THE GENIUS OF EMERSON.
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And mount to Paradise By the stairway of surprise."
He opened and, in a certain sense, brought to a culmination, that foremost era in American literature which claims Bryant, Hawthorne, Holmes, Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier. In all his writings, standing out clearly against the groundwork, above the beauty of his thoughts, we see the man. Never writing for a sect, church or party, but for all, he brought joy and gladness to every household.
From many quarters comes the cry that we are drifting toward anarchy; that truth, virtue and honesty are not to be found in our public men; that love for gold is working destruction the most terrible; that the poor are become poorer and the rich richer; that corporations have no souls and that with the increase of our population can come nothing but suffering and deprivation. Amidst all this gloom and dark foreboding it is cheering to think of the luminous optimism of Emerson. While he saw the evil tendencies of our civilization, he always had confidence in the genius of the American people. He could see above and beyond the evils, the grand underlying principles of our government—principles for which three times in the history of our country the best blood of the nation was shed—principles which every true American, to-day and forever, will risk his life to preserve. No one believed more heartily in her opportunities, her powers and her destiny. He believed that truth is mighty and will prevail. Encouragingly he says, "look up, hitch your wagon to a star." All his writings inspire the reader to live a nobler, purer life. He has widened the horizon of purity and holiness. He is a man who would make a great art, a great science or a great nation.
Emerson has attained in the hearts and minds of our people the highest place that love and admiration can give or genius
claim. And now one of England's greatest sons, with decided superciliousness, would shatter the reputation of the man whom we esteem so highly. You have all read the criticisms of Matthew Arnold on Emerson—read how he tries to measure true genius by a rigid rule, assuming that the great American was not a poet because he lacked melody and rythm, was not a philosopher because he founded no system, and that he did not possess the essential elements of a great writer, simplicity, sensuousness and passion. True, Emerson did not spend his days and nights in making an externally perfect verse, but in putting between the words and over the lines sparkling thoughts and noble truths, making each sentence full and rounded, an essay in itself. In the words of Lowell, his diction, "was like home-spun cloth of gold." Emerson was not so narrow minded as to confine to some exacting philosophical system, the meager knowledge of the present, meager when compared with the vast field's still unexplored, but believed that each man should reach out in a straight line after knowledge and give the result of his superior talents to the world, unbiased and unhampered by any system.
But after all Arnold is only a critic and they are surely a fallible race. Johnson, the king among such, once said that, "he would hang a dog that would read the Lycidas of Milton twice." Yet posterity has a way of its own in passing sentence upon greatness. Men who have inspired others to lead nobler, purer lives, who have struggled for better laws and better morals, who have made the skies seem brighter and this world more cheerful because they have lived, who have lessened the burdens of earth and made heaven seem nearer, these the future will call great and as a bright star in the firmament of God will be the name of Emerson.