The next topic is Emerson, whom I left yesterday on the deck of the Halifax steamer, and saw pass rapidly down the Mersey on his way home.
He came to Oxford just at the end of Lent term, and stayed three days. Everybody liked him, and as the orthodox mostly had never heard of him, they did not suspect him. He is the quietest, plainest, unobtrusivest man possible; will talk, but will rarely discourse to more than a single person, and wholly declines ‘roaring.’ He is very Yankee to look at, lank and sallow, and not quite without the twang; but his looks and voice are pleasing nevertheless, and give you the impression of perfect intellectual cultivation, as completely as would any great scientific man in England—Faraday or Owen, for instance, more in their way perhaps than in that of Wordsworth or Carlyle. I have been with him a great deal; for he came over to Paris and was there a month, during which time we dined together daily: and since that I have seen him often in London, and finally here. One thing that struck everybody is that he is much less Emersonian than his Essays. There is no dogmatism or arbitrariness or positiveness about him.
Next to myself, —— is, I suppose, accounted the wildest and most écervelé republican going. I myself, à propos of a letter of Matt’s, which he directed to Citizen Clough, Oriel Lyceum, Oxford, bear that title par excellence.
Waterhead: September 4.
I have been visiting Fisher in Patterdale, where he has his first reading party. He got a first-class duly and honourably at Easter, πατρὸς ἀμείνων, outdoing his coach.
I believe I shall probably, in about six weeks’ time, publish, conjointly with Burbidge, a volume of poems.[9] Some of them I hope you will like, but I don’t think much will come of it. I don’t intend writing any more verse, but have a notion for essays. I gave my Tutorship up at Easter, and I seriously think of doing the same with the Fellowship in October at latest.
To ——
Oxford: October 23, 1848.
My relations wrote kindly and temperately (on hearing of the resignation of the Fellowship), on the whole; made the most of conscientiousness, but were alarmed with ideas of extreme and extravagant views.
My little book, I hope, will be out in ten days.