EMERSON 175 
tion,” ‘‘ Morals,” and ‘‘Transcendency ; ” but it is all 
a plea for transcendency. J am reminded of the story 
of an old Indian chief who was invited to some great 
dinner where the first course was ‘‘succotash.” 
When the second course was ready the old Indian 
said he would have a little more succotash, and when 
the third was ready he called for more succotash, 
and so with the fourth and fifth, and on to the end. 
In like manner Emerson will have nothing but the 
“spiritual law ” in poetry, and he has an enormous 
appetite for that. Let him have it, but why should 
he be so sure that mankind all want succotash? 
Mankind finally comes to care little for what any 
poet has to say, but only for what he has to sing. 
We want the pearl of thought dissolved in the wine 
of life. How much better are sound bones and a 
good digestion in poetry than all the philosophy and 
transcendentalism in the world! 
What one comes at last to want is power, mas- 
tery ; and, whether it be mastery over the subtleties 
of the intellect as in Emerson himself, or over the 
passions and the springs of action, as in Shakespeare, 
or over our terrors and the awful hobgoblins of hell 
and Satan, as in Dante, or over vast masses and 
spaces of nature and the abysms of aboriginal man, 
as in Walt Whitman, what matters it? Are we 
not refreshed by all? There is one mastery in 
Burns, another in Byron, another in Rabelais, and 
in Victor Hugo, and in Tennyson; and though the 
critic has his preferences, though he affect one more 
than another, yet who shall say this one is a poet 
