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edition, uniform with the works, of the letters of Charles Lamb. Until he has given us these, also with notes, his pious labours are incomplete. Lamb's letters are not only the best text of his life, but the best comment upon it. They reveal all the heroism of the man and all the cunning of the author; they do the reader good by stealth. Let us have them speedily, so that honest men may have in their houses a complete edition of at least one author of whom they can truthfully say, that they never know whether they most admire the writer or love the man.

EMERSON.

THERE are men whose charm is in their entirety. Their words occasionally utter what their looks invariably express. We read their thoughts by the light of their smiles. Not to see and hear these men is not to know them, and criticism without personal knowledge is in their case mutilation. Those who did know them listen in despair to the half-hearted praise and clumsy disparagement of critical strangers, and are apt to exclaim, as did the younger Pitt, when some extraneous person was expressing wonder at the enormous reputation of Fox, 'Ah! you have never been under the wand of the magician.'

Of such was Ralph Waldo Emerson. When we find so cool-brained a critic as Mr. Lowell writing and quoting thus of Emerson:

'Those who heard him while their na

tures were yet plastic, and their mental nerves trembled under the slightest breath of divine air, will never cease to feel and say:

""Was never eye did see that face,

Was never ear did hear that tongue,
Was never mind did mind his grace

That ever thought the travail long;
But eyes, and ears, and every thought

Were with his sweet perfections caught;"'

we recognise at once that the sooner we take off our shoes the better, for that the ground upon which we are standing is holy. How can we sufficiently honour the men who, in this secular, work-a-day world, habitually breathe

'An ampler ether, a diviner air,'

than ours!

But testimony of this kind, conclusive as it is upon the question of Emerson's personal influence, will not always be admissible in support of his claims as an author. In the long run an author's only witnesses are his own books.

In Dr. Holmes's estimate of Emerson's books every one must wish to concur.

* See Life of Emerson, by O. W. Holmes.

*

These are not the days, nor is this dry and thirsty land of ours the place, when or where we can afford to pass by any well of spiritual influence. It is matter, therefore, for rejoicing that, in the opinion of so many good judges, Emerson's well can never be choked up. His essays, so at least we are told by no less a critic than Mr. Arnold, are the most valuable prose contributions to English literature of the century; his letters to Mr. Carlyle carried into all our homes the charm of a most delightful personality; the quaint melody of his poems abides in many ears. He would, indeed, be a churl who grudged Emerson his fame.

But when we are considering a writer so full of intelligence as Emerson — one so remote and detached from the world's bluster and brag it is especially incumbent upon us to charge our own language with intelligence, and to make sure that what we say is at least truth for us.

Were we at liberty to agree with Dr. Holmes, in his unmeasured praise- did we, in short, find Emerson full of inspiration our task would be as easy as it would be pleasant; but not entirely agree

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ing with Dr. Holmes, and somehow missing the inspiration, the difficulty we began by mentioning presses heavily upon us.

Pleasant reading as the introductory thirty-five pages of Dr. Holmes's book make, we doubt the wisdom of so very sketchy an account of Emerson's lineage and intellectual environment. Attracted towards Emerson everybody must be; but there are many who have never been able to get quit of an uneasy fear as to his 'staying power.' He has seemed to some of us a little thin and vague. A really great author dissipates all such fears. Read a page and they are gone. To inquire after the intellectual health of such a one would be an impertinence. Emerson hardly succeeds in inspiring this confidence, but is more like a clever invalid who says, and is encouraged by his friends. to say, brilliant things, but of whom it would be cruel to expect prolonged mental exertion. A man, he himself has said, 'should give us a sense of mass.' He perhaps does not do so. This gloomy and possibly distorted view is fostered rather than discouraged by Dr. Holmes's intro

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