This surely is an odd way of hiving truths. It follows from it that Emerson is more striking than suggestive. He likes things on a large scale--he is fond of ethnical remarks and typical persons. Notwithstanding his habit of introducing the names of common things into his discourses and poetry ('Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool, and wood,' is a line from one of his poems), his familiarity therewith is evidently not great. 'Take care, papa,' cried his little son, seeing him at work with his spade, 'you will dig your leg.' His essay on _Friendship_ will not be found satisfactory. Here is a subject on which surely we are entitled to 'body.' The _Over Soul_ was different; _there_ it was easy to agree with Carlyle, who, writing to Emerson, says: 'Those voices of yours which I likened to unembodied souls and censure sometimes for having no body--how _can_ they have a body? They are light rays darting upwards in the east!' But friendship is a word the very sight of which in print makes the heart warm. One remembers Elia: 'Oh! it is pleasant as it is rare to find the same arm linked in yours at forty which at thirteen helped it to turn over the Cicero _De Amicitia_, or some other tale of antique friendship which the young heart even then was burning to anticipate.' With this in your ear it is rather chilling to read, 'I do, then, with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them. We must have society on our own terms, and admit or exclude it on the slightest cause. I cannot afford to speak much with my friend.' These are not genial terms. For authors and books his affection, real as it was, was singularly impersonal. In his treatment of literary subjects, we miss the purely human touch, the grip of affection, the accent of scorn, that so pleasantly characterize the writings of Mr. Lowell. Emerson, it is to be feared, regarded a company of books but as a congeries of ideas. For one idea he is indebted to Plato, for another to Dr. Channing. _Sartor Resartus_, so Emerson writes, is a noble philosophical poem, but 'have you read Sampson Read's _Growth of the Mind_?' We read somewhere of 'Pindar, Raphael, Angelo, Dryden, and De Stael.' Emerson's notions of literary perspective are certainly 'very early.' Dr. Holmes himself is every bit as bad. In this very book of his, speaking about the dangerous liberty some poets--Emerson amongst the number--take of crowding a redundant syllable into a line, he reminds us 'that Shakspeare and Milton knew how to use it effectively; Shelley employed it freely: Bryant indulged in it; Willis was fond of it.' One has heard of the _Republic of Letters_, but this surely does not mean that one author is as good as another. 'Willis was fond of it.' I dare say he was, but we are not fond of Willis, and cannot help regarding the citation of his poetical example as an outrage.