156 INDOOR STUDIES 



but is often touched by his ill-humor. When 

 Teufelsdrockh fulminates his "Everlasting No" in 

 "Sartor," it rings out like a thunder-peal; this is 

 the wrath and invincibility of the hero at bay. If, 

 in Emerson's earlier essays, this note seems to us 

 now a little too pronounced, savoring just a little 

 of "tall talk," it did not seem so when we first read 

 them, but was as clear, and frank, and sweet as the 

 note of a bugle. Carlyle once defined poetry as the 

 "heroic of speech," a definition that probably would 

 not suit Mr. Arnold, but which describes much of 

 Emerson's verse, and many of those brave sentences 

 in his essays. 



If in Addison the note is that of genial urbanity, 

 in Franklin that of worldly prudence ("There is a 

 flower of religion, a flower of honor, a flower of 

 chivalry," says Sainte-Beuve, "which must not be 

 required from Eranklin "), in Bacon of large wis- 

 dom, in Pope of polished common-sense, in Arnold 

 himself the classical note or note of perfection, in 

 Emerson we come at once upon the chivalrous, heroic 

 attitude and temper. No scorn, no contempt, no 

 defiance, but a bright and cheerful confronting of 

 immense odds. In other writers there are words of 

 prudence, words of enlightenment, words of grave 

 counsel, words that divide one thing from another 

 like a blade, words of sympathy and love; but in 

 Emerson more than in any other there are words 

 that are like banners leading to victory, symbolical, 

 inspiring, rallying, seconding, and pointing the way 

 to your best endeavor. " Self- trust, " he says, "is 



