is worth more than the whole essay. In this matter of Hebrew explicitness on a definite religious theme Carlyle easily surpassed Emerson. Carlyle raved and spoke wildly at times, when Emerson was bland and cautious; but Carlyle, on an august theme, was never intangible. This criticism applies but to a small portion of Emerson's writings, but it falls upon that portion with crushing force. and, Again, Emerson was at times superficial; what is worse, spoke authoritatively on subjects concerning which he had no deep knowledge. That which he disliked he too often contemptuously condemned. His method, as has been said, was that of outspeaking, and this method, applied to the whole universe by one with intense prejudices and fixed limits, is a dangerous one. In the case of his imitators it became grotesque, and undoubtedly retarded habits of close and orderly thought in America. estimate. But on the general estimate, the work of Emerson is of great importance to America and to the world. His name, by any standard of The general just judgment, must ever stand in honor. The ideal, the beautiful, the true, the right, the godlike, he set in burning words over against the merely material, the utilitarian, the false, the politic, the animal and worldly. He restated for the modern world the eternal principles of transcendentalism, of spiritualism, of the inner light, never lost since the days of Plato. He told the world anew, and in fresh words, of the great First Cause, by whom and in whom are all things. He ever emphasized the potency and the duty of individual freedom and of the development of the man. In this last line of work he achieved his greatest results. "Be bold, be free," he exclaimed to all men; but he added: "Be true, be right, else you will be enslaved cowards." Of him his friend, fellow-poet, and biographer has aptly written : "From his mild throng of worshippers released, Our Concord Delphi sends its chosen priest, Prophet or poet, mystic, sage, or seer, By every title always welcome here. Why that ethereal spirit's frame describe? You know the race-marks of the Brahmin tribe,- spare, slight form, the sloping shoulders droop, The calm, scholastic air, the clerkly stoop, The lines of thought the narrowed features wear, "List: for he speaks! As when a king would choose This diamond for its flaw,-find that less bright "Where in the realm of thought, whose air is song, Amidst the sources of its subtile fire, And steal their effluence for his lips and lyre? None treads with firmer footstep when he lights; A soaring nature, ballasted with sense, And every altar helps to shape his creed." CHAPTER X. ESSAYISTS AND CRITICS. If American THE essay, in more than one of its directions, has been represented creditably in America. we define the word somewhat in the sense in which Lord Bacon used it, as a brief essays. literary composition on some important theme of religion, morals, taste, intellect, or the conduct of life, the essays of Emerson, studied in the preceding chapter, fulfil the definition, and add to it an original element. If by the term essay we are reminded of the gracious and winsome work of Addison, Steele, or Lamb, in which grave and gay are discussed with pathos or humor, and in a style which is finished at its best or attitudinizing at its worst, the writings of Washington Irving occur to the mind of the reader. A few attempts have even been made by Franklin, Irving, Mitchell, Curtis -to revive and perpetuate the periodical essay. If, again, we are thinking of the critical essay of Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, or Sainte-Beuve, it is no shame to add to their company the genuinely Yankee but soundly scholarly James Russell Lowell. Of all the chief departments of English essaywriting, but one has been ineffectively represented in the United States: the biographical or historical essay of the Macaulay type, in which the author, taking a book-title for a text, proceeds to write a miniature "life and times" or "complete history." The pages of our reviews are full of imitations of Macaulay, short paragraphs, antitheses, and all, which sadly prove that "all that flams is not flamboyant." Even in this division, however, is found the historical essay of Motley or Prescott; Motley's "Peter the Great," if it is less than Macaulay's work, is also some thing more. dell Holmes, b. 1809. Besides these writers, there is another American whose work as a poet will be considered in a future volume of this history, but who must also take his place in the present chapter. Oliver Wendell Oliver Wen- Holmes, as an essayist, does not belong to the school of Bacon, or Addison, or Lamb, or Carlyle, or Montaigne, or Sainte-Beuve. It would be easy, perhaps, to frame a comparison between him and Christopher North, and to say that Holmes performed for The Atlantic Monthly, in its early years, a service like that which Christopher gave to Maga long ago. In their writings, too, there is a little likeness. But to carry out this comparison, or any other, would be valueless, and might mislead. It is better to say that Holmes followed an original idea in his BreakfastTable series. When he was a young man, so he tells us in the illustrated edition of "The Last Leaf," he found that some poetasters were probably imitating his metrical forms, and determined to produce a poem in a metre wholly unfamiliar, so |