“There are persons, mole-blind to the soul’s make and style, Who insist on a likeness ’twixt him and Carlyle; To compare him with Plato would be vastly fairer, Carlyle’s the more burly, but E. is the rarer; He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, truelier, If C.’s as original, E.’s more peculiar; That he’s more of a man you might say of the one, Of the other, he’s more of an Emerson; C.’s the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb,-- E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim; The one’s two thirds Norseman, the other half Greek, Where the one’s most abounding, the other’s to seek; C.’s generals require to be seen in the mass,-- E.’s specialties gain if enlarged by the glass; C. gives nature and God his own fits of theblues, And rims common-sense things with mystical hues,-- E. sits in a mystery calm and intense, And looks coolly around him with sharp common-sense; C. shows you how every-day matters unite With the dim transdiurnal recesses of night,-- While E., in a plain, preternatural way, Makes mysteries matters of mere every day; C. draws all his characters quite _à la_ Fuseli,-- Not sketching their bundles of muscles and thews illy, He paints with a brush so untamed and profuse, They seem nothing but bundles of muscles and thews; E. is rather like Flaxman, lines strait and severe, And a colorless outline, but full, round, and clear;-- To the men he thinks worthy he frankly accords The design of a white marble statue in words. C. labors to get at the centre, and then Take a reckoning from there of his actions and men; E. calmly assumes the said centre as granted, And, given himself, has whatever is wanted. “He has imitators in scores, who omit No part of the man but his wisdom and wit,-- Who go carefully o’er the sky-blue of his brain, And when he has skimmed it once, skim it again; If at all they resemble him, you may be sure it is Because their shoals mirror his mists andobscurities, As a mud-puddle seems deep as Heaven for a minute, While a cloud that floats o’er is reflected within it.