Emerson's truthfulness was often the cause of mirth even to himself. I remember that he thought he did not care for the work of Bayard Taylor, but he confessed one day with sly ruefulness that he had taken up the last "Atlantic" by chance, and found there some noble hexameters upon "November;" and "I said to myself, 'Ah! who is this? this is as good as Clough.' When to my astonishment, and not a little to my discomfiture, I discovered they were Bayard Taylor's! But how about this 'Faust'? We have had Dante done over and over, and even now done, I see, again by a new hand, and Homer forever being done, and now 'Faust'! I quarrel somewhat with the overmuch labor spent upon these translations, but first of all I quarrel with Goethe. 'Faust' is unpleasant to me. The very flavor of the poem repels me, and makes me wish to turn away." The "Divina Commedia," too, he continued, was a poem too terrible to him to read. He had never been able to finish it. It is probable that poor translations of both "Faust" and Dante read in early youth were at the bottom of these opinions.
Emerson was a true appreciator of Walter Scott. At one of the Saturday Club dinners it was suggested that Walter Scott be made the subject of conversation, and the occasion be considered as his birthday. Emerson spoke with brilliant effect two or three times. He was first called out by his friend Judge Hoar, who said he was chopping wood that morning in his woodshed, when Emerson came in and said so many delightful things about Sir Walter that if he would now repeat to the table only a portion of the excellent sayings heard in the woodshed he would delight them all. Emerson rose, and, referring pleasantly to the brilliancy of the judge's imagination, began by expressing his sense of gratitude to Walter Scott, and concluded a fine analysis of his work by saying that the root and gist of his genius was to be found, in his opinion, in the Border Minstrelsy.
His loyalty to the Saturday Club was quite as sincere as Dr. Holmes's, but the difficulties in the way of his constant attendance were somewhat greater. Emerson kept a friendly lookout over absent members, and greeted with approval any one who arrived at the monthly tryst in spite of hindrances. Seeing Mr. Fields appear one day, bag in hand, at a time when he was living in the country, Emerson glanced at him affectionately, saying half aloud, "Good boy! good boy!" At this meeting it appeared that Lowell and Emerson had chanced to go together, while in Paris, to hear Renan. They spoke of the beauty and perfection of his Hebrew script upon the blackboard; it was faultless, they said. Emerson added that he could not understand Renan's French, so he looked at Lowell, who wore a very wise expression, instead.
Emerson was no lover of the sentimental school. The sharp arrow of his wit found a legitimate target there. Of one person in especial, whom we all knew and valued for extraordinary gifts, he said: "—— is irreclaimable. The sentimentalists are the most dangerous of the insane, for they cannot be shut up in asylums."
The labor bestowed upon his own work before committing himself to print was limitless. I have referred to this already in speaking of the publication of his address after the death of Thoreau. Sometimes in joke a household committee would be formed to sit in judgment on his essays, and get them out of his hands. The "May-day" poem was long in reaching its home in print. There were references to it from year to year, but he could never be satisfied to yield it up. In April, 1865, after the fall of Richmond, he dined with us, full of what he said was "a great joy to the world, not alone to our little America." That day he brought what he then called some verses on Spring to read aloud; but when the reading was ended, he said they were far "too fragmentary to satisfy him," and quietly folded them up and carried them away again.
This feeling of unreadiness to print sprang as much from the wonderful modesty as from the sincerity of his character. He wrote shortly after to his publisher:—
"I have the more delight in your marked overestimate of my poem that I have been vexed with a belief that what skill I had in whistling was nearly or quite gone, and that I might henceforth content myself with guttural consonants or dissonants, and not attempt warbling. On the strength of your note, I am working away at my last pages of rhyme. But this has been and is a week of company. Yet I shall do the best I can with the quarters of hours."
Again, with his mind upon the "May-day" poem, he wrote:—
"I have long seen with some terror the necessity closing round me, in spite of all my resistance, that shall hold me from home. It now seems fixed to the 20th or 21st March. I had only consented to 1st March. But in the negotiations of my agent it would still turn out that the primary engagements made a year ago, and to which the others were only appendages—the primaries, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh—must needs thrust themselves into March, and without remedy. But I cannot allow the 'May-day' to come till I come. There were a few indispensable corrections made and sent to the printer, which he reserved to be corrected on the plates, but of which no revise was ever sent to me; and as good publish no book as leave these errata unexpunged. Then there is one quatrain, to which his notice was not called, for which I wish to substitute another. So I entreat you not to finish the book except for the fire until I come. As the public did not die for the book on the 1st January, I presume they can sustain its absence on the 1st April…. Though I do not know that your courage will really hold out to publish it on the 1st April if I were quite ready."
Again in the same spirit he writes to his editor and publisher:—