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American Men of Letters
EDITED BY
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.
"_Thou wert the morning star among the living, Ere thy fair light had fled: Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving New splendor to the dead._"
American Men of Letters
* * * * *
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
BY
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
1891
NOTE.
My thanks are due to the members of Mr. Emerson's family, and the other friends who kindly assisted me by lending interesting letters and furnishing valuable information.
The Index, carefully made by Mr. J.H. Wiggin, was revised and somewhat abridged by myself.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
BOSTON, November 25, 1884.
CONTENTS.
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I.
1803-1823. To AET. 20.
Birthplace.--Boyhood.--College Life.
CHAPTER II.
1823-1828. AET. 20-25.
Extract from a Letter to a Classmate.--School-Teaching.--Study of Divinity.--"Approbated" to Preach.--Visit to the South.--Preaching in Various Places.
CHAPTER III.
1828-1833. AET. 25-30.
Settled as Colleague of Rev. Henry Ware.--Married to Ellen Louisa Tucker.--Sermon at the Ordination of Rev. H.B. Goodwin.--His Pastoral and Other Labors.--Emerson and Father Taylor.--Death of Mrs. Emerson.--Difference of Opinion with some of his Parishioners.--Sermon Explaining his Views.--Resignation of his Pastorate.
CHAPTER IV.
1833-1838. AET. 30-35.
Section I. Visit to Europe.--On his Return preaches in Different Places.--Emerson in the Pulpit.--At Newton.--Fixes his Residence at Concord.--The Old Manse.--Lectures in Boston.--Lectures on Michael Angelo and on Milton published in the "North American Review."--Beginning of the Correspondence with Carlyle.--Letters to the Rev. James Freeman Clarke.--Republication of "Sartor Resartus."
Section 2. Emerson's Second Marriage.--His New Residence in Concord.--Historical Address.--Course of Ten Lectures on English Literature delivered in Boston.--The Concord Battle Hymn.--Preaching in Concord and East Lexington.--Accounts of his Preaching by Several Hearers.--A Course of Lectures on the Nature and Ends of History.--Address on War.--Death of Edward Bliss Emerson.--Death of Charles Chauncy Emerson.
Section 3. Publication of "Nature."--Outline of this Essay.--Its Reception.--Address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society
CHAPTER V.
1838-1843. AET. 35-40.
Table of contents (by pages)
- 1: Ralph Waldo Emerson by Oliver Wendell Holmes
- 2: Conferred upon Emerson by Harvard University
- 3: His Reception at Concord on his Return CHAPTER XII1873 1878
- 4: Daughter of the Reverend Edward Bulkeley
- 5: And a Fellow of Saint John's Colledge in Cambridge
- 6: The second Reverend Joseph Emerson
- 7: And the father of Ralph Waldo Emerson
- 8: Such was the descent of Ralph Waldo Emerson
- 9: With more indescribable lustre
- 10: Being about seven years younger than Waldo
- 11: George Stillman Hillard was his rival
- 12: Kirkland left little to be remembered by
- 13: And writing the Memoir of Buckminster
- 14: And William Emerson Vice President
- 15: The headquarters of Unitarianism
- 16: Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston
- 17: Emerson had the Lawyer's side to advocate
- 18: That blue nankeen sounds strangely
- 19: Emerson received the second prize
- 20: Fascinating John Gourdin together as room mates
- 21: And from Unitarianism to Christian Theism
- 22: Married to Ellen Louisa Tucker
- 23: Emerson expressed himself in this parting discourse
- 24: Had I not been called by my office to administer it
- 25: Death of Charles Chauncy Emerson
- 26: And the earnest thought pervading his discourse
- 27: Emerson preached there several months
- 28: The Robinson Crusoe of Walden Pond
- 29: In 1834 he lectured on Michael Angelo
- 30: Emerson had the same lofty aim as Milton
- 31: You asked in your note concerning Carlyle
- 32: I consulted James Munroe Co
- 33: Emerson delivered an Historical Discourse
- 34: Emerson delivered in Boston a Lecture on War
- 35: He writes to Carlyle Your last letter
- 36: In the chapter entitled Commodity
- 37: And Nature is the symbol of spirit
- 38: But the prose loses nothing by the comparison
- 39: Himself become a creator in the finite
- 40: Treated this singular semi philosophical
- 41: The worm Mounts through all the spires of form
- 42: Cooke says truly of this oration
- 43: Was reduced to a minute fraction of a fraction of humanity
- 44: Action is with the scholar subordinate
- 45: Dartmouth College Address Literary Ethics
- 46: He listened while Jehudi read the opening passages
- 47: The doctrine of inspiration is lost
- 48: Hardly a Christian institution
- 49: If Emerson was the moving spirit
- 50: Demonology in Lectures and Biographical Sketches
- 51: If any rumor of the former discourse had reached Dartmouth
- 52: Emerson sometimes rises in the midst of his general serenity
- 53: The Oration shows the same vein of thought as the letter
- 54: But tendency appears on all hands
- 55: But parched corn and a house with one apartment
- 56: He said hard things to the reformer
- 57: The materialist insists on facts
- 58: Channing opened his mind to Mr
- 59: Is not commonly called a Transcendentalist
- 60: Society also has its duties in reference to this class
- 61: To be called 'The Transcendentalist
- 62: As thus 'The Boston Transcendentalist
- 63: I cannot bid you quit 'The Dial
- 64: That freedom from household routine
- 65: What does Rome know of rat and lizard
- 66: Emerson has attempted the impossible
- 67: We might borrow Goethe's language about Spinoza
- 68: Whose income in ordinary years is six per cent
- 69: He believed in American institutions
- 70: Emerson's second series of Essays was published in 1844
- 71: Flowers and fruits are always fit presents
- 72: Your salad shall be grown from the seed
- 73: And will die but it shall not ferment
- 74: In 1846 Emerson's first volume of poems was published
- 75: Emerson wrote the Editor's Address
- 76: To which also Plato was debtor
- 77: 'The whole world is but a manifestation of Vishnu
- 78: Montaigne talks with shrewdness
- 79: Shakespeare is the only biographer of Shakespeare
- 80: After all that Carlyle had written about Goethe
- 81: And William Henry Channing each took a part
- 82: Every barbarous impediment to women
- 83: Sons of greedy and ferocious pirates
- 84: Used to roll crumbs with both hands
- 85: Emerson was a member of the Saturday Club from the first
- 86: On the Centennial Anniversary of the poet's birth
- 87: But 'tis almost chemistry at last
- 88: Thoreau had many rare and admirable qualities
- 89: Imbecility in the vast majority of men at all times
- 90: The antidotes against this organic egotism are
- 91: After reading what Emerson says about the masses
- 92: Conferred upon Emerson by Harvard University
- 93: The Adirondacs is a pleasant narrative
- 94: Pure doctrine always bears fruit in pure benefits
- 95: But here is the whole poem TERMINUS
- 96: I will underscore it for italics
- 97: The discourse on Eloquence is more systematic
- 98: And have found there is a Concord under old Concord
- 99: And which he attended very regularly
- 100: Though there is no alchemy in this Lecture
- 101: About 1871 I made up a party for California
- 102: Forbes wrote the letter just given
- 103: Was once in the cars with Emerson
- 104: Emerson 'was extraordinary temperate in his Diet
- 105: To the Subscribers to the Fund for the Rebuilding of Mr
- 106: Emerson's credit in the Concord National Bank
- 107: Yours and theirs affectionately
- 108: George Willis Cooke's Ralph Waldo Emerson
- 109: This volume contains eleven Essays
- 110: For the essential thing is heat
- 111: If to follow this native bias is the first rule
- 112: The reader who would finish this Essay
- 113: He alone was immovable on the question of force
- 114: Lectures and Biographical Sketches
- 115: Plutarch had a religion which Montaigne wanted
- 116: And will merely enumerate all that follow the Plutarch
- 117: The Historical Discourse in Concord
- 118: With committees of vigilance and safety
- 119: His prose is often highly poetical
- 120: In my pleached garden watched the pomp
- 121: Or Keats's Ode to a Nightingale
- 122: Great be the manners of the bard
- 123: Without using the Rosetta stone of Swedenborg
- 124: Emerson was a realist in the best sense of that word
- 125: A humpback may add picturesqueness to a procession
- 126: If we allow that Emerson is not a born singer
- 127: It is such a poem as Collins might have written
- 128: These are the chapter on The Pathetic Fallacy
- 129: Emerson shows himself in his verse
- 130: That his words and phrases arrange themselves
- 131: Emerson looked at the rose admiringly
- 132: Emerson in answer to my questions
- 133: Rockwood Hoar remained by the coffin below
- 134: From which I extract two eloquent and inspiring passages
- 135: Immediately before the benediction
- 136: Haskins then pronounced the benediction
- 137: Emerson's personal appearance was that of a scholar
- 138: And the singing master was gathering his pupils
- 139: Vast debility and procrastination
- 140: Emerson himself among the number
- 141: Emerson inherited the traditions of the Boston pulpit
- 142: Emerson was an essayist and a lecturer
- 143: For forty years Emerson lectured and published lectures
- 144: A lover and admirer of Emerson
- 145: It is interesting to observe that Montaigne
- 146: Scorn trifles comes from Aunt Mary Moody Emerson
- 147: When he is thinking of Mettus Curtius
- 148: And spoke of mensality and cyathity tableity
- 149: Of planting themselves on their instincts
- 150: He was an intellectual rather than an emotional mystic
- 151: The song of Braham is an Irish howl
- 152: For there's nae waile choice o' wigs on Munrimmon Moor
- 153: And all their botany is Latin names
- 154: Melioration is another favorite word of Emerson's
- 155: Emerson accepted his martyrdom with meek submission
- 156: He has been foolishly accused of Pantheism
- 157: Over the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
- 158: We can dare to predict of Emerson
- 159: So transparent was the life of Emerson
- 160: Anti Slavery in Emerson's pulpit
- 161: Matthew quotation about America
- 162: His translation of Homer quoted
- 163: Recollections of their relations
- 164: First association with the Emerson name
- 165: John service to scholarship
- 166: Scotland Emerson's visit and preaching
- 167: Second marriage and Concord home
- 168: Comparison with contemporaries
- 169: Lectures and Biographical Sketches
- 170: Natural History of the Intellect
- 171: Occasional and Miscellaneous Pieces
- 172: Connected with the Emerson family
- 173: Recollections of Emerson's boyhood
- 174: John Gaillard Keith and Robert
- 175: Jest erroneously attributed to
- 176: Italy Emerson's first visit
- 177: President of Dartmouth College
- 178: Middlesex Agricultural Association
- 179: Charles Eliot editor of Correspondence
- 180: Elizabeth Palmer her Aesthetic Papers
- 181: Pythagoras imagery quoted
- 182: Aid in rebuilding the Old Manse
- 183: The Emerson's preaching tour
- 184: Swedenborgians liking for a paper of Carlyle's
- 185: Transcendentalism and Temperance