Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson belongs to a class of gentlemen with whom we have no patience whatever—the mystics for mysticism’s sake. Quintilian mentions a pedant who taught obscurity, and who once said to a pupil “this is excellent, for I do not understand it myself.” How the good man would have chuckled over Mr. E! His present rôle seems to be the out-Carlyling Carlyle. Lycophron Tenebrosus is a fool to him. The best answer to his twaddle is cui bono?—a very little Latin phrase very generally mistranslated and misunderstood—cui bono?—to whom is it a benefit? If not to Mr. Emerson individually, then surely to no man living.
His love of the obscure does not prevent him, nevertheless, from the composition of occasional poems in which beauty is apparent by flashes. Several of his effusions appeared in the “Western Messenger”—more in the “Dial,” of which he is the soul—or the sun—or the shadow. We remember the “Sphynx,” the “Problem,” the “Snow Storm,” and some fine old-fashioned verses entitled “Oh fair and stately maid whose eye.”
His MS. is bad, sprawling, illegible and irregular—although sufficiently bold. This latter trait may be, and no doubt is, only a portion of his general affectation.
The name of Gulian C. Verplanck has long been familiar to all American readers, and it is scarcely necessary to say more than that we coincide in the general view of his merits. His orations, reviews, and other compositions all evince the cultivated belles-lettres scholar, and man of intellect and taste. To high genius he has about the same claim as Mr. Sprague, whom in many respects he closely resembles.
His chirography is unusually rambling and school-boyish—but has vigor and precision. It has no doubt been greatly modified by adventitious circumstances, so that it would be impossible to predicate anything respecting it.