Society and Solitude
By . Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co.
LORD CLARENDON said of Lord Falkland, Secretary of State to Charles I., that as his house was within ten miles of Oxford, “ the most polite and accurate: men of that university frequently resorted and dwelt with him, as in a college situated in purer air; so that his house was a university in less volume, whither they came not so much for repose as study.”
It is a comfort to think that fate still makes ample provision for the suburbs of university towns, and that Concord is but about ten miles from Cambridge. For many years the two were “ half-shire-towns ” of the same county, and Emerson, as Knight of the half-shire, fitly shared the intellectual jurisdiction of his compeer, the President of the College. Indeed, he made his house, like that of Falkland, “a college in purer air ” ; and so inseparable has been the influence of his life from that of his books, that the whole has supplied for us “a university in less volume.” It is the enviable lot of those who were pupils in this benignant seminary, that they can never know how much of their instruction came from the text-books and how much from the teacher. Thus the literary work of Emerson eludes the criticism of contemporaries, and awaits a colder audience which shall award its meed.
It is now ten years since the “ Conduct of Life ” was published. Most of the present essays, though printed later, were written earlier than that volume, and some of them were read as lectures a quarter of a century ago. Is it, then, from early association that some of us find, in them, or seem to find, a fresher inspiration than in the “ Conduct of Life ” ? We fancy that they show more variety, and a more distinct organic life in each essay, while they are no less finished and scarcely less concentrated. There is a provoking trait about some of his later lectures, and they seem like stray sheets caught up at random ; or to have what botanists call premorse roots, that seem as if bitten off arbitrarily at the end, and can stop anywhere. But these have each a beginning, a middle, and an end, so that they seem alive and graceful, as well as nutritious and good. Literary ease and flexibility do not always advance with an author’s years; as his thoughts deepen they sometimes press harder and harder on the vehicle of expression, and though his sympathies may mellow, his style does not. He is then in danger of becoming like the giant in the Norse Fulda, who was choked by Iris own wisdom and needed a siphon for his relief. Far from our beloved Emerson be such a peril ! but meanwhile there is a charm in the easier flow of his earlier essays, even though they be burdened with less weighty thought.
We sigh at not finding in this volume that admirable lecture on “The Natural Method of Intellectual Philosophy,” which many of us heard with such delight a dozen years ago, and which came nearer to a positive system than anything which Emerson has ever printed. Possibly it forms tire basis for his present course on “The Natural History of Intellect,” and if so it may well be withheld. There was in it material enough lor twenty lectures, without doubt. But there is no such compensation for the loss of the essay on “War,” first read as a lecture in 1838, and printed eleven years later in Miss Peabody’s “ Æsthetic Papers.” There are other omissions ; but if, on the other hand, we looked through Emerson’s whole works, we could find nothing to take procedure of the essays here printed on “ Books,” on “ Eloquence,” on “ Works and Days,” and on “ Society and Solitude.” They are not surpassed by the “ Method of Nature,” nor by “ Man Thinking.” It is not enough to say that such papers as these constitute the high-water mark of American literature; it is not too much to say that they are unequalled in the literature of the age. Name, if you can, the Englishman or the Frenchman who, on themes like these, must not own himself second to Emerson. Bearing these in his hand, the resolute American traveller can fearlessly unfurl tire stars and stripes in presence of the Académic itself, were it necessary, and yet not feel himself to be swerving from the traditional modesty of his race.