“But, to come back to Emerson (whom, by the way, I believe we left waiting),--his is, we may say, A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range Has Olympus for one pole, for t’other the Exchange; He seems, to my thinking (although I’m afraid The comparison must, long ere this, have been made), A Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian’s gold mist And the Gascon’s shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl coexist; All admire, and yet scarcely six converts he’s got To I don’t (nor they either) exactly know what; For though he builds glorious temples, ’tis odd He leaves never a doorway to get in a god. ’Tis refreshing to old-fashioned people like me To meet such a primitive Pagan as he, In whose mind all creation is duly respected As parts of himself--just a little projected; And who’s willing to worship the stars and the sun, A convert to--nothing but Emerson. So perfect a balance there is in his head, That he talks of things sometimes as if they were dead; Life, nature, love, God, and affairs of that sort, He looks at as merely ideas; in short, As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet, Of such vast extent that our earth’s a mere dab in it; Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her, Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer; You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration, Each figure, word, gesture just fits the occasion, With the quiet precision of science he’ll sort’em, But you can’t help suspecting the whole a _post mortem_.