192 LITEKAEY VALUES 



some youthful festival, half religious, half social, in 

 which he took part, and the memory of which still 

 stirs his emotions. 



Emerson finally dropped the church, but he never 

 ceased to be a clergyman. He was like a flower es- 

 caped from the garden, and finding a lodgment in an 

 adjoining field, but which never ceased to be a gar- 

 den flower. A certain sanctity and unworldliness 

 always clung to him, — a certain remoteness from 

 the common thoughts, aims, attractions, of every- 

 day humanity. If he had been a better worldling 

 he would have been a better poet, — that is, if he 

 had had more of the feelings, passions, sympathies 

 and thoughts of ordinary men. These things would 

 have given him more flexibility and brought him 

 closer to human life. Karely, as poet or prose 

 writer, could he speak in the tone of the people. 

 There was always, more or less concealed, the tone 

 of the pulpit. Mr. James expressed this idea well 

 when he said that Emerson " had no prosaic side 

 relating him to ordinary people." 



This prosaic side is very important to the poet, 

 or to any man who would touch and move his 

 fellow-men. We desire our singer or teacher to be 

 of the same flesh and blood as ourselves. Emerson 

 was always a preacher, and his theme, by whatever 

 name he called it, was always religion, or what he 

 called religion, namely, the universality of the moral 

 law. 



No lover of Emerson, I imagine, would have had 

 him other than what he was ; I certainly would not. 



