Natural history of intellect, and other papersEmerson, Ralph Waldo
Philosophy
Natural history of intellect, and other papers
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
American essays -- 19th century; Boston (Mass.); Intellect; Memory; Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1475-1564; Milton, John, 1608-1674
with boughs of hemlock and sweetbriar, with ferns and pond lilies
which the children have gathered. But let us not quarrel with our
benefactors. Perhaps Tennyson is too quaint and elegant. What then?
It is long since we have had as good a lyrist; it will be long before
we have his superior. “Godiva” is a noble poem that will tell the
legend a thousand years. The poem of all the poetry of the present
age for which we predict the longest term, is “Abou ben Adhem,” of
Leigh Hunt. Fortune will still have her part in every victory, and
it is strange that one of the best poems should be written by a man
who has hardly written any other. And “Godiva” is a parable which
belongs to the same gospel. “Locksley Hall” and “The Two Voices”
are meditative poems, which were slowly written to be slowly read.
“The Talking Oak,” though a little hurt by its wit and ingenuity, is
beautiful, and the most poetic of the volume. “Ulysses” belongs to
a high class of poetry, destined to be the highest, and to be more
cultivated in the next generation. “Œnone” was a sketch of the same
kind. One of the best specimens we have of the class is Wordsworth’s
“Laodamia,” of which no special merit it can possess equals the total
merit of having selected such a subject in such a spirit.
Next to the poetry, the novels, which come to us in every ship from
England, have an importance increased by the immense extension of
their circulation through the new cheap press, which sends them
to so many willing thousands. We have heard it alleged with some
evidence that the prominence given to intellectual power in Bulwer’s
romances has proved a main stimulus to mental culture in thousands
of young men in England and America. The effect on manners cannot be
less sensible, and we can easily believe that the behavior of the
ball-room and of the hotel has not failed to draw some addition of
dignity and grace from the fair ideals with which the imagination of
a novelist has filled the heads of the most imitative class.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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