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he must obey: he fancies himself poor, orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd drives hither and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to be done, now that. What is he that he should resist their will, and think or act for himself? Every moment, new changes, and new showers of deceptions, to baffle and distract him. And when, by and by, for an instant, the air clears, and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still sitting around him on their thrones, they alone with him alone.

There is, it need scarcely be said, a good deal in the works of Emerson-literary criticism, characterization of men and movements, reflection on the state of society-which lies outside of this ethical category; but even in such essays his guiding ideas are felt in the background. Nor are these ideas hard to discover. The whole circle of them, ever revolving upon itself, is likely to be present, explicit or implicit, in any one of his great passages, as it is in the paragraph just cited-the clear call to self-reliance, announcing that "a man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within"; the firm assurance that, through all the balanced play of circumstance, "there is a deeper fact in the soul than compensation, to wit, its own nature"; the intuition, despite all the mists of illusion, of the Over-Soul which is above us and still ourselves: "We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles; meanwhile within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty. . .; the eternal One."

Emerson's philosophy is thus a kind of reconciled dualism, and a man's attitude towards it in the end will be determined by his sense of its sufficiency or insufficiency to meet the facts of experience. One of Emerson's biographers has attempted to set forth this philosophy as "a synthesis and an anticipation." It is a synthesis because in it we find, as Emerson had already found in Plato and Plotinus, a reconciliation of "the many and the one," the everlasting flux and the motionless calm at the heart of things:

An ample and generous recognition of this transiency and slipperiness both in the nature of things and in man's soul seems more and more a necessary ingredient in any estimate of the universe which shall satisfy the intellect of the coming man. But it seems equally true that the coming man who shall resolve our

problems will never content himself with a universe a-tilt, a universe in cascade, so to speak; the craving for permanence in some form cannot be jauntily evaded. Is there any known mind which foreshadows the desired combination so clearly as Emerson's? Who has felt more profoundly the evanescence and evasiveness of things? ... Yet Emerson was quite as firm in his insistence on a single unalterable reality as in his refusal to believe that any aspect or estimate of that reality could be final.1

The necessity of the dualism that underlies Emerson's philosophy could scarcely be put more neatly, and the kind of synthesis, or reconciliation, in which Emerson floated is admirably expressed. But it is not so plain that this synthesis anticipates the solution of the troublesome problems of life. There will be those who will ask whether the power of religion for mature minds does not depend finally on its feeling for evil. How otherwise, in fact, shall religion meet those harder questions of experience when its aid is most needed? And in like manner they will say that the power of philosophy as the dux vitae depends on its acquaintance with the scope and difficulties of scepticism. Both religion and philosophy would seem, in such a view, to rest not only on a statement of the dualism of good and evil, knowledge and ignorance, but on a realization of the full meaning and gravity, practical and intellectual, of this dualism. Now Emerson certainly recognizes the dualism of experience, but it is a fair question whether he realizes its full meaning and seriousness. He accepts it a trifle too jauntily, is reconciled to its existence with no apparent pang, is sometimes too ready to wave aside its consequences, as if a statement of the fact were an escape from its terrible perplexities. Carlyle meant something of the sort when he worried over Emerson's inability to see the hand of the devil in human life. Hence it is that Emerson often loses value for his admirers in proportion to their maturity and experience. He is above all the poet of religion and philosophy for the young; whereas men, as they grow older, are inclined to turn from him, in their more serious moods, to those sages who have supplemented insight with a firm grasp of the darker facts of human nature. That is undoubtedly true; nevertheless, as time passes, the deficiencies of this brief period of New England, of which 'O. W. Firkins, Ralph Waldo Emerson, p. 364.

Emerson was the perfect spokesman, may well be more ari more condoned for its rarity and beauty. One of the wings f the spirit is hope, and nowhere is there to be found a purr hope than in the books of our New England sage; rather, it might be said that he went beyond hope to the assurance of present happiness. The world had never before seen anything quite of this kind, and may not see its like again.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Books for which no place of publication is given were published in New

York.

The following general authorities are not cited, except in special cases, in the bibliographies of individual chapters:

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

American Catalogue, The. Ed. Leypoldt, F., and others. Covering period I
July, 1876-31 December, 1910. 14 vols. 1880-1911. [Title varies after
1886.]
Catalogue of Copyright-entries of Books and Other Articles Entered in the
Office of the Librarian of Congress.

Washington, 1891–.

Cumulative Book Index, The. 10 vols. Minneapolis, 1906-16. Evans, C. American Bibliography. A Chronological Dictionary of all Books, Pamphlets and Periodical Publications Printed in the United States of America from the Genesis of Printing in 1639 down to and including the Year 1820. 8 vols. Chicago, 1903-1914. [At present completed only through 1792.]

Foley, P. K. American Authors 1795-1895. A Bibliography of First and Notable Editions. Boston, 1897.

Growoll, A. Book-trade Bibliography in the United States in the Nineteenth Century. 1898.

Harris, C. F. Index to American Poetry and Plays in the Collection of C. Fiske Harris. Providence, 1874. Rev. ed. by Stockbridge, J. C., 1886.

Kelly, J. The American Catalogue of Books. 1861-1871. 2 vols. 1866-71. Roorbach, O. A. Bibliotheca Americana. Catalogue of American Publications. 1820-1852. 1852. Supplements, 1855, 1858, 1861.

Sabin, J. A Dictionary of Books relating to America from its Discovery to the Present Time. 20 vols. 1868-92. [A to Smith.]

Stone, H. S. First Editions of American Authors. A Manual for Book-lovers with an Introduction by Eugene Field. Cambridge, 1893.

United States Catalogue, The. Books in Print, January 1, 1912. Minneapolis, 1912.

ANTHOLOGIES

Alderman, E. A., Harris, J. C., Kent, C. W., and others. Library of Southern Literature Compiled under the Direct Supervision of Southern Men of Letters. 16 vols. New Orleans, etc., 1908–13.

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Griswold, R. W. The Poets and Poetry of America. Philadelphia, 1842.
The Prose Writers of America. Philadelphia, 1847.

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Kettell, S. Specimens of American Poetry. 3 vols. Boston, 1829.

Matthews, B. The Wampum Library of American Literature: Matthews, B., American Familiar Verse; Baldwin, C. S., American Short Stories; Payne, W. M., American Literary Criticism. 3 vols. 1904.

Rittenhouse, Jessie B. The Younger American Poets. Boston, 1904.

A Little Book of Modern American Verse. Boston and New York, 1913. Sladen, D. Younger American Poets 1830-1890. London and Sydney, 1891. Stedman, E. C., and Hutchinson, Ellen M. A Library of American Literature from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time. II vols. 1889-1890. Stedman, E. C. An American Anthology 1787-1900.

Boston and New York,

1900. Stevenson, B. E. Poems of American History. Boston and New York, 1908. Trent, W. P., and Wells, B. W. Colonial Prose and Poetry. 3 vols. 1901. Trent, W. P. Southern Writers.

1905.

HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL

Adams, O. F. A Dictionary of American Authors. Boston and New York, 1897. 5th ed., 1905.

Addison, D. D. The Clergy in American Life and Letters. 1900.

Allibone, S. A. A Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors Living and Deceased. 3 vols. Philadelphia, 1858–71. Supplement by Kirk, J. F. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1891.

1912.

Beers, H. A. Initial Studies in American Letters. 1892.
Brownell, W. C. American Prose Masters. 1909.
Burton, R. Literary Leaders of America. 1903.
Cairns, W. B. A History of American Literature.
Chasles, V. E. P. Études sur la Littérature et les Moeurs des Anglo-Américains
au XIXe siècle. Paris, 1851. English translation. New York, 1852.
Duyckinck, E. A. and G. L. Cyclopædia of American Literature.

2 vols.

Philadelphia, 1855. Supplement, 1866. Rev. ed. by Simons, M. L., 1875. Evans, E. P. Beiträge zur Amerikanischen Litteratur-und Kulturgeschichte. Stuttgart, 1898.

Flügel, E. Die nordamerikanische Literatur. In Wülker, R., Geschichte der englischen Literatur von den ältesten Zeiten bis zur Gegenwart. Leipzig and Vienna, 1907.

Higginson, T. W., and Boynton, H. W. A Reader's History of American Literature. Boston, 1903.

Homes of American Authors; comprising Anecdotical, Personal, and Descriptive Sketches. 1852.

Howe, M. A. De W. American Bookmen.

1898.

Just, W. Die romantische Bewegung in der amerikanischen Literatur: Brown, Poe, Hawthorne. Weimar, 1910.

Kellner, L. Geschichte der nordamerikanischen Literatur. 2 vols. Berlin, 1913. English translation. New York, 1915.

Knapp, S. L. Lectures on American Literature. 1829.

Knortz, K. Geschichte der nordamerikanischen Literatur. Berlin, 1891. 2 vols.

Mitchell, D. G. American Lands and Letters. 2 vols. 1897-99.

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