Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Part 1 · 1/66
Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Part 1
1ESSAYS BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON Merrill's English Texts SELECTED AND EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, BY EDNA H.L. 2TURPIN, AUTHOR OF "STORIES FROM AMERICAN HISTORY," "CLASSIC FABLES," "FAMOUS PAINTERS," ETC. 3NEW YORK CHARLES E. 4MERRILL CO. 51907 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION LIFE OF EMERSON CRITICAL OPINIONS CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF PRINCIPAL WORKS THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR COMPENSATION SELF RELIANCE FRIENDSHIP HEROISM MANNERS GIFTS NATURE SHAKESPEARE; OR, THE POET PRUDENCE CIRCLES NOTES PUBLISHERS' NOTE Merrill's English Texts This series of books will include in complete editions those masterpieces of English Literature that are best adapted for the use of schools and colleges. 6The editors of the several volumes will be chosen for their special qualifications in connection with the texts to be issued under their individual supervision, but familiarity with the practical needs of the classroom, no less than sound scholarship, will characterize the editing of every book in the series. 7In connection with each text, a critical and historical introduction, including a sketch of the life of the author and his relation to the thought of his time, critical opinions of the work in question chosen from the great body of English criticism, and, where possible, a portrait of the author, will be given. 8Ample explanatory notes of such passages in the text as call for special attention will be supplied, but irrelevant annotation and explanations of the obvious will be rigidly excluded. 9CHARLES E. 10MERRILL CO. 11LIFE OF EMERSON Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25, 1803. 12He was descended from a long line of New England ministers, men of refinement and education. 13As a school-boy he was quiet and retiring, reading a great deal, but not paying much attention to his lessons. 14He entered Harvard at the early age of fourteen, but never attained a high rank there, although he took a prize for an essay on Socrates, and was made class poet after several others had declined. 15Next to his reserve and the faultless propriety of his conduct, his contemporaries at college seemed most impressed by the great maturity of his mind. 16Emerson appears never to have been really a boy. 17He was always serene and thoughtful, impressing all who knew him with that spirituality which was his most distinguishing characteristic. 18After graduating from college he taught school for a time, and then entered the Harvard Divinity School under Dr. 19Channing, the great Unitarian preacher. 20Although he was not strong enough to attend all the lectures of the divinity course, the college authorities deemed the name Emerson sufficient passport to the ministry. 21He was accordingly "approbated to preach" by the Middlesex Association of Ministers on October 10, 1826. 22As a preacher, Emerson was interesting, though not particularly original. 23His talent seems to have been in giving new meaning to the old truths of religion. 24One of his hearers has said: "In looking back on his preaching I find he has impressed truths to which I always assented in such a manner as to make them appear new, like a clearer revelation." 25Although his sermons were always couched in scriptural language, they were touched with the light of that genius which avoids the conventional and commonplace. 26In his other pastoral duties Emerson was not quite so successful. 27It is characteristic of his deep humanity and his dislike for all fuss and commonplace that he appeared to least advantage at a funeral. 28A connoisseur in such matters, an old sexton, once remarked that on such occasions "he did not appear at ease at all. 29To tell the truth, in my opinion, that young man was not born to be a minister." 30Emerson did not long remain a minister. 31In 1832 he preached a sermon in which he announced certain views in regard to the communion service which were disapproved by a large part of his congregation. 32He found it impossible to continue preaching, and, with the most friendly feelings on both sides, he parted from his congregation. 33A few months later (1833) he went to Europe for a short year of travel. 34While abroad, he visited Walter Savage Landor, Coleridge and Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle. 35This visit to Carlyle was to both men a most interesting experience. 36They parted feeling that they had much intellectually in common. 37This belief fostered a sympathy which, by the time they had discovered how different they really were, had grown so strong a habit that they always kept up their intimacy. 38This year of travel opened Emerson's eyes to many things of which he had previously been ignorant; he had profited by detachment from the concerns of a limited community and an isolated church. 39After his return he began to find his true field of activity in the lecture-hall, and delivered a number of addresses in Boston and its vicinity. 40While thus coming before the open public on the lecture platform, he was all the time preparing the treatise which was to embody all the quintessential elements of his philosophical doctrine. 41This was the essay _Nature_, which was published in 1836. 42By its conception of external Nature as an incarnation of the Divine Mind it struck the fundamental principle of Emerson's religious belief. 43The essay had a very small circulation at first, though later it became widely known. 44In the winter of 1836 Emerson followed up his discourse on Nature by a course of twelve lectures on the "Philosophy of History," a considerable portion of which eventually became embodied in his essays. 45The next year (1837) was the year of the delivery of the _Man Thinking, or the American Scholar_ address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge. 46This society, composed of the first twenty-five men in each class graduating from college, has annual meetings which have called forth the best efforts of many distinguished scholars and thinkers. 47Emerson's address was listened to with the most profound interest. 48It declared a sort of intellectual independence for America. 49Henceforth we were to be emancipated from clogging foreign influences, and a national literature was to expand under the fostering care of the Republic. 50These two discourses, _Nature_ and _The American Scholar_, strike the keynote of Emerson's philosophical, poetical, and moral teachings. 51In fact he had, as every great teacher has, only a limited number of principles and theories to teach. 52These principles of life can all be enumerated in twenty words--self-reliance, culture, intellectual and moral independence, the divinity of nature and man, the necessity of labor, and high ideals. 53Emerson spent the latter part of his life in lecturing and in literary work. 54His son, Dr. 55Edward Emerson, gave an interesting account of how these lectures were constructed. 56"All through his life he kept a journal. 57This book, he said, was his 'Savings Bank.' 58The thoughts thus received and garnered in his journals were indexed, and a great many of them appeared in his published works. 59They were religiously set down just as they came, in no order except chronological, but later they were grouped, enlarged or pruned, illustrated, worked into a lecture or discourse, and, after having in this capacity undergone repeated testing and rearranging, were finally carefully sifted and more rigidly pruned, and were printed as essays." 60Besides his essays and lectures Emerson left some poetry in which is embodied those thoughts which were to him too deep for prose expression. 61Oliver Wendell Holmes in speaking of this says: "Emerson wrote occasionally in verse from his school-days until he had reached the age which used to be known as the grand climacteric, sixty-three.... 62His poems are not and hardly can become popular; they are not meant to be liked by the many, but to be dearly loved and cherished by the few.... 63His occasional lawlessness in technical construction, his somewhat fantastic expressions, his enigmatic obscurities hardly detract from the pleasant surprise his verses so often bring with them.... 64The poetic license which we allow in the verse of Emerson is more than excused by the noble spirit which makes us forget its occasional blemishes, sometimes to be pleased with them as characteristic of the writer." 65Emerson was always a striking figure in the intellectual life of America. 66His discourses were above all things inspiring. 67Through them many were induced to strive for a higher self-culture. 68His influence can be discerned in all the literary movements of the time. 69He was the central figure of the so-called transcendental school which was so prominent fifty years ago, although he always rather held aloof from any enthusiastic participation in the movement. 70Emerson lived a quiet life in Concord, Massachusetts. 71"He was a first-rate neighbor and one who always kept his fences up." 72He traveled extensively on his lecturing tours, even going as far as England. 73In _English Traits_ he has recorded his impressions of what he saw of English life and manners. 74Oliver Wendell Holmes has described him in this wise: "His personal appearance was that of the typical New Englander of college-bred ancestry. 75Tall, spare, slender, with sloping shoulders, slightly stooping in his later years, with light hair and eyes, the scholar's complexion, the prominent, somewhat arched nose which belongs to many of the New England sub-species, thin lips, suggestive of delicacy, but having nothing like primness, still less of the rigidity which is often noticeable in the generation succeeding next to that of the men in their shirt-sleeves, he would have been noticed anywhere as one evidently a scholarly thinker astray from the alcove or the study, which were his natural habitats. 76His voice was very sweet, and penetrating without any loudness or mark of effort. 77His enunciation was beautifully clear, but he often hesitated as if waiting for the right word to present itself. 78His manner was very quiet, his smile was pleasant, but he did not like explosive laughter any better than Hawthorne did. 79None who met him can fail to recall that serene and kindly presence, in which there was mingled a certain spiritual remoteness with the most benignant human welcome to all who were privileged to enjoy his companionship." 80Emerson died April 27, 1882, after a few days' illness from pneumonia.
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