154 EMERSON THE LECTURER. 



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 backwoodsman 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 sun and as suddenly absconds in the dark and 

 dreamy waters again. There is keen excitement, though 

 there be no ponderable 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 diving-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. &quot; Would you 

 know,&quot; says Goethe, &quot; the ripest cherries f l Ask the boys 

 and the blackbirds.&quot; 



The announcement that such a pleasure as a new course 

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

 something like those forebodings of spring that prepare us 

 every year for a familiar novelty, none the less novel, when 

 it arrives, because it is familiar. We know perfectly well 

 what we are to expect from Mr. Emerson, and yet what he 

 says always penetrates 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 &quot; plain living and high 



