Emerson’s style is brilliant, epigrammatic, gem-like; clear in sentences, obscure in paragraphs. He was a sporadic observer. He saw by flashes. He said, “I do not know what arguments mean in reference to any expression of a thought.” The coherence of his writing lies in his personality. His work is fused by a steady glow of optimism. Yet he states this optimism moderately. “The genius which preserves and guides the human race indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favourable to the side of reason.”
His verse, though in form inferior to his prose, was perhaps a truer expression of his genius. He said, “I am born a poet”; and again, writing to Carlyle, he called himself “half a bard.” He had “the vision,” but not “the faculty divine” which translates the vision into music. In his two volumes of verse (Poems, 1846; May Day and other Pieces, 1867) there are many passages of beautiful insight and profound feeling, some lines of surprising splendour, and a few poems, like “The Rhodora,” “The Snowstorm,” “Ode to Beauty,” “Terminus,” “The Concord Ode,” and the marvellous “Threnody” on the death of his first-born boy, of beauty unmarred and penetrating truth. But the total value of his poetical work is discounted by the imperfection of metrical form, the presence of incongruous images, the predominance of the intellectual over the emotional element, and the lack of flow. It is the material of poetry not thoroughly worked out. But the genius from which it came—the swift faculty of perception, the lofty imagination, the idealizing spirit enamoured of reality—was the secret source of all Emerson’s greatness as a speaker and as a writer. Whatever verdict time may pass upon the bulk of his poetry, Emerson himself must be recognized as an original and true poet of a high order.
His latter years were passed in peaceful honour at Concord. In 1866 Harvard College conferred upon him the degree of LL.D., and in 1867 he was elected an overseer. In 1870 he delivered a course of lectures before the university on “The Natural History of the Intellect.” In 1872 his house was burned down, and was rebuilt by popular subscription. In the same year he went on his third foreign journey, going as far as Egypt. About this time began a failure in his powers, especially in his memory. But his character remained serene and unshaken in dignity. Steadily, tranquilly, cheerfully, he finished the voyage of life.
| “I trim myself to the storm of time, I man the rudder, reef the sail, Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime: ‘Lowly faithful, banish fear, Right onward drive unharmed; The port, well worth the cruise, is near. And every wave is charmed.’” |
Emerson died on the 27th of April 1882, and his body was laid to rest in the peaceful cemetery of Sleepy Hollow, in a grove on the edge of the village of Concord.
Authorities.—Emerson’s Complete Works, Riverside edition, edited by J.E. Cabot (11 vols., Boston, 1883-1884); another edition (London, 5 vols., 1906), by G. Sampson, in Bohn’s “Libraries”; The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Charles Eliot Norton (Boston, 1883); George Willis Cooke, Ralph Waldo Emerson: His Life, Writings and Philosophy (Boston, 1881); Alexander Ireland, Ralph Waldo Emerson: His Life, Genius and Writings (London, 1882); A. Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher and Seer (Boston, 1882); Moncure Daniel Conway, Emerson at Home and Abroad (Boston, 1882); Joel Benton, Emerson as a Poet (New York, 1883); F.B. Sanborn (editor), The Genius and Character of Emerson: Lectures at the Concord School of Philosophy (Boston, 1885); Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson (“American Men of Letters” series) (Boston, 1885); James Elliott Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 2 vols. (the authorized biography) (Boston, 1887); Edward Waldo Emerson, Emerson in Concord (Boston, 1889); Richard Garnett, Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (London, 1888); G.E. Woodberry, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1907). Critical estimates are also to be found in Matthew Arnold’s Discourses in America, John Morley’s Critical Miscellanies, Henry James’s Partial Portraits, Lowell’s My Study Windows, Birrell’s Obiter Dicta (2nd series), Stedman’s Poets of America, Whipple’s American Literature, &c. There is a Bibliography of Ralph Waldo Emerson, by G.W. Cooke (Boston, 1908).
(H. van D.)
EMERSON, WILLIAM (1701-1782), English mathematician, was born on the 14th of May 1701 at Hurworth, near Darlington, where his father, Dudley Emerson, also a mathematician, taught a school. Unsuccessful as a teacher he devoted himself entirely to studious retirement, and published many works which are singularly free from errata. In mechanics he never advanced a proposition which he had not previously tested in practice, nor published an invention without first proving its effects by a model. He was skilled in the science of music, the theory of sounds, and the ancient and modern scales; but he never attained any excellence as a performer. He died on the 20th of May 1782 at his native village. Emerson was eccentric and indeed clownish, but he possessed remarkable independence of character and intellectual energy. The boldness with which he expressed his opinions on religious subjects led to his being charged with scepticism, but for this there was no foundation.
Emerson’s works include The Doctrine of Fluxions (1748); The Projection of the Sphere, Orthographic, Stereographic and Gnomical (1749); The Elements of Trigonometry (1749); The Principles of Mechanics (1754); A Treatise of Navigation (1755); A Treatise of Algebra, in two books (1765); The Arithmetic of Infinites, and the Differential Method, illustrated by Examples (1767); Mechanics, or the Doctrine of Motion (1769); The Elements of Optics, in four books (1768); A System of Astronomy (1769); The Laws of Centripetal and Centrifugal Force (1769); The Mathematical Principles of Geography (1770); Tracts (1770); Cyclomathesis, or an Easy Introduction to the several branches of the Mathematics (1770), in ten vols.; A Short Comment on Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia; to which is added, A Defence of Sir Isaac against the objections that have been made to several parts of his works (1770); A Miscellaneous Treatise containing several Mathematical Subjects (1776).