3;6 EMERSON THE LECTURER, 



his eloquence in his books and you will perchance miss it, but 

 meanwhile you will find that it has kindled all your thoughts. 

 For choice and pith of language he belongs to a better age than 

 ours, and might rub shoulders with Fuller and Browne though 

 he does use that abominable word reliable. His eye for a fine, 

 telling phrase that will carry true is like that of a backwoods 

 man for a rifle ; and he will dredge you up a choice word from 

 the mud of Cotton Mather himself. A diction at once so rich 

 and so homely as his I know not where to match in these days 

 of writing by the page ; it is like homespun cloth-of-gold. The 

 many cannot miss his meaning, and only the few can find it. It 

 is the open secret of all true genius. It is wholesome to angle 

 in those profound pools, though one be rewarded with nothing 

 more than the leap of a fish that flashes his freckled side in the 

 Bun and as suddenly absconds in the dark and dreamy waters 

 again. There is keen excitement, though there be no pon 

 derable acquisition. If we carry nothing home in our baskets, 

 there is ample gain in dilated lungs and stimulated blood. 

 What does he mean, quotha? He means inspiring hints, a 

 divining-rod to your deeper nature. No doubt, Emerson, like 

 all original men, has his peculiar audience, and yet I know none 

 that can hold a promiscuous crowd in pleased attention so long 

 as he. As in all original men, there is something for every 

 palate. Would you know, says Goethe, the ripest cherries ? 

 Ask the boys and the blackbirds/ 



The announcement that such a pleasure as a new course of 

 lectures by him is coming, to people as old as I am, is some 

 thing like those forebodings of spring that prepare us every year 

 for a familiar novelty, none the less novel, when it arrives, be 

 cause it is familiar. We know perfectly well what we are to 

 expect from Mr. Emerson, and yet what he says always pene 

 trates and stirs us, as is apt to be the case with genius, in a very 

 unlooked-for fashion. Perhaps genius is one of the few things 

 which we gladly allow to repeat itself one of the few that 

 multiply rather than weaken the force of their impression by 

 iteration ! Perhaps some of us hear more than the mere words, 

 are moved by something deeper than the thoughts ? If it be so, 

 we are quite right, for it is thirty years and more of plain living 

 and high thinking that speak to us in this altogether unique 

 lay-preacher. We have shared in the beneficence of this varied 

 culture, this fearless impartiality in criticism and speculation, 

 this masculine sincerity, this sweetness of nature which rather 

 stimulates than cloys, for a generation long. If ever there was 



