EMERSON THE LECTURER. 28 F 



caught another sentence from the Sibylline leaves that lay 

 before him ambushed behind a dish of fruit and seen only by 

 nearest neighbours. Every sentence brought down the house, 

 as I never saw one brought down before and it is not so easy 

 to hit Scotsmen with a sentiment that has no hint of native 

 brogue in it. I watched, for it was an interesting study, how 

 the quick sympathy ran flashing from face to face down the long 

 tables, like an electric spark thrilling as it went, and then ex 

 ploded in a thunder of plaudits. I watched till tables and faces 

 vanished, for I, too, found myself caught up in the common 

 enthusiasm, and my excited fancy set me under the bema listen 

 ing to him who fulmined over Greece. I can never help apply 

 ing to him what Ben Jonson said of Bacon : * There happened 

 in my time one noble speaker, who was full of gravity in his 

 speaking. His language was nobly censorious. No man ever 

 spake more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less 

 emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of 

 his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could 

 not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. He com 

 manded where he spoke. 7 Those who heard him while their 

 natures were yet plastic, and their mental nerves trembled 

 under the slightest breath of divine air, will never cease to feel 

 and say : 



Was never eye did see that face, 



Was never ear did hear that tongue, 

 Was never mind did mind his grace, 



That ever thought the travail long ; 

 But eyes, and ears, and every thought, 

 Were with his sweet perfections caught. 



POPE. 



IN 1675 Edward Phillips, the elder of Milton s nephews, pub 

 lished his l Theatrum Poetarum. In his Preface and else 

 where there can be little doubt that he reflected the aesthetic 

 principles and literary judgments of his now illustrious uncle, 

 who had died in obscurity the year before.* The great poet who 

 gave to English blank verse the grandeur and compass of organ- 

 music, and who in his minor poems kept alive the traditions of 

 Fletcher and Shakspeare, died with no foretaste, and yet we 

 jnay believe as confident as ever, of that immortality of fame* 



* This was Thomas Warton s opinion. 



