walker, but I used to find myself kept at a stretch when I walked with him in the Concord woods, when he was past seventy. Miss Elizabeth Hoar and one or two other persons who remembered him from his youth have told me that he seemed to them more erect in carriage, better "set up," in later years. A life so much in the open air no doubt had gradually strengthened an originally feeble habit of body. Emerson was never quite willing to acknowledge the fact of sickness or debility.CABOT, JAMES ELLIOT, 1887, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. II, p. 649.

I am not aware of any material change in my estimate of Mr. Emerson's character from the time of my earliest acquaintance with him. It is possible, however, that my judgment of him may be, in some degree, unconsciously tinged by my recollections of the lovely qualities of his mother, from whom, it always seemed to me, he inherited many of his most striking traits. If I were asked to express in the fewest words what it was in Mr. Emerson that most impressed me, I should answer without hesitation, his reverent faith in God; his pure and blameless life. HASKINS, DAVID GREENE, 1887, Ralph Waldo Emerson, His Maternal Ancestors with Some Reminiscences of Him, pp. 137, 139.

The great Emerson, whose discourses, as a rule, were far above the comprehension of the common multitude, was not a good speaker, and certainly made no attempts to amuse, but, on the contrary, aimed to instruct his audiences, told me himself that he once lectured to seven people at Montreal. This he did to console me for the fact that I had mentioned to him, that I had lectured to about thirty in Philadelphia. Eloquent as he was with his pen, he was abnormally shy and retiring, and did not shine in conversation, or greatly care to indulge in it. Like Wordsworth, whom he visited. at Rydal Mount, and of whom he spoke

to me,

He did not much or oft delight,

To season his fireside with personal talk, though he could break through his natural undemonstrativeness upon occasion, when conversing with a companion after his own. heart, with whom he could exchange ideas rather than re-echo commonplaces. MACKAY, CHARLES, 1887, Through the Long Day, vol. II, pp. 143, 151.

Emerson's elocution has been frequently described, and most hearers attest its magical effect. It was, or seemed, the purest natural endowment; if it owed anything to art, it was the ars celare. It gave the impression of utter absorption in the theme, and indifference to all rhetoric and all oratorical stratagem. Composed and undemonstrative as any any listener, almost motionless, except for a slight vibration of the body, seldom even adapting his voice to his matter, he seemed to confide entirely in the justness of his thought, the felicity of his language, and the singular music of his voice.-GARNETT, RICHARD, 1888, Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Great Writers), p. 169.

He established certain iron rules for the management of the pilgrims. No railing or wilful rudeness or uncleanness would he permit. In the autumn of 1871, some years after the arrival of the more wild and uncouth Reformers had ceased, a man short, thick, hairy, dirty, and wild-eyed came to our door and asked to see Mr. Emerson. I showed him into the parlor and went to call my father, and returned with him, the guest had so wild a look. It appeared that he came from Russia, and very possibly the distance he had had to travel may have accounted for his very late arrival. He stood with his hat on. I knew that that hat would have to come off before spiritual communication could be opened, but wondered how it could be got off, as the man looked determined. My father saluted him, asked him to be seated and offered to take his hat. He declined and began to explain his mission. My father again asked him to take his hat off, which proposition he ignored and began again to explain his advanced views. Again the host said, "Yes, but let me take your hat, sir." The Russian snorted some impatient remark about attending to such trifles, and began again, but my father firmly, yet with perfect sweetness, said, "Very well, then, we will talk in the yard," showed the guest out, and walked to and fro with him under the apple-trees, patiently hearing him for a few minutes; but the man who was a fanatic, if not insane, and specially desired that a hall be secured for him, free of charge, to address the people, soon departed, shaking off the dust of his feet against a man so

bound up in slavish customs of society as Mr. Emerson.-EMERSON, EDWARD WALDO, 1888, Emerson in Concord, p. 209.

It now becomes my duty to unveil and present to the British public, and to the strangers within our gates who can appreciate greatness, the statute of a great man [Carlyle]. Might I append to these brief remarks the expression of a wish, personal perhaps in its warmth, but more than personal in its aim, that somewhere upon this Thames Embankment could be raised a companion memorial to a man who loved our hero, and was by him beloved to the end? I refer to the loftiest, purest, and most penetrating spirit that was ever shown in American literature-to Ralph Waldo Emerson, the life-long friend of Thomas Carlyle.-TYNDALL, JOHN, 1890, Personal Recollections of Thomas Carlyle, New Fragments, p. 397.

Well do I remember his tender, shrewd, wise face as I first saw it. Almost before we were alone he made me forget in whose presence I stood. He was merely an old, quiet, modest gentleman, pressing me to a seat near him, and all at once talking about college matters, the new gymnasium, the Quarterly, and from these about books and reading and writing; and all as if he continually expected as much as he gave. And so it was ever after; no circumstances so varying but, whether I saw him alone or in the presence of others, there was the everready welcome shining in his eyes, the same manifest gentleness and persistent preference of others.-WOODBURY, CHARLES J., 1890, Emerson's Talks with a College Boy, Century Magazine, vol. 39, p. 621.

He had a penetrating, eager, questioning look. His head was thrust out as if in quest of knowledge. His gaze was steady and intense. His speech was laconic and to the purpose. His direct manner suggested a wish for closer acquaintance with the mind. His very courtesy, which was invariable and exquisite in its way, had an air of inquiry about it. There was no varnish, no studied grace of motion or demeanor, no manifest desire to please, but a kind of wistfulness as of one who took you at your best and wanted to draw it out. He accosted the soul, and with the winning persuasiveness which befits friendliness on human terms. There was a certain shyness which indicated the modesty which is born of the spirit.-FROTHINGHAM, OC

TAVIUS BROOKS, 1891, Recollections and Impressions, p. 166.

We, who knew him, talked with him and loved him, know that he found the kingdom of heaven on earth. He found God reigning in his babe's nursery; at the postoffice; when he pruned his apple-trees, and when he took the train for Boston. We want you, who have not seen him, to believe that the man of ideas was thus a human man, a man with men. He was not a dreamer. He was an actor. He taught us how to live; and he did so because he lived himself. HALE, EDWARD EVERETT, 1893-1900, Addresses and Essays, p. 257.

Emerson's manner in the lecture-room, like that which distinguished him in private was one of perfect serenity. For any emotion that he displayed, there might have been no audience before him. He always read his lectures, and in a grave monotone, for the most part, with rarely any emphasis. Much in them must have been "caviare to the general," but ever and anon some striking thought, strikingly expressed, produced a ripple of response from the audience, and the close of his finely discriminating lecture on Napoleon was followed by several rounds of applause, all this confirming what he once said to me, that such lecturing triumphs as fell to him were achieved by "hits." To the public success or failure of his lectures he appeared to be profoundly indifferent, a mood to which his experience in American lecture-rooms had habituated him. He told me, with perfect equanimity, that at home he was accustomed to see hearers, after listening to him a little, walk out of the room, as much as to say that they had had enough of him. At his Manchester lectures the audiences were numerous and attentive. Whatever they might fail to understand, they evidently felt that this was a man of genius and of high and pure mind.-ESPINASSE, FRANCIS, 1893, Literary Recollections and Sketches, p. 157.

In his later days Emerson's voice failed him for lecturing, and still later and more entirely his memory of words. His hesitation for the right word had to be met by guesses. At Longfellow's grave, having to speak of him, very touching was the failure

"Our dear friend, whose name at this moment I cannot recall."- LINTON, WILLIAM JAMES, 1894, Threescore and Ten Years, p. 216.

heaven. First class in genius and in character, he was able to discern the face of the times. To him was entrusted not only the silver trump of prophecy, but also that sharp and two-edged sword of the Spirit with which the legendary archangel Michael overcomes the brute Satan. In the great victory of his day, the triumph of freedom over slavery, he has a record not to be outdone and never to be forgotton.-HOWE, JULIA WARD, 1899, Reminisences, 18191899, p. 292.

He lectured in forty successive seasons before a single "lyceum"-that of Salem, Mass. His fine delivery unquestionably did a great deal for the dissemination of his thought. After once hearing him, that sonorous oratory seemed to roll through every sentence that the student read; and his very peculiarities, the occasional pause accompanied with a deep gaze of the eyes, or the apparent hesitation in the selection of a word, always preparing the way, like Charles Lamb's stammer, for some stroke of mother-wit, - these identified themselves with his personality, and secured his hold. He always shrank from extemporaneous speech, though sometimes most effective in its use; he wrote of himself once as "the worst known public speaker, and growing continually worse;" but his most studied remarks had the effect of off-hand conviction from the weight and beauty of his elocution.-HIGGINSON, THOMAS WENT WORTH, 1899, Contemporaries, p. 9.

It was my fortune to be sent to Concord, at Mr. Redpath's suggestion, to see if Mr. Emerson would come in and give us a lecture. I went out and met the dear old man at the Manse House. He greeted me very cordially and gladly accepted the invitation to come in and lecture. The date was fixed; it was advertised in the newspapers; tickets were put out at from one to three dollars, and many of the Boston ladies sold them. The afternoon for the lecture came. The Old South was filled with as choice an audience of the blue blood of Boston as has ever assembled in that old chapel. Mr. Emerson came in and was introduced by Father Neil. As he began reading his lecture the audience was very attentive. After a few moments he lost his place, and his grand-daughter, sitting in the front row of seats, gently stepped toward him and reminded him that he was lecturing. He saw at once that he

was wandering, and with the most charming, characteristic, apologetic bow he resumed his place-an incident that seemed to affect the audience more than anything that could possibly have occurred. A few moments later he took a piece of manuscript in his hand, and turning around with it, laid it on a side table. Just then one of the audience said to me (I think it was Mrs. Livermore or Mrs. Howe), "Please have the audience pass right out," and rushing up to Mr. Emerson, said, "Thank you so much for that delightful lecture," then turning around, waved the audience to go out. He probably had been speaking about fifteen minutes. The audience passed out, many of them in tears. It was one of the most pathetic sights that I ever witnessed. It did not attract very much attention just then, and I never read any account of it in the newspapers. I suppose it was out of love and veneration for the dear man that the incident did not receive public mention, but there must be a great many still alive who were witnesses of that memorable scene. It was Ralph Waldo Emerson's last public appearance.-POND, JAMES BURTON, 1900, Eccentricities of Genius, p. 331.

There was more congruity in the presence and conversation of Emerson with the ideal one naturally formed of him than we usually find in our personal intercourse with famous writers. I think this is partly the cause of the powerful impression he made upon his contemporaries. His manner of life, the man himself, was at one with his thought; his thought at one with his expression. There were no paradoxes, none of the supposed eccentricities of genius, to furnish the intolerable ana for future

literary scavengers. He spoke of Nature not to add an elegant ornament to his pages; he lived near to her. In meeting him the disappointments, if any there were, one found in himself. For he measured men so they became aware of their own stature, not oppressively, but by a flashing, inward self-illumination, because he placed something to their credit that could not stand the test of their own audit.-ALBEE, JOHN, 1901, Remembrances of Emerson, p. 4.

The pure, simple-minded, high-feeling man, made of the finest clay of human nature; the one man who, to Carlyle, uttered a genuine human voice, and soothed the profound glooms of dyspeptic misanthropy; a little too apt, no doubt, to

fall into the illusion of taking the world to be as comfortably constituted as himself; and apt also to withdraw from the ugly drama in which the graver passions are inextricably mixed up with the heroic and the rational, to the remote mountaintops of mystical reflection. Yet nobody could be more fitted to communicate the "electric shock" to his disciples, because of his keen perception of the noble elements of life in superiority to all the vulgar motives and models of thought, which were not the less attractive because he could not see his way to any harmonious or consistent system of thought.-STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1901, Emerson, National Review.

That evening Mr. Sanborn took me over to Emerson's house. We awaited the poet in the large drawing room, which, in fact, was rather a sitting-room. It was not yet dark, and the lamps were not lighted. We came forward as he entered. It was, indeed, the real, the living Emerson. Where another man would hardly have been recognized in the dim light, with him everything was accented. His tall, slightly stooped figure, his long neck and sloping shoulders, his strong features and wellformed head, came out with prominence in the quiet light. But it was not this so much as it was his large but simple manner that impressed me. I felt myself in the presence of a truly great man.- EATON, WYATT, 1902, Recollections of American Poets, Century Magazine, vol. 64, p. 845.

His

Emerson was then [1853] in the vigor of middle age, just turned of fifty, in good health and fine color, with abundant dark brown hair, no beard, but a slight whisker on each cheek, and plainly dressed. form was never other than slender, after I knew him, and his shoulders, like Thoreau's, had that peculiar slope which had attracted notice in England, where the New England type of Anglo-Norman was not so well known as it has since become. His striking features were the noble brow, from which the hair was carelessly thrown back, though not long, and the mild and penetrating blue eye, smiling, in its social mood, in the most friendly manner, but capable, on rare occasions, of much severity.

SANBORN, FRANKLIN BENJAMIN, 1903, The Personality of Emerson, p. 8.

POETRY

Emerson himself is a northern hyperborean genius-a winter-bird with a clear,

saucy, cheery call, and not a passionate summer songster. His lines have little melody to the ear, but they have the vigor and distinctness of all pure and compact things. They are like the needles of the pine "the snow-loving pine"-more than the emotional foliage of the deciduous trees, and the titmouse becomes them well.-BURROUGHS, JOHN, 1873, Birds of the Poets, Scribner's Monthly, vol. 6, p. 572.

Here was more religious inspiration than had entered into more than a very few modern volumes of poetry, with the fervor and power of the old prophets. There was, also, that rich fulness of the best of the mystics, when they most truly rise into the height of spiritual attainment. These two tendencies were wonderfully combined in some of the poems, making them unique in modern poetry. Such a volume, however, could not soon grow into popular favor, and perhaps can never have more than a limited circle of admirers. It is a book for poets and thinkers more than for the people; yet some of these poems will ever remain the admiration of all lovers of nature and of moral inspiration.-COOKE, GEORGE WILLIS, 1881, Ralph Waldo Emerson, His Life, Writings and Philosophy, p. 114.

I can't imagine any better luck befalling these States for a poetical beginning and initiation than has come from Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, and Whittier. Emerson, to me, stands unmistakably at the head, but for the others I am at a loss where to give any precedence. Each illustrious, each rounded, each distinctive. Emerson for his sweet, vital-tasting melody, rhym'd philosophy, and poems as amber-clear as the honey of the wild bee he loves to sing.— WHITMAN, WALT, 1881, Autobiographia, April 16, p. 184.

Here we conclude what we had to say by way of setting forth and elucidating Emerson's right to be ranked among the true poets of this country and of all countries, of this age and of many ages to come. We think it indisputable. Most likely his audience at any one time will be comparatively small. In a single halfgeneration the platitudes of a Tupper found more admirers than Emerson will have found for ages. But be his auditors many or few, they will surely be "fit." If voters were to be weighed, not counted, his would be a heavy vote. And, in the