210 FRESH FIELDS 



gas and water out of them, and give us the handful 

 of lime and iron of which they are composed. He 

 hungered for the "central monosyllables." He 

 praises Cromwell and Frederick, yet says to his 

 friend, "that book will not come which I most 

 wish to read, namely, the culled results, the quin- 

 tessence of private conviction, a liber veritatis, a 

 few sentences, hints of the final moral you drew 

 from so much penetrating inquest into past and 

 present men." 



This is highly characteristic of Emerson; his bid 

 for the quintessence of things. He was always 

 impatient of creative imaginative works ; would sub- 

 lunate or evaporate them in a hurry. Give him 

 the pith of the matter, the net result in the most 

 pungent words. It must still be picture and para- 

 ble, but in a sort of disembodied or potential state. 

 He fed on the marrow of Shakespeare's sentences, 

 and apparently cared little for his marvelous charac- 

 terizations. One is reminded of the child's riddle: 

 Under the hill there is a mill, in the mill there is 

 a chest, in the chest there is a till, in the till there 

 is a phial, in the phial there is a drop I would not 

 give for all the world. This drop Emerson would 

 have. Keep or omit the chest and the mill and 

 all that circumlocution, and give him the precious 

 essence. But the artistic or creative mind does not 

 want things thus abridged, — does not want the 

 universe reduced to an epigram. Carlyle wants an 

 actual flesh-and-blood hero, and, what is more, wants 

 him immersed head and ears in the actual affairs of 

 this world. 



