122 LITEEAET TALT7ES 



all men with preconceived ideas, his mind was more 

 like a searchlight than like a lamp. This makes him 

 stimulating as a critic, hut not always satisfying. 



The same is true of our own Emerson, prohahly 

 our most stimulating and fertilizing mind thus far. 

 Lowell, as a man of letters, is of a much purer strain ; 

 he is in the direct line of succession of the great 

 literary names, yet the value of his contribution 

 undoubtedly falls far short of that of Emerson. As 

 a poet, Emerson was a poor singer with wonderfully 

 penetrating tones, almost unequaled in this respect. 

 The same may be said of him as a critic ; he was a 

 poor critic with a wonderfully penetrating glance. 

 He had the hawk's eye for the game he was looking 

 for ; he could see it amid any tangle of woods or 

 thicket of the commonplace. His special limitation 

 is that he was looking for a particular kind of prey. 

 His sympathies were narrow but intense. The elec- 

 tive affinities were very active in his criticism. He 

 loved Emersonian poetry, he loved the Emersonian 

 paradoxes, he valued the wild seolian tones ; he de- 

 lighted in the word that gave the prick and sting of 

 the electric spark ; abruptness, surprise, the sudden, 

 intense, forked sentence — these took him, these he 

 dealt in. His survey of any man or matter is never 

 a complete one, never a disinterested one, never done 

 in the scientific spirit. He writes about representa- 

 tive men, and exploits Plato, Goethe, Montaigne, etc., 

 in relation to his thought. He is always on quests 

 for particular ideas, in search for Emersonian values. 

 He will not do justice to such poets as Foe and 



