexington.
Having cut himself off from the only ‘regular’ mode of life that seemed
open to him, Emerson took up the irregular vocation of lecturer. During the
winter following his return from Europe, he had lectured before the Boston
Society of Natural History. Beginning in January, 1835, he gave a course on
‘Biography’ consisting of six lectures: ‘Tests of Great Men,’
‘Michelangelo,’ ‘Luther,’ ‘Milton,’ ‘Fox,’ and ‘Burke.’ During succeeding
winters he gave ten lectures on ‘English Literature’ (1835–36), twelve
lectures on ‘The Philosophy of History’ (1836–37), ten lectures on ‘Human
Culture’ (1837–38), ten lectures on ‘Human Life’ (1838–39), ten lectures
on ‘The Present Age’ (1839–40). He was now fairly engaged in his new
calling.
Meantime he had fixed on Concord for his permanent home, bought a
house there, married Miss Lydia Jackson of Plymouth, and begun that
career of which one of his biographers has humorously complained, ‘a life
devoid of incident, of nearly untroubled happiness, and of absolute
conformity to the moral law.’
In 1836 there was published anonymously a little volume entitled
Nature. It was Emerson’s first book. His influence as a man of letters begins
at this point. The succeeding volumes consisted in part of lectures which,
having stood the test of public delivery, were now recast in essay form. Not
every essay, however, had its first presentation as spoken discourse.
 On formal public occasions Emerson was often invited to give the
address. There was authority in his utterances. That he was not unlikely to
say something revolutionary seemed to make it the more important that he
should be heard often. He gave the Historical Address at Concord at the
Second Centennial Anniversary, the Phi Beta Kappa Oration at Harvard on
‘The American Scholar’ (August, 1837), and the Address before the Senior
Class in Divinity College (July 15, 1838), which brought down on him the
wrath of Andrews Norton and a shower of remonstrances from Unitarian
ministers who, however, loved him too much to be angry with him.
At the time of the Divinity Hall Address the so-called Transcendental
movement was in full progress. The movement grew in part out of informal
meetings held by a group of liberal thinkers with a view to protesting
against the unsatisfactory state of current opinion in theology and
20
philosophy, and looking for something broader and deeper.
Transcendentalism was an intellectual ferment. Having a philosophical
and religious significance, it was also notable for its effect on social,
educational, and literary matters. Emerson defined it as faith in intuitions. It
has been called an ‘outburst of Romanticism on Puritan ground.’ Certain
historians connect it with German transcendental philosophy. That it was
indigenous to New England appears to be the sounder view. According to a
21
high authority, ‘Emerson’s transcendentalism was native to his mind.... It
had been in the life and thought of his family for generations.’ He was
certainly regarded as the heresiarch.
Like most complex movements Transcendentalism had a grotesque
side. The enthusiasts, in their anxiety to be emancipated from old formulas,
fell victims to ‘the vice of the age,—the propensity to exaggerate the
importance of visible and tangible facts.’ Emerson laughs at them a little:
‘They promise the establishment of the kingdom of heaven and end with
champing unleavened bread or dedicating themselves to the nourishment of
a beard.’
The movement had an ‘organ,’ a quarterly magazine called ‘The Dial,’
the first number of which appeared in July, 1840. George Ripley was the
business manager, Margaret Fuller the editor. It came under Emerson’s care
two years later, and in 1844 was abandoned. An audience large enough to
support the organ could not be found.
Transcendentalism coincided chronologically with several plans for
bettering the condition of the world. ‘We are a little wild here with
numberless projects of social reform. Not a reading man but has his draft of
22
a new community in his waistcoat pocket. I am gently mad myself.’
Emerson was sympathetic with the community experiments at ‘Brook
Farm’ and ‘Fruitlands,’ but not to the extent of joining them. He approved
every wild action of the experimenters, nevertheless he had a work of his
own.
The work consisted in bringing his thought to his public by means of
lectures. He was not overfond of the medium of communication. ‘Are not
lectures a kind of Peter Parley’s story of Uncle Plato, and a puppet show of
the Eleusinian mysteries?’ he asks. It is not recorded what he thought of
that kind of lecturing which may best be described in Byron’s phrase—‘to
giggle and make giggle.’ He frankly (but unenviously) admired the speaker
who could produce instantaneous effects, moving the audience to laughter
or tears. His own gifts were of another sort. When ‘the stout Illinoisian’
after a short trial walked out of the hall Emerson’s sympathies were with
him: ‘Shakespeare, or Franklin, or Esop, coming to Illinois, would say, I
must give my wisdom a comic form,...’
Urged thereto by his generous friend Alexander Ireland of the
Manchester ‘Examiner,’ who took on himself all the business
responsibilities, Emerson (in 1847) made a lecturing trip to England. He
spoke in Manchester, Edinburgh, London, and elsewhere. The lectures were
‘attacked by the clergymen,’ and the attacks met with ‘pale though brave
defences’ by Emerson’s friends. After a few weeks in Paris, then in the
throes of the revolution, the lecturer returned by way of England to
America.
The crisis in the anti-slavery conflict was approaching. Emerson, in
spite of his philosophical attitude towards reformers, became more and
more identified with the Abolitionists. During a political speech at
Cambridge he was repeatedly hissed by students. According to an eye-
witness, he ‘seemed absolutely to enjoy it.’ As late as 1861 he was received
with marked hostility by the audience which gathered at the annual meeting
of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. ‘The Mob roared whenever I
attempted to speak, and after several beginnings I withdrew.’ The breaking
out of the war in a way relieved him. Now people knew where they stood.
His chief source of income was cut off for a time. The public was not in
the mood for lectures such as his. Later he found it possible to resume his
courses, and he continued to lecture effectively until within a few years of
his death.
 Emerson’s principal books are: Nature, 1836; Essays, 1841; Essays,
‘second series,’ 1844; Poems, 1847; Miscellanies, 1849 (lectures and
addresses, together with a reprint of Nature); Representative Men, 1850;
English Traits, 1856; Conduct of Life, 1860; May-Day and Other Pieces,
1867; Society and Solitude, 1870; Letters and Social Aims, 1876; Lectures
and Biographical Sketches, 1884; and Natural History of Intellect, 1893. He
edited a number of Carlyle’s books, contributed several chapters to the
Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli and compiled a poetic anthology,
Parnassus, 1875. The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo
Emerson (edited by C. E. Norton), 1883, contains two hundred of
Emerson’s letters.
In 1863 Emerson was one of the ‘visitors’ to the Military Academy at
West Point. In 1866 he was Phi Beta Kappa orator at Harvard, and the
following year received from his college the degree of LL. D.
From 1867 to 1879 he was an overseer of Harvard. In 1870, before a
little audience of students from the advanced classes, he gave a course on
the ‘Natural History of Intellect,’ the subject in the handling of which he
had hoped to write his master work. One of the surprises of his later life
was his nomination for the office of Lord Rector of Glasgow University by
the independent party (1874). There were two other candidates. Emerson
polled five hundred votes. Disraeli was victor with seven hundred votes.
Emerson’s memory failed gradually, but the defect was not much
noticed until after the shock consequent on the burning of his house (1872).
A trip to Egypt did much to restore his health and he never lost the ‘royal
trait of cheerfulness.’ He died, after a brief illness, on April 27, 1882.

II
EMERSON’S CHARACTER

T praise which Emerson gives to character at the expense of luxurious

surroundings was sincere. His own tastes were very simple. ‘Can anything
be so elegant as to have few wants and to serve them one’s self, so as to
have something left to give, instead of being always prompt to grab?’
Acknowledging himself enmeshed in the conventionalities of ‘civilized’ life
and no more responsible than his fellow victims, he nevertheless did what
he could to follow out his theory. He would at least not be one of the infirm
people of society, who, if they miss any one of their comforts, ‘represent
themselves as the most wronged and most wretched persons on earth.’
Emerson did not live in the woods on twenty-seven cents a week, but he
had no objection to a friend’s living that way if the friend found it
profitable. For himself he would not be ‘absurd and pedantic in reform.’
No characteristic is more marked than his spirit of tolerance. It was not
of a smooth, purring sort, growing out of eagerness to please or
unwillingness to offend, but rather an aggressive tolerance. Emerson would
not merely grant to every man ‘the allowance he takes,’ but would even
force him to take it. He was patient with the most obnoxious of reformers.
And he could be tolerant with those who could tolerate nothing.
With pronounced and original views he had little solicitude to impose
his views on others. He was without egotism. To state the truth as he
apprehended it and to let the world come to his ideas if the world could and
would, contented him. But he had no quarrel with the order of things. His
good humor and smiling patience are manifest in everything he has written.
Emerson held firmly to the doctrine of the brotherhood of man, yet
with no touch of the unctuous fraternizer. He had the rebuffs that all must
encounter who try to break down the partition wall between classes. In an
attempt to solve, according to the Golden Rule, the problem of a servant’s
status in the household, he was thoroughly beaten and laughingly
acknowledged it. He did his share, but the servant refused to fraternize.
He was a good citizen, an excellent neighbor, prompt in the
acknowledgment of all homely duties. His was a large-souled, benignant,
and gracious nature. There was something healing in his mere presence,
though no word was spoken.

III
THE WRITER

E gave sound advice on the art of writing, like a professor of

rhetoric. He commended the sentences that would stand the test of the
voice. This is applying physiology to literature. He laughed at the habit of
exaggeration, though he also said, ‘The superlative is as good as the
positive if it be alive.’ His rules are excellent, and if followed must give
distinction to whatever page of writing they are applied. But while they go
no deeper than other suggestions, they point out the obvious characteristics
of his style.
 For example, Emerson thought clarity all-important. He aimed at it, and
attained it. He believed in the use of the right word, and was dissatisfied
unless it could be found. The right word is always illuminating, and as a
result Emerson’s English is full of surprises. Even when the term employed
shocks by its unexpectedness, we presently feel that after all the choice was
not grotesque. In practice Emerson was no spendthrift of words, that
currency which loses weight and value in the ratio of one’s prodigality, but
delighted in economy. No doubt his style is aphoristic—that is a natural
result of writing aphorisms. But if no less aphoristic, it is far more logical
than is commonly reported. The want of sequence in Emerson’s work has
been exaggerated, often to the point of absurdity.
There are writers who have two distinct literary styles, as they have two
faces, one to be photographed in, and one for natural wear. Emerson had
one style, which was dual-toned, each tone taking the color of his prevailing
thought, and each shading imperceptibly into the other. A dozen pages
picked at random from his best essays will hardly fail to show how
sublimated his diction could be at times. Then does it come near to the line
dividing poetry from prose, from which it presently falls away to the level
of everyday need. Poetic as Emerson’s diction frequently is, it is always
controlled. On the other hand, when it sinks to plain prose it never loses the
air of distinction and breeding.

IV
NATURE, ADDRESSES, AND LECTURES

I the introduction of his first book, Nature, Emerson announces his

favorite doctrine, the necessity of seeing the world through our own eyes, of
being original, not imitative. He then proceeds with his interpretation.
Nature not only exalts man, giving him a pleasure so tonic that it
admonishes to temperance, but also renders him certain services. They may
be classified under Commodity, Beauty, Language, and Discipline. The
first, albeit the lowest, is perfect in its kind; men everywhere comprehend
the ‘steady and prodigal provision’ that has been made for their comfort.
Beauty is the second, and meets a nobler want. ‘Nature satisfies by its
loveliness,’ and ‘without any mixture of corporeal benefit.’ ‘Give me health
and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.’ This is not
enough, there must be a spiritual element. Such element is found in the will
and virtue of man. An act of truth or heroism ‘seems at once to draw to
itself the sky as its temple.’ Beauty in Nature also becomes an object of the
intellect. It reforms itself in the mind, leads to a new creation, and hence
Art.
Nature is the source of language, words being the signs of natural facts.
But ‘every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.’ In brief, ‘the
world is emblematic.’ Nature is a discipline of the understanding, devoting
herself to forming the common-sense. Nature is the discipline of the will,
after which she becomes the ally of Religion. In short, so great is the part
played by Nature in disciplining man that the ‘noble doubt’ perpetually
arises ‘whether the end be not the Final Cause of the Universe; and whether
nature outwardly exists.’
What then? It makes no difference ‘whether Orion is up there in heaven
or some god paints the image in the firmament of the soul.’ Culture has the
uniform effect of leading us to regard nature as a phenomenon, not a
substance. Nature herself gives us the hint of Idealism. The poet teaches the
same lesson. The philosopher seeking, not Beauty, but Truth, dissolves the
‘solid seeming block of matter’ by a thought. Intellectual science begets
‘invariably a doubt of the existence of matter.’ Ethics and religion have the
same effect of degrading ‘nature and suggesting its dependence on spirit.’
Back of all nature, then, is spirit. ‘The world proceeds from the same
spirit as the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior incarnation of God.’ At
present man has not come into his whole kingdom. He depends on his
understanding alone. Let him apply all his powers, the reason as well as the
understanding.
Brief as it is, this little book shows to perfection the richness of
Emerson’s thought, his skill in the apothegm, his economy of phrase, the
poetic cast of his mind, and the beauty of his diction.
Nine addresses and lectures are printed along with Nature in the
definitive edition of Emerson’s writings. The first is the Phi Beta Kappa
Oration, ‘The American Scholar,’ in which Emerson sounds with resonant
tone that note of independence so marked in all his teaching. It was time, he
thought, for the ‘sluggard intellect’ of America to ‘look from under its iron
lids’ and prove itself equal to something more than ‘exertions of mechanical
skill.’ We have been too long the bond slave of Europe.
True emancipation consists in freedom from the idea that only a few
gifted ones of the earth are privileged to learn truth at first hand. Let us not
be cowed by great men.
Emerson notes three influences acting upon the scholar. First, nature,
always with us and taking the impress of our minds. Second, books, which,
noble as they are in theory, have their danger: ‘I had better never see a book
than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit.’ Third, life,
everything which is the opposite of mere thinking. ‘If it were only for a
vocabulary the scholar would be covetous of action. Life is our dictionary.’
Above all, he praises the obscure scholar who without hope of visible
reward, reckoning at true value the seesaw of public whim and fancy,
patient of neglect, patient of reproach, ‘is happy if he can satisfy himself
alone that this day he has seen something truly.’
‘The Divinity Address,’ as it is called, was thought in its day nothing
short of outrageous radicalism. The now well-known Emersonian plea for a
noble individuality is made in terms the most inspiring. He bewails the
helplessness of mankind. ‘All men go in flocks to this saint or that poet,
avoiding the God who seeth in secret.’ Emerson would drive out the spirit
which prompts a man to content himself with being ‘an easy secondary to
some Christian scheme, or sectarian connection, or some eminent man.’ He
would have men follow no one leader, however distinguished or gifted, but
seek truth at first hand, know God face to face. And while he grants that
nothing is of value in comparison with the soul of a good and great man,
even a great man becomes a source of danger if we propose to rest in the
shadow of his achievement rather than develop our own gift.
‘The Method of Nature’ is a rhapsody in praise of the spontaneous and
unreasoning as over against the logical and definite. Nature looks to great
results, not to little ones, to the type rather than the individual.
In ‘Man the Reformer’ Emerson preaches another favorite doctrine, the
necessity of manual work. There is nothing fanciful in his view. He did not
set himself against division of labor. He did not insist that every man should
be a farmer ‘any more than that every man should be a lexicographer.’ His
‘doctrine of the Farm’ is that ‘every man ought to stand in primary relations
with the work of the world.’
This address should be read in connection with the one on ‘The Times,’
which supplements it. The ideal reformer is not he who has some cause at
heart in comparison with which all other causes are naught. The reformer is
the ‘Re-maker of what man has made; a renouncer of lies, a restorer of truth
and good, imitating that great Nature which embosoms us all, and which
sleeps no moment on an old past.’
A reading of this address ought to be followed by a reading of the one
entitled ‘The Conservative.’ As he had advised reformers of the danger to
which they were exposed, he now warns conservatives not to forget that
they are the retrograde party. By their theory of life sickness is a necessity
and the social frame a hospital. Yet in a planet ‘peopled with conservatives
one Reformer may yet be born.’
In the lecture on ‘The Transcendentalist’ Emerson comes to a tempered
defence of his own. He defines the new movement; it is merely Idealism as
it shows itself in 1840—an old thing under a new name. He is very patient
with the Transcendentalists, whose chief idiosyncrasy is that they have
‘struck work.’ ‘Now every one must do after his kind, be he asp or angel,
and these must.’ American literature and spiritual history will profit by the
turmoil. This heresy will leave its mark, as any one will admit who knows
‘these seething brains, these admirable radicals, these talkers who talk the
sun and moon away.’

V
THE ESSAYS, REPRESENTATIVE MEN, ENGLISH
TRAITS, CONDUCT OF LIFE

W the Essays appeared, Emerson found a larger audience. He now

spoke through the medium of a recognized literary form. If all readers do
not read essays, they at least know what they are and stand in no fear of
them. Some buyers may have been tempted by the table of contents. Titles
such as ‘Self-Reliance,’ ‘Compensation,’ ‘Friendship,’ ‘Heroism,’ had an
encouraging sound and promised useful advice.
In the essay on ‘History,’ Emerson reaffirms the doctrine of the unity of
human nature. There is ‘one mind,’ history is its record. What we possess in
common with the men of the past enables us to comprehend and interpret
the actions of the men of the past. The facts must square with our own
experience.
The theme is continued in ‘Self-Reliance.’ As there is one mind
common to all men, and as what belongs to greatness of the Past belongs
also to us, it is suicide to descend to imitation. ‘Speak your latent conviction
and it shall become the universal sense.’ The whole essay is a glowing
exhortation to men to live largely and stand on their own feet, facing the
world with the nonchalance begotten of health, good humor, and the sense
of possession.
In ‘Compensation’ the essayist notes those inexorable forces by which
a balance is kept in the world, the laws by virtue of which ‘things refuse to
be mismanaged long.’ In ‘Spiritual Laws’ he shows the importance of
living the life of nature. Let no man import into his mind ‘difficulties which
are none of his.’ The essay on ‘Love’ is a prose poem in honor of that
passion which ‘makes the clown gentle, and gives the coward heart.’
Following it is the essay on ‘Friendship’ with its austere definitions. ‘I do
not wish to treat friendships daintily, but with roughest courage.’
‘Friendship implies sincerity, and sincerity is the luxury allowed, like
diadems and authority, only to the highest rank.’
Emerson writes on ‘Prudence’ in order to balance those fine lyric
words of Love and Friendship with words of coarser sound. Prudence
considered in itself is naught; but recognized as one of the conditions of
existence, it deserves our utmost attention. It keeps a man from standing in
false and bitter relations to other men. Emerson had no patience with people
who, because they have genius or beauty, expect an exception of the laws of
Nature to be made in their case. Notwithstanding their gifts, they must toe
the mark.
‘Heroism,’ the eighth essay in this volume, contains a definition of the
hero which does not coincide with the popular conception. We are so
accustomed to seeing our heroes crowned with wreaths and overwhelmed
with lecture engagements the day following the act of valor that we are
surprised to read: ‘Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of
mankind.’ Emerson gives a new turn to the old phrase ‘the heroic in
everyday life.’ Life, he says, has its ‘ragged and dangerous front.’ It is full
of evils against which the man must be armed. ‘Let him hear in season that
he is born into a state of war.’ To this ‘militant attitude of the soul’ Emerson
gave the name of heroism. In its rudest form it is ‘contempt for safety and
ease.’
To some readers the essay on ‘The Over-Soul’ is at once the clearest
and the most darkened, the plainest and the most enigmatic of the essays in
this book. But there is no misapprehending the value of this effort to put,
not in rigid scientific terms, but in glowing and lofty imagery, the
dependence of man on the Infinite, the marvel of that Immensity which is
the background of our being. ‘From within or from behind, a light shines
through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the
light is all.’ It is the universal mind by which all being is enveloped and
interpenetrated.
The essay on ‘Circles’ contains this thought: Outside every circle
another may be drawn. Opinion seeks to crystallize at a certain limit, to
insist that there is nothing beyond. The soul bursts these barriers to set new
limits, which in turn are good only for a time. Man must therefore keep
himself always open to the conception of a larger circle. Let him ‘prefer
truth to his past apprehension of truth.’
How to seek truth is the subject of the next essay, ‘Intellect,’ a tribute to
the spontaneous action of the mind. We do not control our thoughts but are
controlled by them. All we can do is to clear away obstructions and ‘suffer
the intellect to see.’ Pursue truth and it avoids you. Relax the energy of your
pursuit and it comes to you; yet the pursuit was as necessary as the
subsequent relaxation.
In the final essay, on ‘Art,’ the large, simple, and homely elements are
praised, the qualities which appeal to universal human nature. In the
paintings of the Old World one thinks to be astonished by something new
and strange, and he is struck by the familiar look. He is reminded of what
he had always known.
The second series of Essays treats of ‘The Poet,’ ‘Experience,’
‘Character,’ ‘Manners,’ ‘Gifts,’ ‘Nature,’ ‘Politics,’ of ‘Nominalist and
Realist;’ there is also a lecture on ‘New England Reformers.’ Emerson
notes the shallow nature of a theory of poetry busied only with externals.
Neither is that poetry which is written ‘at a safe distance from our own
experience.’ The poet is representative. ‘He stands among common men for
the complete man, and apprises us not of his wealth but of the
commonwealth.’
‘Experience’ is in praise of a mode of life which consists in living
without making a fuss about it, filling the time, taking hold where one can
and exhausting the possibilities. Only fanatics say it is not worth while. ‘Let
us be poised, and wise, and our own, to-day. Let us treat the men and
women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are.’
‘Character’ and ‘Manners’ are related studies. There is a moral order in
the world. Nothing can withstand it. ‘Character is this moral order seen
through the medium of an individual nature.’ Society has raised certain
artificial distinctions. But they must be recognized. Society is real, and
grows out of a genuine need. ‘The painted phantasm Fashion casts a species
of derision on what we say. But I will neither be driven from some
allowance to Fashion as a symbolic institution, nor from the belief that love
is the basis of courtesy.’
‘Gifts’ is a fine bit of paradox. ‘The gift, to be true, must be the flowing
of the giver unto me, correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the
waters are at level, then my goods pass to him, and his to me.’ To give
useful things denies the relation. Hence the fitness of beautiful things.
 There is bold imagery in the essay on ‘Nature.’ ‘Plants are the young of
the world, but they grope ever upward toward consciousness; the trees are
imperfect men, and seem to bemoan their imprisonment, rooted to the
ground. The animal is the novice and probationer of a more advanced order.
The men though young, having tasted the first drop from the cup of thought,
are already dissipated: the maples and ferns are still uncorrupt; yet no doubt
when they come to consciousness they too will curse and swear.’ Thus does
Emerson describe that glimpse he had of a ‘system in transition.’
A healthy optimism pervades the essay on ‘Politics.’ In spite of
meddling and selfishness the foundations of the State are very secure.
‘Things have their laws, as well as men; and things refuse to be trifled
with.’ By a higher law property will be protected. The same necessity
secures to each nation the form of governing best suited to it. Yet all forms
are defective. Good men ‘must not obey the laws too well.’ Perfect
government rests on character at last. There are dreamers who do not
despair of seeing the State renovated ‘on the principle of right and love.’
Representative Men consists of lectures on Plato, Swedenborg,
Montaigne, Shakespeare, Napoleon, and Goethe, together with an
introduction on the ‘Uses of Great Men.’
Plato is the man who makes havoc with originalities, the philosopher
whose writings have been for twenty-two hundred years the Bible of the
learned, but who has his defects. Intellectual in aim, and therefore literary,
he attempts a system of the universe and fails to complete it or make it
intelligible.
Swedenborg is the representative of mysticism, great with its power,
weak with its defects.
Out of the eternal conflict between abstractionist and materialist arises
another type of mind, one that laughs at both philosophies for being out of
their depth and pushing too far. He is the sceptic, Montaigne, for example.
The type was peculiarly grateful to Emerson, admiring as he did a man who
talked with shrewdness, was not literary, who knew the world, used the
positive degree, never shrieked, and had no wish to annihilate time and
space.
Shakespeare meets our conception of the Poet, ‘a heart in unison with
his time and country,’ whose production comes ‘freighted with the
weightiest convictions and pointed with the most determined aims which
any man or class knows of in his times.’ He demonstrated the possibility of
translating things into song. The ear is ravished by the beauty of his lines,
‘yet the sentence is so loaded with meaning and so linked with its foregoers
and followers, that the logician is satisfied.’ And he had the royal trait of
cheerfulness.
In Napoleon we have ‘the strong and ready actor’ who in the ‘universal
imbecility, indecision, and indolence of men’ knows how to take occasion
by the beard. His life is an answer to cowardly doubts. Emerson calls
Napoleon ‘the agent or attorney of the middle class of modern society.’ It
was he who showed what could be done by the use of common virtues. His
experiment failed because he had a selfish and sensual aim. In the last
analysis Napoleon was not a gentleman.
Goethe is the other phase of the genius of the age. There is a provision
for the writer in the scheme of things. Nature insists on being reported. To
Man the universe is something to be recorded. The instinct exists in
different degrees. One has the power to ‘see connection where the multitude
sees fragments.’ Lift this faculty to a high degree and you have the great
German poet who well-nigh restored literature to its primal significance.
‘There must be a man behind the book.’ ‘The old Eternal Genius who built
the world has confided himself more to this man than any other.’ Goethe is
the type of culture. Here, too, is his defect. For his devotion is not to pure
truth, but to truth for the sake of culture.
Representative Men was succeeded by English Traits, a volume in
which Emerson taught his countrymen more about England than they had
hitherto known or fancied. Histories, statistical reports, treatises on British
art and British manufactures, are useful and sometimes dreary reading; they
give us facts heaped on facts. It is a relief to put them down and take up
English Traits in order to learn what we have been reading about.
Through Emerson’s eyes we can see this little island ‘a prize for the
best race,’ its singular people, chained to their logic, willing ‘to kiss the
dust before a fact,’ strong in their sense of brotherhood, yet fond each of his
own way, incommunicable, ‘in short every one of these islanders an island
in himself.’ They have a ‘superfluity of self-regard’—which is a secret of
their power; they are assertive, crotchety, wholly forgetful of ‘a cardinal
article in the bill of social rights,’ that every man ‘has a right to his own
ears;’ nevertheless Emerson concludes (and an Englishman would assure
him no other conclusion was possible) they are the best stock in the world.
Here is the typical islander as Emerson paints him. ‘He is a churl with a soft
place in his heart, whose speech is a brash of bitter waters, but who loves to
help you at a pinch. He says no, and serves you, and your thanks disgust
him.’
 There are paragraphs and chapters on the Aristocracy, the Universities,
Religion, Literature, and the Press, that is, the ‘Times.’ Every page glitters
with wit. Every apothegm contains the full proportion of truth and untruth
which sayings of that sort are wont to contain. Says Emerson: ‘The gospel
the Anglican church preaches is, ‘“By taste are ye saved.”’ Yet the more
one reflects on this monstrous statement, the more is he astonished at the
amount of truth in it.
The volume entitled Conduct of Life has a fine rough vigor. Here are
displayed to advantage Emerson’s robust habit of mind, searching analysis,
vivacity and picturesqueness of expression, epigrammatic skill, homely
plain sense, and lofty idealism. The first essay, ‘Fate,’ is an energetic and
striking performance. One needs the optimism of its last paragraphs to
counteract the grim terror of the earlier ones. Seldom has the relentless
ferocity of Circumstance, Fate, Environment, been set forth in terms equally
emphatic. The companion essay, ‘Power,’ is a study of the influence of
brute force (and its compensations) in life and history. Emerson shows the
value of the ‘bruiser’ in politics, trade, and in society. This leads to the third
subject, ‘Wealth.’ Money must be had if only to buy bread. Nature insults
the man who will not work. ‘She starves, taunts, and torments him, takes
away warmth, laughter, sleep, friends and daylight, until he has fought his
way to his own loaf.’ But what men of sense want is power, mastery, not
candy; they esteem wealth to be ‘the assimilation of nature to themselves.’
To all this there must be a corrective; it is discussed in the essay on
‘Culture.’ Nature ruins a man to gain her ends, makes him strong in things
she wants done, weak otherwise, and then robs him of his sense of
proportion so that he becomes an egotist. Culture restores the balance.
Culture rescues a man from himself, ‘kills his exaggeration.’ The simpler
means to it are books, travel, society, solitude; and there are nobler ones,
not the least of which is adversity. The discussion is continued in the
practical essay on ‘Behavior’ and lifted to the highest plane in the essay on
‘Worship.’ The whole state of man is a state of culture, ‘and its flowering
and completion may be described as Religion or Worship.’ For all its beauty
this chapter will not please many people. They may take refuge in
‘Considerations by the Way,’ which shows the ‘good of evil,’ or in the fine
essay on ‘Beauty’ or the ironical little closing piece called ‘Illusions.’

VI
THE POEMS
M paragraphs in Nature and the Essays struggle in their prose
environment as if seeking a higher medium of expression. Emerson’s
command of poetic materials was extraordinary, though it fails to justify the
claims sometimes made for him. He could be wilfully careless in respect to
technique. There are moments when no cacophonous combination terrifies
him. Then will he say his say though the language creak.
He had published freely in ‘The Dial,’ where he met his own little
audience, but when the question arose of putting his verses in the
pretentious form of a book Emerson hesitated. Only after much
deliberation, continued through four years, did he come finally to a
decision.
His capital theme is Nature, ‘the inscrutable and mute.’ ‘Woodnotes,’
‘Monadnock,’ ‘May-Day,’ ‘My Garden,’ ‘Sea-Shore,’ ‘Song of Nature,’
‘Nature,’ ‘The Snow Storm,’ ‘Waldeinsamkeit,’ ‘Musketaquit,’ ‘The
Adirondacs,’ are varied renderings of the subject. Among the lines which
haunt the memory, take for example this description of the sea:—

The opaline, the plentiful and strong,

Yet beautiful as is the rose in June,

* * * * *

Purger of earth, and medicine of men;

Creating a sweet climate by my breath,
Washing out harms and griefs from memory,
And, in my mathematic ebb and flow,
Giving a hint of that which changes not.

Splendid imagery and rich coloring mark the fine passages in ‘May-
Day’ describing the advance of summer:—
 As poured the flood of the ancient sea
Spilling over mountain chains,
Bending forests as bends the sedge,
Faster flowing o’er the plains,—
A world-wide wave with a foaming edge
That rims the running silver sheet,—
So pours the deluge of the heat
Broad northward o’er the land,
Painting artless paradises,
Drugging herbs with Syrian spices,
Fanning secret fires which glow
In columbine and clover-blow,

* * * * *

The million-handed sculptor moulds

Quaintest bud and blossom folds,
The million-handed painter pours
Opal hues and purple dye;
Azaleas flush the island floors,
And the tints of heaven reply.

Leaving to one side the mere external shows of the world, and calling
in science to aid imagination, the poet strikes out stanzas like these from the
‘Song of Nature:’—

I wrote the past in characters

Of rock and fire the scroll,
The building in the coral sea,
The planting of the coal.

And thefts from satellites and rings

And broken stars I drew,
And out of spent and aged things
I formed the world anew;
 What time the gods kept carnival,
Tricked out in star and flower,
And in cramp elf and saurian forms
They swathed their too much power.

‘Hamatreya,’ the exquisite ‘Rhodora,’ and the musical allegory ‘Two

Rivers’ are important as showing the part played by Nature in Emerson’s
verse.
Certain poems repeat (or anticipate) the ideas of the essays. ‘Brahma,’
for example, is an incomparable setting of the doctrine of the universal soul
or ground of all things:—

Far or forgot to me is near;

Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.

‘The Sphinx’ announces, in a sphinx-like manner it must be

acknowledged, though with rare beauty in individual lines, the doctrine of
man’s relation to all existences, comprehending one phase of which man
has the key to the whole. ‘Uriel’ is a declaration of the poet’s faith in good
out of evil. ‘The Problem’ teaches the imminence of the Infinite:—

The hand that rounded Peter’s dome

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome
Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew;—
The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Rich in thought and abounding in genuine poetic gold are ‘The World-
Soul,’ ‘The Visit,’ ‘Destiny,’ ‘Days’ (Emerson’s perfect poem),
‘Forerunners,’ ‘Xenophanes,’ ‘The Day’s Ration,’ and the ‘Ode to Beauty.’
‘Merlin’ and ‘Saadi’ treat of the poet and his mission. The one is a
protest against the tinkling rhyme, an art without substance; the other exalts
the calling of the bard, but warns him that while he has need of men and
they of him, the true poet dwells alone. Together with these suggestive
verses should be read the posthumous fragment originally intended for a
23
masque.
Of his occasional and patriotic poems the ‘Concord Hymn,’ sung at the
dedication of the battle monument in 1837, must be held an imperishable
part of our young literature. The winged words of the first stanza are among
the not-to-be-forgotten things, and there is rare beauty in the second
stanza:—

The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

For the Concord celebration of 1857 Emerson wrote the ‘Ode’

beginning

O tenderly the haughty day

Fills his blue urn with fire;

and for the ‘Jubilee Concert’ in Music Hall, on the day Emancipation went
into effect, the ‘Boston Hymn,’ with the bold stanzas:—

God said, I am tired of kings,

I suffer them no more;
Up to my ear the morning brings
The outrage of the poor.

Think ye I made this ball

A field of havoc and war,
Where tyrants great and tyrants small
Might harry the weak and poor?

The best of Emerson’s patriotic poems is the ‘Voluntaries,’ containing

the often quoted and perfect lines:—
 So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, Thou must,
The youth replies, I can.

The personal poems are ‘Good-Bye,’ ‘Terminus,’ ‘In Memoriam,’

‘Dirge,’ and ‘Threnody.’ The last of the group is the poet’s lament for his
first-born, the ‘hyacinthine boy’ of five years, who died in 1842. It is hardly
worth the while to compare these exquisite verses with some other poem
born of intense sorrow with a view to determining whether they are greater,
or less. Their wondrous beauty is as palpable as it is unresembling.
Comparisons little befit Emerson the poet. His muse was wayward.
Extreme eulogists do him injury by applying to him standards that were
none of his. They forget how he said of himself that he was ‘not a poet, but
a lover of poetry and poets, and merely serving as a writer, etc., in this
empty America before the arrival of poets.’ For the extravagancies of the
extremists the tempered admirers find themselves regularly lectured, as if
they were children who must have it explained to them that Emerson was
not a Keats or a Shelley, or a Hugo.
Emerson as frequently gets less than he deserves as more. What
niggardly praise is that from the pen of an eminent living English man of
letters who can only suppose that Emerson ‘knew what he was about when
he wandered into the fairyland of verse, and that in such moments he found
nothing better to his hand!’ But the ‘Threnody,’ ‘Monadnock,’ ‘May-Day,’
‘Voluntaries,’ and ‘The Problem,’ whatever else may be true of them, are
not the work of a man who found nothing better to his hand.

VII
LATEST BOOKS

F volumes remain to be commented on. The first, Society and Solitude

(so called after the initial paper), is a group of twelve essays entitled
‘Civilization,’ ‘Art,’ ‘Eloquence,’ ‘Domestic Life,’ ‘Farming,’ ‘Works and
Days,’ ‘Books,’ ‘Clubs,’ ‘Courage,’ ‘Success,’ and ‘Old Age.’ They have
mostly a practical bent. That on ‘Books’ doubtless gives an account of
Emerson’s own reading, adequate as far as it expresses his literary
preferences, inadequate respecting completeness. For example, Emerson
must have read George Borrow, of an acquaintance with whom he
repeatedly gives proof, but these lists contain no mention of Lavengro or
Romany Rye. Here too will be found his famous heresy about the value of
translations, but not so radically stated by Emerson as it is sometimes stated
by those who propose to attack Emerson’s position.
Letters and Social Aims (a volume forced from him by the rumor that
an English house proposed to reprint his early papers from ‘The Dial’)
covers topics as diverse as, on the one hand, ‘Social Aims,’ ‘Quotation and
Originality,’ ‘The Comic,’ and on the other, ‘Poetry and Imagination,’
‘Inspiration,’ ‘Greatness,’ ‘Immortality.’ There are also essays on
‘Eloquence,’ ‘Resources,’ ‘Progress of Culture,’ and ‘Persian Poetry.’
Lectures and Biographical Sketches consists of nineteen pieces, among
which will be found ‘Historic Notes of Life and Letters in New England,’
‘The Superlative,’ and the brilliant sketches of Thoreau, of Ezra Ripley, and
of Carlyle.
Miscellanies (not to be confounded with the volume of 1849 bearing
the same title) contains a number of papers and addresses on political
topics, and is indispensable to the student of Emerson’s life. Here will be
found his speeches on John Brown, on the Fugitive Slave Law, on
Emancipation in the West Indies, on American Civilization, on Lincoln, and
that inspiring lecture, ‘The Fortune of the Republic.’
Natural History of Intellect and Other Papers is made up of lectures
from the Harvard University course (1870–71) and earlier courses, and a
sheaf of papers from ‘The Dial,’ mostly on ‘Modern Literature.’ He who
deplores the curtness of the note on Tennyson in English Traits will be glad
to seek comfort in this earlier tribute. Yet the comfort may prove to be less
than he would like.

* * * * *
Emerson’s audience is large and varied. Let us consider a few among
the varieties of those who are attracted by his genius and the charm of his
personality.
To certain hardy investigators Emerson is not a mere man of letters
whose thought, radiantly clothed, takes the philosophical form, he is a
philosopher almost in the strict sense. They find a place for him in their
classification. They know exactly what ideas, derived from what pundits,
have come out with what new inflection in his writings. They have done for
Emerson more than he could do, or perhaps cared to do, for himself; they
have given him a system.
 All this is important and valuable. No little praise is due to results
worked out with so much courage and critical acumen. Whether the
conclusions are quite true is another question.
Doubtless, too, there are readers who, taking their cue from the class
just mentioned, find their self-love flattered as they turn the pages of the
Essays and the Conduct of Life. Not only, in spite of dark sayings here and
there, does ‘philosophy’ prove easier and more delightful than they were
wont to think, but their estimate of their own mental powers is immensely
enlarged.
There are the critics of letters whose function is interpretative, and
whose influence is restraining. Solicitous to do their author justice, they are
above all solicitous that injustice shall not be done him by overpraise. They
bring proof that Emerson was not a precursor of Darwin, that he was
inferior to Carlyle, that he was not a poet, that he was never a great and not
always a good writer, that he was apt to impose on his reader as a new truth
an old error in ‘a novel and fascinating dress,’ that he was even capable of
writing words without ideas.
But the motives which draw and bind to him the great majority of
Emerson’s readers are connected with literature rather than philosophy or
criticism. A prerogative of the man of letters is to be read both for what he
says and for the way he says it. In the case of Emerson his thought may not
be divided from the verbal setting. ‘He can never get beyond the English
language.’ ‘No merely French, or German, or Italian reader will have the
24
least notion of the magic of his diction.’
Perhaps in the long run they get the most out of Emerson who read him
not for stimulus, for his militant optimism, for the shock his fine-phrased
audacities give their humdrum opinions, for his uplifting idealism (all of
which they are sure to get and profit by), but who read him for literary
pleasure, for downright good-fellowship, and for the humor that is in him.
That he attracts a large audience of this (seemingly) unimportant class is
enough to show how little danger there is that Emerson will be handed over
to the keeping of the merely erudite and bookish part of the public.
It is well to remember that he had no intention of being so disposed of.
When he said, ‘My own habitual view is to the well being of students or
scholars,’ he was careful immediately to explain that he used the word
‘student’ in no restricted sense. ‘The class of scholars or students ... is a
class that comprises in some sort all mankind, comprises every man in the
best hours of his life.’ He pictures the newsboy entering a train filled with
men going to business. The morning papers are bought, and ‘instantly the
entire rectangular assembly, fresh from their breakfast, are bending as one
man to their second breakfast.’ This was Emerson’s student body, this was
the audience he aimed to reach.
Did he reach this body? It is believed that he did, if not always directly,
then vicariously. He was compelled as a matter of course to speak in his
own way—the impossible thing for him was to do violence to his genius.
Emerson invented the phrase, ‘the man in the street.’ Now it is notorious
that the man in the street cares little about the ‘over-soul.’ The mere
juxtaposition of the two expressions is comic. But Emerson did not talk of
the over-soul all the time. He had a Franklin-like common-sense and a
pithiness of speech which are captivating. Perhaps in magnifying his
idealism we have neglected to do justice to his mundane philosophy.

FOOTNOTES:
19
Ellen (Tucker) Emerson was but twenty years of age at the time of her death.
Emerson first saw her in December, 1827. They were married about two
years later.
20
Cabot: Emerson, i, 244.
21
G. W. Cooke: An Historical and Biographical Introduction to accompany
T D as reprinted in numbers for The Rowfant Club [Cleveland], 1902.
22
Emerson to Carlyle, Oct. 30, 1840.
23
‘The Poet,’ printed in the appendix of the definitive edition of Emerson’s
Poems.
24
Richard Garnett.
 VII
Edgar Allan Poe

REFERENCES:

R. W. Griswold: ‘Memoir of the Author’ prefixed to the

Works of Edgar A. Poe, vol. iii, 1850.
E. C. Stedman: Edgar Allan Poe, 1881.
J. H. Ingram: Edgar Allan Poe, his Life, Letters, and
Opinions, 1880.
G. E. Woodberry: Edgar Allan Poe, ‘American Men of
Letters,’ fourth edition, 1888.
J. A. Harrison: Life and Letters of Edgar Allan Poe
[1902–03].
Emile Lauvrière: Edgar Poe, sa Vie et son Œuvre,
étude de psychologie pathologique, 1904.

I
HIS LIFE

Poe was of Irish extraction. His great-grandfather, John Poe, came to

America about 1745 and settled near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. John Poe’s
son David (known in the annals of Baltimore as ‘old General Poe’)
rendered notable services to his country during the Revolution. Lafayette
remembered him well and during a visit to Baltimore in 1824 asked to be
taken to the place where Poe was buried. ‘Ici repose un cœur noble,’ said
Lafayette as he knelt and kissed the old patriot’s grave.
Of General Poe’s six children, the eldest, David, was to have been bred
to the law, but his tastes led him first to the amateur and then to the
professional stage. He married a young English actress, Mrs. Elizabeth
(Arnold) Hopkins. They had three children, William, Edgar, and Rosalie.
Edgar (afterwards known as Edgar Allan) was born in Boston,
Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809.
The young family suffered the petty miseries incident to the life of
strolling players, and became at one time very poor. The circumstances of
David Poe’s death and the place of his burial are unknown. When Mrs. Poe
died at Richmond, Virginia, in December, 1811, Edgar was taken by Mrs.
John Allan, the wife of a highly respected merchant of that city, and was
brought up as a child of the house.
The Allans were in England from 1815 to 1820. During this time Poe
was placed at Manor House School, Stoke Newington. He afterwards
attended the English and Classical School in Richmond and on February 14,
1826, matriculated at the University of Virginia. His connection with the
University ceased in December of the same year. He left behind him a
reputation for marked abilities, but he is said to have lost caste by his
recklessness in card playing. Allan positively refused to pay the youth’s
gambling debts, which amounted to twenty-five hundred dollars.
Placed in Allan’s counting-house, Poe was unhappy and rebellious, and
finally disappeared. He declared in after years that he went abroad to offer
his services to the Greeks. What he really did was to enlist in the United
States army under the name of Edgar A. Perry. During the summer of 1827
he was with Battery H of the First Artillery at Fort Independence, Boston.
In August of that year he published Tamerlane and Other Poems, by a
Bostonian. The edition was small and the pamphlet has become one of the
rarest of bibliographical curiosities.
Battery H was sent to Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, in October, 1827,
and a year later to Fortress Monroe, Virginia. At some time during this
period Poe must have made his whereabouts known to the Allans. Mrs.
Allan, who was tenderly attached to Poe, may have succeeded in bringing
about an understanding between the youth and his foster father. When she
died (in February, 1829) Poe lost his best friend.
Allan, however, did what he could to forward the young man’s newest
ambition, which was to enter the Military Academy at West Point. He paid
for a substitute in the army and wrote letters to men who were influential in
such matters, with the result that Poe was enrolled at the Academy on July
1, 1830. He gave his age as nineteen years and five months. His
prematurely old look led to the invention of the story that the appointment
was really procured for Poe’s son, but the son having died the father had
taken his place.
While the question of the appointment was pending, Poe spent some
time in Baltimore and there published his second volume of verse, Al
Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829).
The accounts of his life at the Academy are not so divergent as to be
contradictory. One classmate noted the youth’s censorious manner: ‘I never
heard him speak in terms of praise of any English writer, living or dead.’
Excelling in French and mathematics, Poe by intentional neglect of military
duty brought about his own dismissal. He was court-martialled and left
West Point on March 7, 1831. He had previously taken subscriptions among
his friends for a new book of verse. It was published in New York (1831)
under the title of Poems, ‘second edition,’ and was dedicated to ‘the U. S.
Corps of Cadets,’ who are said to have been disappointed at finding in its
pages none of the local squibs with which the author had been wont to
amuse them.
Poe is next heard of in Baltimore, where he seems to have made his
home with his father’s sister, Mrs. Maria Clemm, a widow with one child,
Virginia. In 1833 ‘The Saturday Visiter’ of Baltimore offered two prizes—
one hundred dollars for a story, fifty for a poem. Poe submitted a
manuscript volume entitled ‘Tales of the Folio Club,’ and was given one
award for his famous ‘MS. Found in a Bottle.’ Had not the conditions of the
contest precluded giving both prizes to the same person, he would have
received the other award for his poem ‘The Coliseum.’
Through John P. Kennedy, one of the judges in the contest, Poe came
into relations with T. W. White, the proprietor of ‘The Southern Literary
Messenger,’ published at Richmond. His contributions were heartily
welcomed. White then invited Poe to become his editorial associate. The
offer was accepted and Poe went to Richmond. Mrs. Clemm and Virginia
followed, and in May, 1836, Poe was married to his cousin. A private
marriage is said to have taken place at Baltimore the preceding September.
The arrangement entered into by White and Poe was most propitious.
The proprietor of the ‘Messenger’ had obtained the services of a young man
with a positive genius for the work in hand,—a young man who was able to
contribute such tales as ‘Berenice,’ ‘Morella,’ ‘Hans Pfaall,’
‘Metzengerstein,’ besides poems, miscellanies, and caustic book-criticisms.
On the other hand, Poe had, if a small, at least a regular income. He could
not buy luxury with a salary of five hundred and twenty dollars, but it was a
beginning, and an increase was promised. Moreover, he was in the hands of
a man who regarded him with affection no less than admiration.
Unfortunately the arrangement was not to last. Poe had become the victim
25
of a hereditary vice. Whether he drank much or little is of less
consequence than the fact that after a period of indulgence he was wholly
unfitted for work. Once when Poe was temporarily in Baltimore, White
wrote him that if he returned to the office it must be with the understanding
that all engagements were at an end the moment he ‘got drunk.’ Kennedy
explained Poe’s leaving the ‘Messenger’ thus: He was ‘irregular, eccentric,
and querulous, and soon gave up his place.’
From Richmond, Poe went to New York, attracted by some promise in
connection with a magazine. He lived in Carmine Street, and Mrs. Clemm
contributed to the family support by taking boarders. In July, 1838, was
published The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. A month later Poe
removed to Philadelphia.
He contributed to annuals and magazines and had a hand in a piece of
hack-work, The Conchologist’s First Book (1839). This same year he
became assistant editor of ‘Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine and American
Monthly,’ a periodical owned by the actor, William E. Burton, and held his
position until June, 1840. The irregularity and querulousness which
Kennedy had remarked led to misunderstandings. How the two men
differed in policy becomes plain from a letter to Poe in which Burton says:
‘You must, my dear sir, get rid of your avowed ill feelings towards your
brother authors.’ There was a quarrel, and Poe, who had some command of
the rhetoric of abuse, described Burton as ‘a blackguard and a villain.’
The year 1840 was notable in the history of American letters, for then
appeared the first collected edition of Poe’s prose writings, Tales of the
Grotesque and Arabesque. The edition, of seven hundred and fifty copies,
was in two volumes and contained twenty-five stories, among them
‘Morella,’ ‘William Wilson,’ ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,’ ‘Ligeia,’
‘Berenice,’ and ‘The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion’.
Poe, a born ‘magazinist,’ cherished the ambition of editing a periodical
of his own in which, as he phrased it, he could ‘kick up a dust.’ He secured
a partner and actually announced that ‘The Penn Magazine’ would begin
publication on January 1, 1841. Compelled to postpone his project, he
undertook the editorship of ‘Graham’s Magazine,’ a new monthly formed
by uniting the ‘Gentleman’s,’ which Graham had bought, and ‘The Casket.’
From February, 1841, to June, 1842, Poe contributed to every number of the
new magazine, printing, among other things, ‘The Murders in the Rue
Morgue,’ ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,’ and ‘The Masque of the Red
Death.’ Griswold succeeded him in the editorial chair. Poe gave as a reason
for resigning his place ‘disgust with the namby-pamby character of the
magazine.’ In the hope of bettering his fortune, he sought a place in the
Philadelphia Custom House, but was unsuccessful.
Notwithstanding frequent set-backs, he had it in his power at any time
to attract public notice. In 1843 he won a hundred-dollar prize for his story
‘The Gold-Bug,’ printed in the ‘Dollar Newspaper,’ and he lectured with
success on ‘The Poets and Poetry of America.’ But the field was barren and
Poe determined on going to New York. Within a week after his arrival in
that city (April, 1844) he printed in ‘The Sun’ his famous ‘Balloon Hoax.’
In October he began work on ‘The Evening Mirror,’ Willis’s paper, and on
January 29, 1845, ‘The Raven’ appeared in its columns and was the poetical
sensation of the day. The next month he lectured on American Poetry in the
library of the New York Historical Society. Dissatisfied with the ‘Mirror,’
he accepted a proposition from C. F. Briggs to become one of the editors of
‘The Broadway Journal.’ Later Poe became the sole editor, and for a brief
time enjoyed the ambition of his life, the control of a paper of his own. He
is said to have doubled the circulation in the four months during which he
filled the editorial chair. Unfortunately he lacked capital and could by no
means secure it. ‘The Broadway Journal’ stopped publication.
While editing the ‘Journal’ Poe was invited to read an original poem
before the Boston Lyceum. He gave a juvenile piece, and when criticised,
defended himself with curious want of tact. That he might lose no
opportunity to alienate his contemporaries, he began publishing in ‘Godey’s
Lady’s Book’ a series of papers entitled ‘The Literati,’ in which he gave
free rein to his propensity to ‘kick up a dust.’ The irony of his situation
might well excite pity. He who most loathed a combination of literature and
fashion plates was driven for support to the journals which made such a
combination their chief feature.
At the close of 1845 was published The Raven and Other Poems, the
first collected edition of Poe’s verse. Occasionally the poet was seen at
literary gatherings, where he left the most agreeable impression by his
manner, appearance, and conversation. But his fortunes steadily declined,
and in 1846, after he had moved to Fordham, a suburb of New York, he fell
into desperate straits. His frail little wife, always an invalid, grew steadily
worse. An appeal was made through the journals in behalf of the
unfortunate family. Mrs. Poe died on January 30, 1847. Her husband’s grief
was so poignant that it is with amazement one reads of the strange affairs of
the heart following this event.
 Recovering from the severe illness which followed his wife’s death,
Poe resumed work. He lectured and he wrote. Eureka was published early
in 1847. The consuming desire to own and edit a magazine was no less
consuming, and he made some progress towards founding ‘The Stylus.’
The summer of 1849 Poe spent in Richmond and was received with
cordiality. He proposed marriage to Mrs. Shelton of that city, a wealthy
widow, somewhat older than himself, and was accepted. On the last of
September he started for New York to get Mrs. Clemm and bring her to
Richmond. He was found almost unconscious on October 3 at Baltimore, in
a saloon used as a voting place, was taken to a hospital, and died at five
o’clock on the morning of October 7, 1849.

II
POE’S CHARACTER

P ’ wilfulness in marring his own fortunes bordered on fatuity. At an age

when men give over youthful excesses merely because they are
incongruous, he had not so much as begun to ‘settle down.’ The appropriate
period for sowing wild oats is brief at best. Nothing justifies an undue
prolongation. It were absurd to take the lofty tone with a man of genius
because at the age of seventeen he carried to extreme the indulgences
characteristic of the youth of his time, or because at eighteen he ran away
from a book-keeper’s desk to join the army. Impulsiveness and vacillation
are not wholly bad things at eighteen; but at thirty they are ridiculous.
Poe’s abuse of liquor and opium has long been well understood, and the
question of his responsibility handed over to the decision of the medical
faculty. If many of his troubles sprang from this abuse, many more arose
out of his unwillingness to recognize the fact that he was a part of society,
not an isolated and self-sufficient being. As a genius he was entitled to his
prerogative. He was also a man among men and under the same obligations
to continued fair dealing, courtesy, patience, and forbearance as were his
fellows. In these matters he was notoriously deficient. No one could have
been more eager for praise and sympathy than Poe. He asked for both and
received in the measure of his asking. Men of influence helped him
ungrudgingly. They lent him money, commended his work, defended him at
first from the criticism of those who thought they had suffered at his hands;
but it was to no purpose. By his perversity and capriciousness (as also by an
occasional display of that which in a less highly endowed man than he
would have been called malevolence) Poe alienated those who were most
inclined to befriend him. Nevertheless he wondered that friends fell away.
With a powerful mind, a towering imagination, a natural command of
the technical part of literature, which he improved by tireless exercise, and
with no little spontaneity of productive energy, Poe remained a boy in
character, self-willed, spoiled, ungrateful, petulant. The sharper the lash of
fortune’s whip on his shoulders, the more rebellious he became.
The affair of the Boston Lyceum illustrates Poe’s singular disregard of
what is expected of men supposed to know the ways of the world. A
Southern paper commenting on this affair said that Poe should not have
gone to Boston. The implication was that as Poe had been attacking the
New Englanders for years he could not expect fair treatment. Poe had
indeed often attacked the ‘Frogpondians,’ as he enjoyed calling them, and
they invited him to come and read an original poem on an occasion of some
local importance. This may have been a mark of innocence on the part of
the ‘Frogpondians;’ it can hardly be construed as indicative of narrowness
or prejudice. Poe accepted their hospitality apparently in the spirit in which
it was offered, read one of his old poems, and declared afterward that he
wrote it before completing his tenth year, and that he considered it would
answer sufficiently well for an audience of Transcendentalists: ‘It was the
best we had—for the price—and it did answer remarkably well.’
The episode is of no importance save as it illustrates Poe’s attitude
towards the game of life. Poe expected other men to play the game strictly
according to the rules, for himself he would play the game in his own way.
And he did. But he could not go on breaking the rules indefinitely. They
who had his real interest at heart told him as much. Simms, the novelist,
wrote Poe in July, 1846, that he deeply deplored his misfortunes—‘the more
so as I see no process for your relief but such as must result from your own
decision and resolve.’ The letter should be read in its entirety. It does honor
to the writer’s manly nature, and it throws no little light on the enigmatic
character of Poe.

III
THE PROSE WRITER

P ’ genius was essentially journalistic. In his prose writing he aimed at an

immediate effect, and he knew exactly how to produce it. The journalist
does not in general write with a view to the influence his paragraph will