Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works

arterly Review;" Visi

"Representative Men

Plato; or, the Phi

borg; or, the Mystic.

; or, the Poet. VI. Nap

, the Writer.-Contribu

Fuller

ew." Emerson wrote the "Editor's Address," but took no further active part in it, Theodore Parker being the r

es of lectures. Mr. Alexander Ireland, who had paid him friendly attentions during his earlier visit, and whose impressions of him in the pulpit have been given on a previous page, urged his coming. Mr. Conw

n audience. He would like to read lectures before institutions or friendly persons who sympathize with his studies. He has had a good many decisive tokens of interest from British men and women, but he doubts whether

had been arranged for him. Mr. Ireland's account of Emerson's visits and the interviews between him and many distinguished persons is full of interest, but the interest largely relates to the persons visited by Emerson. He lectured at Edinburgh, where his liberal way of thinking and

rk-worthy, the loftiest, and most heroic mere man that ever appeared." Emerson has a lecture on the superlative, to which he himself was never add

he ever passed such inhuman judgments on the least desirable of his new acquaintances as his friend Carlyle has left as a bitter legacy behind him. Carlyle's merciless discourse about Coleridge and Charles Lamb, and Swinburne's carnivorous lines, which take a barbarous vengeance on him for his offence, are on the level of political rhetoric rather than

, which furnished him materials for a lecture on Fra

consider the names he has selected as typical, and the ground of their selection. We get his classification of men considered as leaders in thought and in action. He shows his own affinities and repulsions, and, as everywhere, writes his own biography, no matter about whom or what he is talking. There is hardly any book of his better worth study by those who wish to underst

idol, Shakespeare next. But he says of all great men: "The power which they communicate is not theirs. Wh

s much as Carlyle doe

od," and "darlings of t

the Fifth, of Spain,

d Plantagenet,

ing all men by fascination into tributaries and supporters of his power. Sword and staff, or talents sword-like or staff-like, carry on the work of the world. But I find him greater when he can abolish himself and al

now more, now less, and pass away; the qualities remain on another brow.-All that respects the individual is tem

But Plato takes the first place in Emerson's gallery of six grea

Koran, when he said, 'Burn the libraries; for their value is in this book.' Out

him with plagiarism.-But the inventor only knows how to borrow. When we are praising Plato, it seems we are praising quotations from Solon and Sophron and Philolaus. Be

ral statement when he learns from what wide fiel

s the probable source of some of the dee

nor are others, others; nor am I, I.' As if he had said, 'All is for the soul, and the soul is Vishnu; and animals and stars are transient paintings; and light is whitewash; and durations are deceptive; and form is imprisonment; and heaven itself a decoy.'" All of which we see reproduced in Emerson's poem "Brahma."-"The country of unity, of immovable institutions, the seat of a philosophy delighting in abstractio

test German, the lovingest disciple, could never tell what Platonism was; indeed

him, with his "soliform eye and his boniform soul,"-the two quaint adjectives being from the mint of

es to the Christian symbol, instead of to the moral sentiment, which carries innumerable christianities, humanities, divinities in its bosom." The men of science will smile at the exorbitant claims put forward in behalf of Swedenborg as a scientific discoverer. "Philosophers" will not be pleased to be reminded that Swedenborg called them "cockatrices,"

verses in

e their faul

nowed throug

lasted good

annot blea

nmake what

yes to fin

hundred d

e five immortal poets referred to are Homer

re landscape. No bird ever sang in these gardens of the dead. The entire want of poetry in so transcendent a mind betokens the disease, and like a hoarse voice in a beautiful person,

rg at a distance, but seen nearer, he

or the personal regard which he has for Montaigne by the story of his first acquaintance with him

man with such abundance of thought: he is never dull, never insincere,

re the book that seems less written. It is the language of conversation transfer

e or time, but is stout and solid; tastes every moment of the day; likes pain because it makes him feel himself and realize things; as we pinch ourselves to know that we are awake. He keeps the plain; he rarely mounts or sinks; likes to feel solid ground and the

ams and his dreamers, he must have found a great relief in getting into "the middle of the road" with Montai

icism to affirmative and negative belief, the philo

son naturally gives expression to his leading i

me and country."-"There is nothing whimsical and fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted wi

great mass of old plays existing in manuscript and reproduced from time to time on the stage. He borrowed in all directions: "A great poet who appears in illiterate times absorbs into his sphere all the light which is anywhere radiating." Homer, Chaucer, Saadi, felt that all wit wa

are, is obvious enough. He was arguing in his own cause,-not defending himself, as if there were some charge of plagiaris

."-"Shakespeare is as much out of the category of eminent authors as he is out of the crowd. A good reader can i

Shakespeare, he weighs him with the rest of mankind, and fin

d on his command into entertainment. H

lite, German, and Swede, he says: "It must be conceded that these are half views of half men. The world still wants its poet-priest, who shall not

hould have much that is new to say abou

es of this Essay

roughout the middle class everywhere, has po

" As Plato borrowed, as Shakespeare borrowed, as Mirabeau "plagiarized every good thought, every good word that

ng. "He had a directness of action never before combined with such comprehension. Here was a man who i

s a titular king everybody

gitator, the destroyer of prescription, the internal improver, the liberal, the radical, t

g in high colors the outline of his moral deformities, Emerson gives us

ve penetrated through

e not dealing with a

rogue; and he fully d

, or a sort of

ower and existence of those who served him; and the universal cry of F

unced, gave expression in the terrible satire in which he pictured France as a fiery courser

verte aux talens" is the expression f

hard work. It flows rather languidly, toys with side issues as a stream loiters round a nook in its margin, and finds an excuse for play in every pebble. Still, he has praise enough for his author. "He has clothed our modern existence with poetry."-"He has said the best things about nature that ever were said.-He flung into literature in his Mephistopheles the first organic figure that has been added for some ages, and which will remain

guide to reconstruct the Ess

rson's account of her conversation and extracts from her letters and diaries, with his running commentaries and his interpretation of her mind and chara