376 EMERSON THE LECTURER. 



be something like this : " OCTOBER : Indian Summer ; 

 now is the time to get in your early Vedas." What, 

 then, is his secret 1 Is it not that he out- Yankees us 

 all 1 that his range includes us all 1 that he is equally at 

 home with the potato-disease and original sin, with peg 

 ging shoes and the Over-soul ? that, as we try all trades, 

 so has he tried all cultures? and above all, that his 

 mysticism gives iis a counterpoise to our super-practi 

 cality 1 



There is no man living to whom, as a writer, so many 

 of us feel and thankfully acknowledge so great an in 

 debtedness for ennobling impulses, none whom so 

 many cannot abide. What does he mean ? ask these 

 last. Where is his system? What is the use of it 

 all ? What the 4 euse have we to do with Brahma ? 

 I do not propose to write an essay on Emerson at this 

 time. I will only say that one may find grandeur 

 and consolation in a starlit night without caring to 

 ask what it means, save grandeur and consolation; 

 one may like Montaigne, as some ten generations be 

 fore us have done, without thinking him so systematic 

 as some more eminently tedious (or shall we say te 

 diously eminent ?) authors ; one may think roses as 

 good in their way as cabbages, though the latter would 

 make a better show in the witness-box, if cross-examined 

 as to their usefulness ; and as for Brahma, why, he can 

 take care of himself, and won't bite us at any rate. 



The bother with Mr. Emerson is, that, though he 

 writes in prose, he is essentially a poet. If you undei*- 

 take to paraphrase what he says, and to reduce it to 

 words of one syllable for infant minds, you will make as 

 sad work of it as the good monk with his analysis of 

 Homer in the "Epistoke Obscurorum Virorum.'' We 

 look upon him as one of the few men of genius whom 

 our age. has produced, and there needs no better proof 



