But all I wish now to point out is the effect of English Traits upon the English themselves. Roughly speaking, it puzzled them. It is one of the truest books ever written. Yet to the English themselves its truth has never appeared quite true. On Emerson, as thinker, poet, philosopher, all kinds of judgments have been formed in England, and expressed, in some cases, with vehemence. He has always had an audience and a following here; and always enemies. But the book they least understand is the book about themselves. Looking into the egregious Allibone for an apt quotation concerning the Traits I find none, but instead a remark by Allibone himself that "Mr. Emerson's writings have excited considerable interest on both sides of the Atlantic!" The space given to Emerson in the Dictionary of English Literature is less than a column, though fourteen columns are not thought too many for Longfellow; nor are they. In the Supplement Emerson gets a little more attention; still grudgingly given.
Allibone does not matter, and the perplexity of the Philistine struggling with a book he cannot understand does not matter. But let us go at once to the best of English critics; to Matthew Arnold. Alas! we fare no better. Arnold's Discourse on Emerson has been resented by Emersonians as an elaborate disparagement of their Master. It is not that. Arnold was incapable of disparagement, and while he denies to Emerson many gifts which his readers find in him, his appreciation is still sympathetic, and he lifts himself to own from time to time Emerson's real greatness. He thinks the Essays "the most important work done in prose in our language" during the last century—"more important than Carlyle's." But he puts aside the English Traits because, compared with Montaigne, La Bruyère, Addison (!), the Traits will not stand the comparison.
"Emerson's observation has not the disinterested quality of the observation of these masters. It is the observation of a man systematically benevolent, as Hawthorne's observation in Our Old Home is the work of a man chagrined."
And Arnold explains that Emerson's systematic benevolence comes from his persistent optimism. The book is too good-natured to be scientific. Yet, oddly enough—or perhaps not oddly—the criticism of the English Philistine is the exact opposite of Arnold's. The man in the street, if he has read the English Traits, complains that the criticism of things English is too relentless; that Emerson always has the scalpel and the probe in hand; that the inquiry is not critical but anatomical; and the atmosphere that of the dissecting room. He is appalled when he sees the most cherished beliefs of centuries and blended races put under the microscope, and when Character, Aristocracy, Plutocracy, the Church, Religion itself are made to take off their masks and yield up their secrets. They are not conciliated even when Emerson sums up the English as "the best of actual races." What care they for comparisons with other races, or for the opinion of other races, or of transatlantic critics upon England and the English and the institutions of this little island? Emerson's criticism is chemical, it resolves things into their elements, their primordial atoms. No doubt, but neither the Throne nor the Church is shaken, nor a single Act of Parliament repealed.
Arnold, recalling the influences which wrought upon him as a student at Oxford "amid the last enchantments of the Middle Ages," said to an American audience in Emerson's "own delightful town," Boston:
"He was your Newman, your man of soul and genius visible to you in the flesh, speaking to your bodily ears, a present object for your heart and imagination. That is surely the most potent of all influences! Nothing can come up to it."
And that is the influence which descended beneficially upon us of a past or passing generation, to whom it was given to see Emerson and to hear him. As I think it all over, I begin to doubt whether to have heard Emerson on the platform did not bring you a sense of greater intimacy than to have known him even in his Concord home.
There was a time, during Theodore Parker's illness and absence, when Emerson and Wendell Phillips used to take his place at stated intervals—in both cases, I think, once a month. Before the great audience of the Music Hall, Emerson had precisely the same manner as with a few hundred people. He hardly seemed to be aware of his audience. He stood there behind Parker's desk, towering above it, his slight figure adjusting itself to whatever attitude suited his mood for the moment; never quite erect; the body never quite straight; the hands fumbling with his manuscript; turning over a dozen leaves at a time; turning back again another dozen, as if it scarce mattered in what order he read. Often he skipped; the large quarto pages were turned by the score and there was no return. His mind seemed to be carrying on processes of thought quite independent of those he had inscribed on his manuscript. He felt his way with his hearers; and his unconsciousness of their presence was therefore apparent only. Between them and him there was the flow of invisible, mysterious currents, whether of sympathy or antipathy. In Mr. Gladstone's fine image, they gave back to him in vapour what he poured out in a flood upon them. But that, of course, was far more completely true of an orator like Mr. Gladstone than of a lecturer like Emerson who read his discourse. But it was true in a measure of Emerson also.
But Emerson was an orator too. He was not always above the arts of the orator. He could, and did, calculate his effects; observing the while whether they told or not. He delighted in a crescendo. His voice rose and fell and rose again; and he had unsuspected depths of resonant tone. At one moment clear and cold, then vibrating with emotion, in which the whole force of the man seemed to seek expression; then sometimes at the very end becoming prophetic, appealing, menacing; till the sentences came as if from the Judgment seat. He once read Allingham's poem, "The Talisman," as the peroration of his address in the Music Hall. I never heard anything like it—like the wild, strange melody of his voice, which had in it the intonations and cadences which give to many Slavic airs, and most of all to the Hungarian Czardas, though that is dance music, a magic charm.
I have spoken of the prejudice against Emerson which prevailed in Boston and elsewhere. It was most vehement in society. That worshipful company, which is necessarily a minority and prides itself on being a minority, likes to set its own standards and expects the rest of the world, so far as it comes in contact with these social law-givers, to conform to these standards. They soon became aware that to no standard but his own did Emerson ever conform; save so far as civility and kindness bade him. He gave way readily enough in little things. It is a sign of greatness to hold little things of little account; an aphorism by no means universally accepted.