{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_24435/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_24435","id":"gutenberg_24435","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24435","summary":null,"tags":["Category: American Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Concord School of Philosophy","Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864","Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919","Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892"],"text":"Produced by Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was\nproduced from images generously made available by The\nInternet Archive/American Libraries.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFOUR AMERICANS\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nREPRINTS FROM THE YALE REVIEW\n\n[Illustration: Separator]\n\n_A Book of Yale Review Verse_\n\n1917\n\n_War Poems from The Yale Review_\n\n1918\n\n_War Poems from The Yale Review_\n\n(_Second Edition_)\n\n1919\n\n_Four Americans: Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman_\n\n1919\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nFOUR AMERICANS\n\nROOSEVELT\nHAWTHORNE\nEMERSON\nWHITMAN\n\n\nBY\n\nHENRY A. BEERS\n\nAUTHOR OF\n\nSTUDIES IN AMERICAN LITERATURE\nA HISTORY OF ENGLISH ROMANTICISM\n\n[Illustration: Shield, scroll: LUX ET VERITAS]\n\nNEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT\nPUBLISHED FOR THE YALE REVIEW\n\nBY THE\n\nYALE UNIVERSITY PRESS\nMDCCCCXX\n\n\n\n\nCOPYRIGHT, 1919, BY\nYALE UNIVERSITY PRESS\n\n\nFirst published, 1919\nSecond printing, 1920\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n                                   PAGE\n\n  I. Roosevelt as Man of Letters      7\n\n II. Fifty Years of Hawthorne        33\n\nIII. A Pilgrim in Concord            59\n\n IV. A Wordlet about Whitman         85\n\n\n\n\nROOSEVELT AS MAN OF LETTERS\n\n\nIn a club corner, just after Roosevelt's death, the question was asked\nwhether his memory would not fade away, when the living man, with his\nvivid personality, had gone. But no: that personality had stamped itself\ntoo deeply on the mind of his generation to be forgotten. Too many\nobservers have recorded their impressions; and already a dozen\nbiographies and memoirs have appeared. Besides, he is his own recorder.\nHe published twenty-six books, a catalogue of which any professional\nauthor might be proud; and a really wonderful feat when it is remembered\nthat he wrote them in the intervals of an active public career as Civil\nService Commissioner, Police Commissioner, member of his state\nlegislature, Governor of New York, delegate to the National Republican\nConvention, Colonel of Rough Riders, Assistant Secretary of the Navy,\nVice-President and President of the United States.\n\nPerhaps in some distant future he may become a myth or symbol, like\nother mighty hunters of the beast, Nimrod and Orion and Tristram of\nLyonesse. Yet not so long as \"African Game Trails\" and the \"Hunting\nTrips of a Ranchman\" endure, to lift the imagination to those noble\nsports denied to the run of mortals by poverty, feebleness, timidity,\nthe engrossments of the humdrum, everyday life, or lack of enterprise\nand opportunity. Old scraps of hunting song thrill us with the great\nadventure: \"In the wild chamois' track at break of day\"; \"We'll chase\nthe antelope over the plain\"; \"Afar in the desert I love to ride\"; and\nthen we go out and shoot at a woodchuck, with an old double-barrelled\nshotgun--and miss! If Roosevelt ever becomes a poet, it is while he is\namong the wild creatures and wild landscapes that he loved: in the\ngigantic forests of Brazil, or the almost unnatural nature of the\nRockies and the huge cattle ranches of the plains, or on the limitless\nSouth African veldt, which is said to give a greater feeling of infinity\nthan the ocean even.\n\nRoosevelt was so active a person--not to say so noisy and conspicuous;\nhe so occupied the centre of every stage, that, when he died, it was as\nthough a wind had fallen, a light had gone out, a military band had\nstopped playing. It was not so much the death of an individual as a\ngeneral lowering in the vitality of the nation. America was less\nAmerica, because he was no longer here. He should have lived twenty\nyears more had he been willing to go slow, to loaf and invite his soul,\nto feed that mind of his in a wise passiveness. But there was no repose\nabout him, and his pleasures were as strenuous as his toils. John\nBurroughs tells us that he did not care for fishing, the contemplative\nman's recreation. No contemplation for him, but action; no angling in a\nclear stream for a trout or grayling; but the glorious, dangerous\nexcitement of killing big game--grizzlies, lions, African buffaloes,\nmountain sheep, rhinoceroses, elephants. He never spared himself: he\nwore himself out. But doubtless he would have chosen the crowded hour of\nglorious life--or strife, for life and strife were with him the same.\n\nHe was above all things a fighter, and the favorite objects of his\ndenunciation were professional pacifists, nice little men who had let\ntheir muscles get soft, and nations that had lost their fighting edge.\nAggressive war, he tells us in \"The Winning of the West,\" is not always\nbad. \"Americans need to keep in mind the fact that, as a nation, they\nhave erred far more often in not being willing enough to fight than in\nbeing too willing.\" \"Cowardice,\" he writes elsewhere, \"in a race, as in\nan individual, is the unpardonable sin.\" Is this true? Cowardice is a\nweakness, perhaps a disgraceful weakness: a defect of character which\nmakes a man contemptible, just as foolishness does. But it is not a sin\nat all, and surely not an unpardonable one. Cruelty, treachery, and\ningratitude are much worse traits, and selfishness is as bad. I have\nknown very good men who were cowards; men that I liked and trusted but\nwho, from weakness of nerves or other physical causes--perhaps from\nprenatal influences--were easily frightened and always constitutionally\ntimid. The Colonel was a very pugnacious man: he professed himself to be\na lover of peace--and so did the Kaiser--but really he enjoyed the\n_gaudium certaminis_, as all bold spirits do.\n\nIn the world-wide sense of loss which followed his death, some rather\nexaggerated estimates made themselves heard. A preacher announced that\nthere had been only two great Americans, one of whom was Theodore\nRoosevelt. An editor declared that the three greatest Americans were\nWashington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. But not all great Americans have\nbeen in public life; and, of those who have, very few have been\nPresidents of the United States. What is greatness? Roosevelt himself\nrightly insists on character as the root of the matter. Still character\nalone does not make a man great. There are thousands of men in common\nlife, of sound and forceful character, who never become great, who are\nnot even potentially great. To make them such, great abilities are\nneeded, as well as favoring circumstances. In his absolute manner--a\nmanner caught perhaps partly from Macaulay, for whose qualities as a\nwriter he had a high and, I think, well-justified regard--he pronounces\nCromwell the greatest Englishman of the seventeenth century. Was he so?\nHe was the greatest English soldier and magistrate of that century; but\nhow about Bacon and Newton, about Shakespeare and Milton?\n\nLet us think of a few other Americans who, in their various fields,\nmight perhaps deserve to be entitled great. Shall we say Jonathan\nEdwards, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, Robert\nFulton, S. F. B. Morse, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Daniel Webster, Horace\nGreeley, Henry Ward Beecher, Admiral Farragut, General W. T. Sherman,\nJames Russell Lowell, Nathaniel Hawthorne, General Robert E. Lee? None\nof these people were Presidents of the United States. But to the man in\nthe street there is something imposing about the office and title of a\nchief magistrate, be he emperor, king, or elected head of a republic. It\nsets him apart. Look at the crowds that swarm to get a glimpse of the\nPresident when he passes through, no matter whether it is George\nWashington or Franklin Pierce.\n\nIt might be safer, on the whole, to say that the three names in\nquestion are those of our greatest presidents, not of the greatest\nAmericans. And even this comparison might be questioned. Some, for\nexample, might assert the claims of Thomas Jefferson to rank with the\nothers. Jefferson was a man of ideas who made a strong impression on his\ngeneration. He composed the Declaration of Independence and founded the\nDemocratic party and the University of Virginia. He had a more flexible\nmind than Washington, though not such good judgment; and he had\nsomething of Roosevelt's alert interest in a wide and diversified range\nof subjects. But the latter had little patience with Jefferson. He may\nhave respected him as the best rider and pistol shot in Virginia; but in\npolitics he thought him a theorist and doctrinaire imbued with the\nabstract notions of the French philosophical deists and democrats.\nJefferson, he thought, knew nothing and cared nothing about military\naffairs. He let the army run down and preferred to buy Louisiana rather\nthan conquer it, while he dreamed of universal fraternity and was the\nforerunner of the Dove of Peace and the League of Nations.\n\nRoosevelt, in fact, had no use for philosophy or speculative thought\nwhich could not be reduced to useful action. He was an eminently\npractical thinker. His mind was without subtlety, and he had little\nimagination. A life of thought for its own sake; the life of a dreamer\nor idealist; a life like that of Coleridge, with his paralysis of will\nand abnormal activity of the speculative faculty, eternally spinning\nmetaphysical cobwebs, doubtless seemed to the author of \"The Strenuous\nLife\" a career of mere self-indulgence. It is not without significance\nthat, with all his passion for out of doors, for wild life and the study\nof bird and beast, he nowhere, so far as I can remember, mentions\nThoreau,[A] who is far and away our greatest nature writer. Doubtless he\nmay have esteemed him as a naturalist, but not as a transcendentalist or\nas an impracticable faddist who refused to pay taxes because\nMassachusetts enforced the fugitive slave law. We are told that his\nfellow historian, Francis Parkman, had a contempt for philosophers like\nEmerson and Thoreau and an admiration for writers such as Scott and\nCooper who depicted scenes of bold adventure. The author of \"The Oregon\nTrail\" and the author of \"African Game Trails\" had a good deal in\ncommon, especially great force of will--you see it in Parkman's jaw. He\nwas a physical wreck and did his work under almost impossible\nconditions; while Roosevelt had built up an originally sickly\nconstitution into a physique of splendid vigor.\n\nTowards the critical intellect, as towards the speculative, Roosevelt\nfelt an instinctive antagonism. One of his most characteristic\nutterances is the address delivered at the Sorbonne, April 30, 1910,\n\"Citizenship in a Republic.\" Here, amidst a good deal of moral\ncommonplace--wise and sensible for the most part, but sufficiently\nplatitudinous--occurs a burst of angry eloquence. For he was always at\nhis strongest when scolding somebody. His audience included the\nintellectual _elite_ of France; and he warns it against the besetting\nsin of university dons and the learned and lettered class in general, a\nsupercilious, patronizing attitude towards the men of action who are\ndoing the rough work of the world. Critics are the object of his\nfiercest denunciation. \"A cynical habit of thought and speech, a\nreadiness to criticise work which the critic himself never tries to\nperform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with\nlife's realities--all these are marks, not, as the possessor would fain\nthink, of superiority, but of weakness.... It is not the critic who\ncounts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or\nwhere the doer of deeds could have done them better.... Shame on the man\nof cultivated taste who permits refinement to develop into a\nfastidiousness that unfits him for doing the rough work of a workaday\nworld. Among the free peoples who govern themselves there is but a small\nfield of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from\ncontact with their fellows.\"\n\nThe speaker had seemingly himself been stung by criticism; or he was\nreacting against Matthew Arnold, the celebrated \"Harvard indifference,\"\nand the cynical talk of the clubs.\n\nWe do not expect our Presidents to be literary men and are\ncorrespondingly gratified when any of them shows signs of almost human\nintelligence in spheres outside of politics. Of them all, none touched\nlife at so many points, or was so versatile, picturesque, and generally\ninteresting a figure as the one who has just passed away. Washington was\nnot a man of books. A country gentleman, a Virginia planter and\nslave-owner, member of a landed aristocracy, he had the limited\neducation of his class and period. Rumor said that he did not write his\nown messages. And there is a story that John Quincy Adams, regarding a\nportrait of the father of his country, exclaimed, \"To think that that\nold wooden head will go down in history as a great man!\" But this was\nthe comment of a Boston Brahmin, and all the Adamses had bitter tongues.\nWashington was, of course, a very great man, though not by virtue of any\nintellectual brilliancy, but of his strong character, his immense\npractical sagacity and common sense, his leadership of men.\n\nAs to Lincoln, we know through what cold obstruction he struggled up\ninto the light, educating himself to be one of the soundest statesmen\nand most effective public speakers of his day--or any day. There was an\ninborn fineness or sensitiveness in Lincoln, a touch of the artist (he\neven wrote verses) which contrasts with the phlegm of his illustrious\ncontemporary, General Grant. The latter had a vein of coarseness, of\ncommonness rather, in his nature; evidenced by his choice of associates\nand his entire indifference to \"the things of the mind.\" He was almost\nilliterate and only just a gentleman. Yet by reason of his dignified\nmodesty and simplicity, he contrived to write one of the best of\nautobiographies.\n\nRoosevelt had many advantages over his eminent predecessors. Of old\nKnickerbocker stock, with a Harvard education, and the habit of good\nsociety, he had means enough to indulge in his favorite pastimes. To\nrun a cattle ranch in Dakota, lead a hunting party in Africa and an\nexploring expedition in Brazil, these were wide opportunities, but he\nfully measured up to them. Mr. W. H. Hays, chairman of the Republican\nNational Committee, said of him, \"He had more knowledge about more\nthings than any other man.\" Well, not quite that. We have all known\npeople who made a specialty of omniscience. If a man can speak two\nlanguages besides his own and can read two more fairly well, he is at\nonce credited with knowing half a dozen foreign tongues as well as he\nknows English. Let us agree, however, that Roosevelt knew a lot about a\nlot of things. He was a rapid and omnivorous reader, reading a book with\nhis finger tips, gutting it of its contents, as he did the birds that he\nshot, stuffed, and mounted; yet not inappreciative of form, and\naccustomed to recommend much good literature to his countrymen. He took\nan eager interest in a large variety of subjects, from Celtic poetry and\nthe fauna and flora of many regions to simplified spelling and the split\ninfinitive.\n\nA young friend of mine was bringing out, for the use of schools and\ncolleges, a volume of selections from the English poets, all learnedly\nannotated, and sent me his manuscript to look over. On a passage about\nthe bittern bird he had made this note, \"The bittern has a harsh,\nthroaty cry.\" Whereupon I addressed him thus: \"Throaty nothing! You are\nguessing, man. If Teddy Roosevelt reads your book--and he reads\neverything--he will denounce you as a nature faker and put you down for\nmembership in the Ananias Club. Recall what he did to Ernest\nSeton-Thompson and to that minister in Stamford, Connecticut. Remember\nhow he crossed swords with Mr. Scully touching the alleged dangerous\nnature of the ostrich and the early domestication of the peacock. So far\nas I know, the bittern thing has no voice at all. His real stunt is as\nfollows. He puts his beak down into the swamp, in search of insects and\nsnails or other marine life--_est-ce que je sais?_--and drawing in the\nbog-water through holes in his beak, makes a booming sound which is most\nimpressive. Now do not think me an ornithologist or a bird sharp.\nPersonally I do not know a bittern from an olive-backed thrush. But I\nhave read some poetry, and I remember what Thomson says in 'The\nSeasons':\n\n\n     The bittern knows his time with bill ingulf'd\n     To shake the sounding marsh.\n\n\nSee also 'The Lady of the Lake':\n\n\n     And the bittern sound his drum,\n     Booming from the sedgy shallow.\n\n\nSee even old Chaucer who knew a thing or two about birds, _teste_ his\n'Parlament of Foules,' admirably but strangely edited by Lounsbury,\nwhose indifference to art was only surpassed by his hostility to nature.\nSays Chaucer:\n\n\n     And as a bytoure bumblith in the myre.\"\n\n\nMy friend canceled his note. It is, of course, now established that the\nbittern \"booms\"--not in the mud--but in the air.\n\nMr. Roosevelt was historian, biographer, essayist, and writer of\nnarrative papers on hunting, outdoor life, and natural history, and in\nall these departments did solid, important work. His \"Winning of the\nWest\" is little, if at all, inferior in historical interest to the\nsimilar writings of Parkman and John Fiske. His \"History of the Naval\nWar of 1812\" is an astonishing performance for a young man of\ntwenty-four, only two years out of college. For it required a careful\nsifting of evidence and weighing of authorities. The job was done with\npatient thoroughness, and the book is accepted, I believe, as\nauthoritative. It is to me a somewhat tedious tale. One sea fight is\nmuch like another, a record of meaningless slaughter.\n\nOf the three lives, those of Gouverneur Morris, T. H. Benton, and Oliver\nCromwell, I cannot speak with confidence, having read only the last. I\nshould guess that the life of Benton was written more _con amore_ than\nthe others, for the frontier was this historian's favorite scene. The\nlife of Cromwell is not so much a formal biography as a continuous essay\nin interpretation of a character still partly enigmatic in spite of all\nthe light that so many acute psychologists have shed upon it. It is a\nrelief to read for once a book which is without preface, footnote, or\nreference. It cannot be said that the biographer contributes anything\nvery new to our knowledge of his subject. The most novel features of his\nwork are the analogies that he draws between situations in English and\nAmerican political history. These are usually ingenious and\nilluminating, sometimes a little misleading; as where he praises\nLincoln's readiness to acquiesce in the result of the election in 1864\nand to retire peaceably in favor of McClellan; contrasting it with\nCromwell's dissolution of his Parliaments and usurpation of the supreme\npower. There was a certain likeness in the exigencies, to be sure, but a\nbroad difference between the problems confronting the two rulers.\nLincoln was a constitutional President with strictly limited powers,\nbound by usage and precedent. For him to have kept his seat by military\nforce, in defiance of a Democratic majority, would have been an act of\ntreason. But the Lord Protector held a new office, unknown to the old\nconstitution of England and with ill-defined powers. A revolution had\ntossed him to the top and made him dictator. He was bound to keep the\npeace in unsettled times, to keep out the Stuarts, to keep down the\nunruly factions. If Parliament would not help, he must govern without\nit. Carlyle thought that he had no choice.\n\nRoosevelt's addresses, essays, editorials, and miscellaneous papers,\nwhich fill many volumes, are seldom literary in subject, and certainly\nnot in manner. He was an effective speaker and writer, using plain,\ndirect, forcible English, without any graces of style. In these papers\nhe is always the moralist, earnest, high-minded, and the preacher of\nmany gospels: the gospel of the strenuous life; the gospel of what used\nto be called \"muscular Christianity\"; the gospel of large families; of\nhundred per cent Americanism; and, above all, of military preparedness.\nI am not here concerned with the President's political principles, nor\nwith the specific measures that he advocated. I will only say, to guard\nagainst suspicion of unfair prejudice, that, as a Democrat, a\nfreetrader, a state-rights man, individualist, and anti-imperialist, I\nnaturally disapproved of many acts of his administration, of the\nadministration of his predecessor, and of his party in general. I\ndisapproved, and still do, of the McKinley and Payne-Aldrich tariffs; of\nthe Spanish war--most avoidable of wars--with its sequel, the conquest\nof the Philippines; above all, of the seizure of the Panama Canal zone.\n\nBut let all that pass: I am supposed to be dealing with my subject as\nman of letters. As such the Colonel of the Rough Riders was the high\ncommander-in-chief of rough writers. He never persuaded his readers into\nan opinion--he bullied them into it. When he gnashed his big teeth and\nshook his big stick,\n\n\n     ... The bold Ascalonite\n     Fled from his iron ramp; old warriors turned\n     Their plated backs under his heel;\n\n\nmollycoddles, pussy-footers, professional pacifists, and nice little men\nwho had lost their fighting edge, all scuttled to cover. He called\nnames, he used great violence of language. For instance, a certain\npresident of a woman's college had \"fatuously announced ... that it was\nbetter to have one child brought up in the best way than several not\nthus brought up.\" The woman making this statement, wrote the Colonel,\n\"is not only unfit to be at the head of a female college, but is not fit\nto teach the lowest class in a kindergarten; for such teaching is not\nmerely folly, but a peculiarly repulsive type of mean and selfish\nwickedness.\" And again: \"The man or woman who deliberately avoids\nmarriage ... is in effect a criminal against the race and should be an\nobject of contemptuous abhorrence by all healthy people.\"\n\nNow, I am not myself an advocate of race suicide but I confess to a\nfeeling of sympathy with the lady thus denounced, whose point of view\nis, at least, comprehensible. Old Malthus was not such an ass as some\nfolks think. It is impossible not to admire Roosevelt's courage,\nhonesty, and wonderful energy: impossible to keep from liking the man\nfor his boyish impulsiveness, camaraderie, sporting blood, and hatred of\na rascal. But it is equally impossible for a man of any spirit to keep\nfrom resenting his bullying ways, his intolerance of quiet, peaceable\npeople and persons of an opposite temperament to his own. Even nice,\ntimid little men who have let their bodies get soft do not like to be\nbullied. It puts their backs up. His ideal of character was manliness, a\nsound ideal, but he insisted too much upon the physical side of it,\n\"red-bloodedness\" and all that. Those poor old fat generals in\nWashington who had been enjoying themselves at their clubs, playing\nbridge and drinking Scotch highballs! He made them all turn out and ride\nfifty miles a day.\n\nMr. Roosevelt produced much excellent literature, but no masterpieces\nlike Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural. Probably his\nsketches of ranch life and of hunting trips in three continents will be\nread longest and will keep their freshness after the public questions\nwhich he discussed have lost interest and his historical works have been\nin part rewritten. In these outdoor papers, besides the thrilling\nadventures which they--very modestly--record, there are even passages of\ndescriptive beauty and chapters of graphic narrative, like the tale of\nthe pursuit and capture of the three robbers who stole the boats on the\nMissouri River, which belonged to the Roosevelt ranch. This last would\nbe a capital addition to school readers and books of selected standard\nprose.\n\nSenator Lodge and other friends emphasize the President's sense of\nhumor. He had it, of course. He took pains to establish the true reading\nof that famous retort, \"All I want out of you is common civility and\ndamned little of that.\" He used to repeat with glee Lounsbury's\nwitticism about \"the infinite capability of the human mind to resist the\nintroduction of knowledge.\" I wonder whether he knew of that other good\nsaying of Lounsbury's about the historian Freeman's being, in his own\nperson, a proof of the necessity of the Norman Conquest. He had, at all\nevents, a just and high estimate of the merits of my brilliant\ncolleague. \"Heu quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam tui\nmeminisse!\" But Roosevelt was not himself a humorist, and his writings\ngive little evidence of his possession of the faculty. Lincoln, now, was\none of the foremost American humorists. But Roosevelt was too strenuous\nfor the practice of humor, which implies a certain relaxation of mind: a\ndetachment from the object of immediate pursuit: a superiority to\npractical interests which indulges itself in the play of thought; and,\nin the peculiarly American form of it, a humility which inclines one to\nlaugh at himself. Impossible to fancy T. R. making the answer that\nLincoln made to an applicant for office: \"I haven't much influence with\nthis administration.\" As for that variety of humor that is called irony,\nit demands a duplicity which the straight-out-speaking Roosevelt could\nnot practise. He was like Epaminondas in the Latin prose composition\nbook, who was such a lover of truth that he never told a falsehood even\nin jest--_ne joco quidem_.\n\nThe only instance of his irony that I recall--there may be others--is\nthe one recorded by Mr. Leupp in his reply to Senator Gorman, who had\ncharged that the examiners of the Civil Service Commission had turned\ndown \"a bright young man\" in the city of Baltimore, an applicant for the\nposition of letter-carrier, \"because he could not tell the most direct\nroute from Baltimore to Japan.\" Hereupon the young Civil Service\nCommissioner challenged the senator to verify his statement, but Mr.\nGorman preserved a dignified silence. Then the Commissioner overwhelmed\nhim in a public letter from which Mr. Leupp quotes the closing passage,\nbeginning thus: \"High-minded, sensitive Mr. Gorman! Clinging, trustful\nMr. Gorman! Nothing could shake his belief in that 'bright young man.'\nApparently he did not even yet try to find out his name--if he had a\nname,\" and so on for nearly a page. Excellent fooling, but a bit too\nlong and heavy-handed for the truest ironic effect.\n\nMany of our Presidents, however little given to the use of the pen, have\nbeen successful coiners of phrases--phrases that have stuck: \"entangling\nalliances,\" \"era of good feeling,\" \"innocuous desuetude,\" \"a condition,\nnot a theory.\" Lincoln was happiest at this art, and there is no need to\nmention any of the scores of pungent sayings which he added to the\nlanguage and which are in daily use. President Roosevelt was no whit\nbehind in this regard. All recognize and remember the many phrases to\nwhich he gave birth or currency: \"predatory wealth,\" \"bull moose,\" \"hit\nthe line hard,\" \"weasel words,\" \"my hat is in the ring,\" and so on. He\ntook a humorous delight in mystifying the public with recondite\nallusions, sending everyone to the dictionary to look out \"Byzantine\nlogothete,\" and to the Bible and cyclopedia to find Armageddon.\n\nRoosevelt is alleged to have had a larger personal following than any\nother man lately in public life. What a testimony to his popularity is\nthe \"teddy bear\"; and what a sign of the universal interest, hostile or\nfriendly, which he excited in his contemporaries, is the fact that Mr.\nAlbert Shaw was able to compile a caricature life of him presenting many\nhundred pictures! There was something German about Roosevelt's\nstandards. In this last war he stood heart and soul for America and her\nallies against Germany's misconduct. But he admired the Germans'\nefficiency, their highly organized society, their subordination of the\nindividual to the state. He wanted to Prussianize this great peaceful\nrepublic by introducing universal obligatory military service. He\ninsisted, like the Germans, upon the _Hausfrau's_ duty to bear and rear\nmany children. If he had been a German, it seems possible that, with his\nviews as to the right of strong races to expand, by force if necessary,\nhe might have justified the seizure of Silesia, the partition of\nPoland, the _Drang nach Osten_, and maybe even the invasion of\nBelgium--as a military measure.\n\nAnd so of religion and the church, which Germans regard as a department\nof government. Our American statesman, of course, was firmly in favor of\nthe separation of church and state and of universal toleration. But he\nadvises everyone to join the church, some church, any old church; not\nbecause one shares its beliefs--creeds are increasingly unimportant--but\nbecause the church is an instrument of social welfare, and a man can do\nmore good in combination with his fellows than when he stands alone.\nThere is much truth in this doctrine, though it has a certain naivete,\nwhen looked at from the standpoint of the private soul and its spiritual\nneeds.\n\nAs in the church, so in the state, he stood for the associative\nprinciple as opposed to an extreme individualism. He was a practical\npolitician and therefore an honest partisan, feeling that he could work\nmore efficiently for good government within party lines than outside\nthem. He resigned from the Free Trade League because his party was\ncommitted to the policy of protection. In 1884 he supported his party's\nplatform and candidate, instead of joining the Mugwumps and voting for\nCleveland, though at the National Republican Convention, to which he\nwent as a delegate, he had opposed the nomination of Blaine. I do not\nbelieve that his motive in this decision was selfish, or that he quailed\nunder the snap of the party lash because he was threatened with\npolitical death in case he disobeyed. Theodore Roosevelt was nobody's\nman. He thought, as he frankly explained, that one who leaves his\nfaction for every slight occasion, loses his influence and his power for\ngood. Better to compromise, to swallow some differences and to stick to\nthe crowd which, upon the whole and in the long run, embodies one's\nconvictions. This is a comprehensible attitude, and possibly it is the\ncorrect one for the man in public life who is frequently a candidate for\noffice. Yet I wish he could have broken with his party and voted for\nCleveland. For, ironically enough, it was Roosevelt himself who\nafterward split his party and brought in Wilson and the Democrats.\n\nDisregarding his political side and considering him simply as man of\nletters, one seeks for comparisons with other men of letters who were at\nonce big sportsmen and big writers; Christopher North, for example:\n\"Christopher in his Aviary\" and \"Christopher in his Shooting Jacket.\"\nThe likeness here is only a very partial one, to be sure. The American\nwas like the Scotchman in his athleticism, high spirits, breezy\noptimism, love of the open air, intense enjoyment of life. But he had\nnot North's roystering conviviality and uproarious Toryism; and the\nkinds of literature that they cultivated were quite unlike.\n\nCharles Kingsley offers a closer resemblance, though the differences\nhere are as numerous as the analogies. Roosevelt was not a clergyman,\nand not a creative writer, a novelist, or poet. His temperament was not\nvery similar to Kingsley's. Yet the two shared a love for bold\nadventure, a passion for sport, and an eager interest in the life of\nanimals and plants. Sport with Kingsley took the shape of trout fishing\nand of riding to hounds, not of killing lions with the rifle. He was\nfond of horses and dogs; associated democratically with gamekeepers,\ngrooms, whippers-in, poachers even; as Roosevelt did with cowboys,\ntarpon fishers, wilderness guides, beaters, trappers, and all whom Walt\nWhitman calls \"powerful uneducated persons,\" loving them for their\npluck, coolness, strength, and skill. Kingsley's \"At Last, a Christmas\nin the West Indies,\" exhibits the same curiosity as to tropical botany\nand zoology that Roosevelt shows in his African and Brazilian journeys.\nNot only tastes, but many ideals and opinions the two men had in\ncommon. \"Parson Lot,\" the Chartist and Christian Socialist, had the same\nsympathy with the poor and the same desire to improve the condition of\nagricultural laborers and London artisans which led Roosevelt to promote\nemployers' liability laws and other legislation to protect the\nworkingman from exploitation by conscienceless wealth. Kingsley, like\nRoosevelt, was essentially Protestant. Neither he nor Mr. Roosevelt\nliked asceticism or celibacy. As a historian, Kingsley did not rank at\nall with the author of \"The Winning of the West\" and the \"Naval War of\n1812.\" On the other hand, if Roosevelt had written novels and poetry, I\nthink he would have rejoiced greatly to write \"Westward Ho,\" \"The Last\nBuccaneer,\" and \"Ode to the North-East Wind.\"\n\nIn fine, whatever lasting fortune may be in store for Roosevelt's\nwritings, the disappearance of his vivid figure leaves a blank in the\ncontemporary scene. And those who were against him can join with those\nwho were for him in slightly paraphrasing Carlyle's words of dismissal\nto Walter Scott, \"Theodore Roosevelt, pride of all Americans, take our\nproud and sad farewell.\"\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[A] Mr. Edwin Carty Ranck, of the Roosevelt Memorial Committee,\ncalls attention to the following sentence, which I had overlooked: \"As a\nwoodland writer, Thoreau comes second only to Burroughs.\"--\"The\nWilderness Hunter,\" p. 261.\n\n\n\n\nFIFTY YEARS OF HAWTHORNE\n\n\nHawthorne was an excellent critic of his own writings. He recognizes\nrepeatedly the impersonal and purely objective nature of his fiction. R.\nH. Hutton once called him the ghost of New England; and those who love\nhis exquisite, though shadowy, art are impelled to give corporeal\nsubstance to this disembodied spirit: to draw him nearer out of his\nchill aloofness, by associating him with people and places with which\nthey too have associations.\n\nI heard Colonel Higginson say, in a lecture at Concord, that if a few\ndrops of redder blood could have been added to Hawthorne's style, he\nwould have been the foremost imaginative writer of his century. The\nghosts in \"The AEneid\" were unable to speak aloud until they had drunk\nblood. Instinctively, then, one seeks to infuse more red corpuscles into\nthe somewhat anaemic veins of these tales and romances. For Hawthorne's\nfiction is almost wholly ideal. He does not copy life like Thackeray,\nwhose procedure is inductive: does not start with observed characters,\nbut with an imagined problem or situation of the soul, inventing\ncharacters to fit. There is always a dreamy quality about the action:\nno violent quarrels, no passionate love scenes. Thus it has been often\npointed out that in \"The Scarlet Letter\" we do not get the history of\nDimmesdale's and Hester's sin: not the passion itself, but only its\nsequels in the conscience. So in \"The House of the Seven Gables,\" and\n\"The Marble Faun,\" a crime has preceded the opening of the story, which\ndeals with the working out of the retribution.\n\nWhen Hawthorne handled real persons, it was in the form of the character\nsketch--often the satirical character sketch,--as in the introduction to\n\"The Scarlet Letter\" which scandalized the people of Salem. If he could\nhave made a novel out of his custom-house acquaintances, he might have\ngiven us something less immaterial. He felt the lack of solidity in his\nown creations: the folly of constructing \"the semblance of a world out\nof airy matter\"; the \"value hidden in petty incidents and ordinary\ncharacters.\" \"A better book than I shall ever write was there,\" he\nconfesses, but \"my brain wanted the insight and my hand the cunning to\ntranscribe it.\"\n\nNow and then, when he worked from observation, or utilized his own\nexperiences, a piece of drastic realism results. The suicide of Zenobia\nis transferred, with the necessary changes, from a long passage in \"The\nAmerican Note Books,\" in which he tells of going out at night, with his\nneighbors, to drag for the body of a girl who had drowned herself in the\nConcord. Yet he did not refrain the touch of symbolism even here. There\nis a wound on Zenobia's breast, inflicted by the pole with which\nHollingsworth is groping the river bottom.\n\nAnd this is why one finds his \"American Note Books\" quite as interesting\nreading as his stories. Very remarkable things, these note books. They\nhave puzzled Mr. James, who asks what the author would be at in them,\nand suggests that he is writing letters to himself, or practising his\nhand at description. They are not exactly a _journal in-time_; nor are\nthey records of thought, like Emerson's ten volumes of journals. They\nare carefully composed, and are full of hints for plots, scenes,\nsituations, characters, to be later worked up. In the three collections,\n\"Twice-Told Tales,\" \"Mosses from an Old Manse,\" and \"The Snow Image,\"\nthere are, in round numbers, a hundred tales and sketches; and Mr.\nConway has declared that, in the number of his original plots, no modern\nauthor, save Browning, has equalled Hawthorne. Now, the germ of many, if\nnot most, of these inventions may be found in some brief jotting--a\nparagraph, or a line or two--in \"The American Note Books.\"\n\nYet it is not as literary material that these notes engage me most--by\nfar the greater portion were never used,--but as records of observation\nand studies of life. I will even acknowledge a certain excitement when\nthe diarist's wanderings lead him into my own neighborhood, however\ninsignificant the result. Thus, in a letter from New Haven in 1830, he\nwrites, \"I heard some of the students at Yale College conjecturing that\nI was an Englishman.\" Mr. Lathrop thinks that it was on this trip\nthrough Connecticut that he hit upon his story, \"The Seven Vagabonds,\"\nthe scene of which is near Stamford, in the van of a travelling showman,\nwhere the seven wanderers take shelter during a thunderstorm. How\nquaintly true to the old provincial life of back-country New England are\nthese figures--a life that survives to-day in out-of-the-way places.\nHolgrave, the young daguerreotypist in \"The House of the Seven Gables,\"\na type of the universal Yankee, had practised a number of these queer\ntrades: had been a strolling dentist, a lecturer on mesmerism, a\nsalesman in a village store, a district schoolmaster, editor of a\ncountry newspaper; and \"had subsequently travelled New England and the\nMiddle States, as a peddler, in the employment of a Connecticut\nmanufactory of Cologne water and other essences.\" The Note Books tell us\nthat, at North Adams in 1838, the author foregathered with a\nsurgeon-dentist, who was also a preacher of the Baptist persuasion: and\nthat, on the stage-coach between Worcester and Northampton, they took up\nan essence-vender who was peddling anise-seed, cloves, red-cedar,\nwormwood, opodeldoc, hair-oil, and Cologne water. Do you imagine that\nthe essence-peddler is extinct? No, you may meet his covered wagon\nto-day on lonely roads between the hill-villages of Massachusetts and\nConnecticut.\n\nIt was while living that strange life of seclusion at Old Salem,\ncompared with which Thoreau's hermitage at Walden was like the central\nroar of Broadway, that Hawthorne broke away now and then from his\nsolitude, and went rambling off in search of contacts with real life.\nHere is another item that he fetched back from Connecticut under date of\nSeptember, 1838: \"In Connecticut and also sometimes in Berkshire, the\nvillages are situated on the most elevated ground that can be found, so\nthat they are visible for miles around. Litchfield is a remarkable\ninstance, occupying a high plain, without the least shelter from the\nwinds, and with almost as wide an expanse of view as from a\nmountain-top. The streets are very wide--two or three hundred feet at\nleast--with wide green margins, and sometimes there is a wide green\nspace between two road tracks.... The graveyard is on the slope, and at\nthe foot of a swell, filled with old and new gravestones, some of red\nfreestone, some of gray granite, most of them of white marble and one of\ncast iron with an inscription of raised letters.\" Do I not know that\nwind-swept hilltop, those grassy avenues? Do I not know that ancient\ngraveyard, and what names are on its headstones? Yes, even as the heart\nknoweth its own bitterness.\n\nAs we go on in life, anniversaries become rather melancholy affairs. The\nturn of the year--the annual return of the day--birthdays or death-days\nor set festal occasions like Christmas or the New Year, bring reminders\nof loss and change. This is true of domestic anniversaries; while public\nliterary celebrations, designed to recall to a forgetful generation the\ncentenary or other dates in the lives of great writers, appear too often\nbut milestones on the road to oblivion. Fifty years is too short a time\nto establish a literary immortality; and yet, if any American writer has\nalready won the position of a classic, Hawthorne is that writer.\nSpeaking in this country in 1883, Matthew Arnold said: \"Hawthorne's\nliterary talent is of the first order. His subjects are generally not to\nme subjects of the highest interest; but his literary talent is ... the\nfinest, I think, which America has yet produced--finer, by much, than\nEmerson's.\" But how does the case stand to-day? I believe that\nHawthorne's fame is secure as a whole, in spite of the fact that much of\nhis work has begun to feel the disintegrating force of hostile\ncriticism, and \"the unimaginable touch of time.\"\n\nFor one thing, American fiction, for the past fifty years, has been\ntaking a direction quite the contrary of his. Run over the names that\nwill readily occur of modern novelists and short-story writers, and ask\nyourself whether the vivid coloring of these realistic schools must not\ninevitably have blanched to a still whiter pallor those visionary tales\nof which the author long ago confessed that they had \"the pale tints of\nflowers that blossomed in too retired a shade.\" With practice has gone\ntheory; and now the critics of realism are beginning to nibble at the\naccepted estimates of Hawthorne. A very damaging bit of dissection is\nthe recent essay by Mr. W. C. Brownell, one of the most acute and\nunsparingly analytic of American critics. It is full of cruelly clever\nthings: for example, \"Zenobia and Miriam linger in one's memory rather\nas brunettes than as women.\" And again, _a propos_ of Roger\nChillingworth in \"The Scarlet Letter,\"--\"His characters are not\ncreations, but expedients.\" I admire these sayings; but they seem to me,\nlike most epigrams, brilliant statements of half-truths. In general, Mr.\nBrownell's thesis is that Hawthorne was spoiled by allegory: that he\nabused his naturally rare gift of imagination by declining to grapple\nwith reality, which is the proper material for the imagination, but\nallowing his fancy--an inferior faculty--to play with dreams and\nsymbols; and that consequently he has left but one masterpiece.\n\nThis is an old complaint. Long ago, Edgar Poe, who did not live to read\n\"The Scarlet Letter,\" but who wrote a favorable review of \"The\nTwice-Told Tales,\" advised the author to give up allegory. In 1880, Mr.\nHenry James wrote a life of Hawthorne for the English Men of Letters\nseries. This was addressed chiefly to the English public and was thought\nin this country to be a trifle unsympathetic; in particular in its\npatronizing way of dwelling upon the thinness of the American social\nenvironment and the consequent provincialism of Hawthorne's books. The\n\"American Note Books,\" in particular, seem to Mr. James a chronicle of\nsmall beer, and he marvels at the triviality of an existence which could\nreduce the diarist to recording an impression that \"the aromatic odor of\npeat smoke in the sunny autumnal air is very pleasant.\" This peat-smoke\nentry has become proverbial, and is mentioned by nearly everyone who\nwrites about Hawthorne. Yet on a recent rereading of James's biography,\nit seemed to me not so unsympathetic as I had remembered it; but, in\neffect, cordially appreciative. He touches, however, on this same point,\nof the effect on Hawthorne's genius of his allegorizing habit.\n\"Hawthorne,\" says Mr. James, \"was not in the least a realist--he was\nnot, to my mind, enough of one.\" The biographer allows him a liberal\nshare of imagination, but adds that most of his short tales are more\nfanciful than imaginative. \"Hawthorne, in his metaphysical moods, is\nnothing if not allegorical, and allegory, to my sense, is quite one of\nthe lighter exercises of the imagination. Many excellent judges, I know,\nhave a great stomach for it; they delight in symbols and\ncorrespondences, in seeing a story told as if it were another and a very\ndifferent story. I frankly confess that it has never seemed to me a\nfirst-rate literary form. It is apt to spoil two good things--a story\nand a moral.\"\n\nExcept in that capital satire, \"The Celestial Railroad,\" an ironical\napplication of \"The Pilgrim's Progress\" to modern religion, Hawthorne\nseldom uses out-and-out allegory; but rather a more or less definite\nsymbolism. Even in his full-length romances, this mental habit persists\nin the typical and, so to speak, algebraic nature of his figures and\nincidents. George Woodberry and others have drawn attention to the way\nin which his fancy clings to the physical image that represents the\nmoral truth: the minister's black veil, emblem of the secret of every\nhuman heart; the print of a hand on the heroine's cheek in \"The\nBirthmark,\" a sign of earthly imperfection which only death can\neradicate; the mechanical butterfly in \"The Artist of the Beautiful,\"\nfor which the artist no longer cares, when once he has embodied his\nthought. Zenobia in \"The Blithedale Romance\" has every day a hot-house\nflower sent down from a Boston conservatory and wears it in her hair or\nthe bosom of her gown, where it seems to express her exotic beauty. It\nis characteristic of the romancer that he does not specify whether this\nsymbolic blossom was a gardenia, an orchid, a tuberose, a japonica, or\nwhat it was. Thoreau, if we can imagine him writing a romance, would\nhave added the botanical name.\n\n\"Rappacini's Daughter\" is a very representative instance of those\n\"insubstantial fictions for the illustration of moral truths, not always\nof much moment.\" The suggestion of this tale we find in a quotation from\nSir Thomas Browne in \"The American Note Books\" for 1837: \"A story there\npasseth of an Indian King that sent unto Alexander a fair woman fed\nwith aconite and other poisons, with this intent complexionally to\ndestroy him.\" Here was one of those morbid situations, with a hint of\npsychological possibilities and moral applications, that never failed to\nfascinate Hawthorne. He let his imagination dwell upon it, and gradually\nevolved the story of a physician who made his own daughter the victim of\na scientific experiment. In this tale, Mr. Brownell thinks, the\nnarrative has no significance apart from the moral; and yet the moral is\nquite lost sight of in the development of the narrative, which might\nhave been more attractive if told simply as a fairy tale. This is quite\nrepresentative of Hawthorne's usual method. There is no explicit moral\nto \"Rappacini's Daughter.\" But there are a number of parallels and\napplications open to the reader. He may make them, or he may abstain\nfrom making them as he chooses. Thus we are vaguely reminded of\nMithridates, the Pontic King, who made himself immune to poisons by\ntheir daily employment. The doctor's theory, that every disease can be\ncured by the use of the appropriate poison, suggests the aconite and\nbelladonna of the homeopathists and their motto, _similia similibus\ncurantur_. Again we think of Holmes's novel \"Elsie Venner,\" of the girl\nimpregnated with the venom of the rattlesnake, whose life ended when the\nserpent nature died out of her; just as Beatrice, in Hawthorne's story,\nis killed by the powerful antidote which slays the poison. A very\nobvious incidental reflection is the cruelty of science, sacrificing its\nbest loved object to its curiosity. And may we not turn the whole tale\ninto a parable of the isolation produced by a peculiar and unnatural\nrearing, say in heterodox beliefs, or unconventional habits, unfitting\nthe victim for society, making her to be shunned as dangerous?\n\nThe lure of the symbolic and the marvelous tempted Hawthorne constantly\nto the brink of the supernatural. But here his art is delicate. The\nold-fashioned ghost is too robust an apparition for modern credulity.\nThe modern ghost is a \"clot on the brain.\" Recall the ghosts in Henry\nJames's \"The Turn of the Screw\"--just a suspicion of evil presences. The\ntrue interpretation of that story I have sometimes thought to be, that\nthe woman who saw the phantoms was mad. Hawthorne is similarly\nambiguous. His apparently preternatural phenomena always admit of a\nnatural explanation. The water of Maule's well may have turned bitter in\nconsequence of an ancient wrong; but also perhaps because of a\ndisturbance in the underground springs. The sudden deaths of Colonel\nand Judge Pyncheon may have been due to the old wizard's curse that \"God\nwould give them blood to drink\"; or simply to an inherited tendency to\napoplexy. _Did_ Donatello have furry, leaf-shaped ears, or was this\nmerely his companions' teasing? Did old Mistress Hibben, the sister of\nGovernor Bellingham of Massachusetts, attend witch meetings in the\nforest, and inscribe her name in the Black Man's book? Hawthorne does\nnot say so, but only that the people so believed; and it is historical\nfact that she was executed as a witch. Was a red letter A actually seen\nin the midnight sky, or was it a freak of the aurora borealis? What did\nChillingworth see on Dimmesdale's breast? The author will not tell us.\nBut if it was the mark of the Scarlet Letter, may we not appeal to the\nphenomena of stigmatism: the print, for example, of the five wounds of\nChrist on the bodies of devotees? Hawthorne does not vouch for the truth\nof Alice Pyncheon's clairvoyant trances: he relates her story as a\nlegend handed down in the Pyncheon family, explicable, if you please, on\nnatural grounds--what was witchcraft in the seventeenth century having\nbecome mesmerism or hypnotism in the nineteenth.\n\nFifty years after his death, Hawthorne is already a classic. For even\nMr. Brownell allows him one masterpiece, and one masterpiece means an\nimmortality. I suppose it is generally agreed that \"The Scarlet Letter\"\nis his _chef-d'oeuvre_. Certainly it is his most intensely conceived\nwork, the most thoroughly fused and logically developed; and is free\nfrom those elements of fantasy, mystery, and unreality which enter into\nhis other romances. But its unrelieved gloom, and the author's\nunrelaxing grasp upon his theme, make it less characteristic than some\nof his inferior works; and I think he was right in preferring \"The House\nof the Seven Gables,\" as more fully representing all sides of his\ngenius. The difference between the two is the difference between tragedy\nand romance. While we are riding the high horse of criticism and feeling\nvirtuous, we will concede the superiority of the former _genre_; but\nwhen we give our literary conscience the slip, we yield ourselves again\nto the fascination of the haunted twilight.\n\nThe antique gabled mansion in its quiet back street has the charm of the\nstill-life sketches in the early books, such as \"Sights from a Steeple,\"\n\"A Rill from the Town Pump,\" \"Sunday at Home,\" and \"The Toll-gatherer's\nDay.\" All manner of quaint figures, known to childhood, pass along that\nvisionary street: the scissors grinder, town crier, baker's cart,\nlumbering stage-coach, charcoal vender, hand-organ man and monkey, a\ndrove of cattle, a military parade--the \"trainers,\" as we used to call\nthem. Hawthorne had no love for his fellow citizens and took little part\nin the modern society of Salem. But he had struck deep roots into the\nsoil of the old witch town, his birthplace and the home of generations\nof his ancestors. Does the reader know this ancient seaport, with its\ndecayed shipping and mouldering wharves, its silted up harbor and idle\ncustom-house, where Hawthorne served three years as surveyor of the\nport? Imposing still are the great houses around the square, built by\nretired merchants and shipmasters whose fortunes were made in the East\nIndia trade: with dark old drawing-rooms smelling of sandalwood and\nfilled with cabinets of Oriental curiosities. Hawthorne had little to do\nwith the aristocracy of Salem. But something of the life of these old\nfamilies may be read in Mrs. Stoddard's novel \"The Morgesons,\"--a book\nwhich I am perpetually recommending to my friends, and they as\nperpetually refusing to read, returning my copy after a superficial\nperusal, with uncomplimentary comments upon my taste in fiction.\n\nHawthorne's academic connections are of particular interest. It is\nwonderful that he and Longfellow should have been classmates at Bowdoin.\nEqually wonderful that Emerson's \"Nature\" and Hawthorne's \"Mosses\"\nshould have been written in the same little room in the Old Manse at\nConcord. It gives one a sense of how small New England was then, and in\nhow narrow a runway genius went. Bowdoin College in those days was a\nlittle country school on the edge of the Maine wilderness, only twenty\nyears old, its few buildings almost literally planted down among the\npine stumps. Hawthorne's class--1825--graduated but thirty-seven strong.\nAnd yet Hawthorne and Longfellow were not intimate in college but\nbelonged to different sets. And twelve years afterward, when Longfellow\nwrote a friendly review of \"Twice-Told Tales\" in _The North American\nReview_, his quondam classmate addressed him in a somewhat formal letter\nof thanks as \"Dear Sir.\" Later the relations of the two became closer,\nthough never perhaps intimate. It was Hawthorne who handed over to\nLongfellow that story of the dispersion of the Acadian exiles of\nGrandpre, which became \"Evangeline\": a story which his friend Conolly\nhad suggested to Hawthorne, as mentioned in \"The American Note Books.\"\nThe point which arrested Hawthorne's attention was the incident in the\nBayou Teche, where Gabriel's boat passes in the night within a few feet\nof the bank on which Evangeline and her company are sleeping.\n\nThis was one of those tricks of destiny that so often engaged\nHawthorne's imagination: like the tale of \"David Swan\" the farmer's boy\nwho, on his way to try his fortune in the city, falls asleep by a\nwayside spring. A rich and childless old couple stop to water their\nhorse, are taken by his appearance and talk of adopting him, but drive\naway on hearing someone approaching. A young girl comes by and falls so\nmuch in love with his handsome face that she is tempted to waken him\nwith a kiss, but she too is startled and goes on. Then a pair of tramps\narrive and are about to murder him for his money, when they in turn are\nfrightened off. Thus riches and love and death have passed him in his\nsleep; and he, all unconscious of the brush of the wings of fate,\nawakens and goes his way. Again, our romancer had read the common\nhistorical accounts of the great landslide which buried the inn in the\nNotch of the White Mountains. The names were known of all who had been\nthere that night and had consequently perished--with one exception. One\nstranger had been present, who was never identified: Hawthorne's fancy\nplayed with this curious problem, and he made out of it his story of\n\"The Ambitious Guest,\" a youth just starting on a brilliant career,\nentertaining the company around the fire, with excited descriptions of\nhis hopes and plans; and then snuffed out utterly by ironic fate, and\nnot even numbered among the missing.\n\nTales like these are among the most characteristic and original of the\nauthor's works. And wherever we notice this quality in a story, we call\nit Hawthornish. \"Peter Rugg, the Missing Man,\" is Hawthornish; so is\n\"Peter Schemil, the Man without a Shadow\"; or Balzac's \"Peau de\nChagrin\"; or later work, some of it manifestly inspired by Hawthorne,\nlike Stevenson's tale of a double personality, \"Dr. Jekyll and Mr.\nHyde\"; or Edward Bellamy's \"Dr. Heidenhoff's Process\"--a process for\nensuring forgetfulness of unpleasant things--a modern water of Lethe.\nEven some of James's early stories like \"The Madonna of the Future\" and\n\"The Last of the Valerii,\" as well as Mr. Howells's \"Undiscovered\nCountry,\" have touches of Hawthorne.\n\nEmerson and Hawthorne were fellow townsmen for some years at Concord,\nand held each other in high regard. One was a philosophical idealist:\nthe other, an artist of the ideal, who sometimes doubted whether the\ntree on the bank, or its image in the stream was the more real. But they\ntook no impress from one another's minds. Emerson could not read his\nneighbor's romances. Their morbid absorption in the problem of evil\nrepelled the resolute optimist. He thought the best thing Hawthorne ever\nwrote was his \"Recollections of a Gifted Woman,\" the chapter in \"Our Old\nHome\" concerning Miss Delia Bacon, originator of the Baconian theory of\nShakespeare, whom Hawthorne befriended with unfailing patience and\ncourtesy during his Liverpool consulship.\n\nHawthorne paid a fine tribute to Emerson in the introduction to \"Mosses\nfrom an Old Manse,\" and even paid him the honor of quotation, contrary\nto his almost invariable practice. I cannot recall a half dozen\nquotations in all his works. I think he must have been principled\nagainst them. But he said he had come too late to Concord to fall under\nEmerson's influence. No risk of that, had he come earlier. There was a\njealous independence in Hawthorne which resented the too close approach\nof an alien mind: a species of perversity even, that set him in\ncontradiction to his environment. He always fought shy of literary\npeople. During his Liverpool consulship, he did not make--apparently did\nnot care to make--acquaintance with his intellectual equals. He did not\nmeet Carlyle, Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson, Mill, Grote, Charles Reade,\nGeorge Eliot, or any other first-class minds. He barely met the\nBrownings, but did not really come to know them till afterwards in\nItaly. Surrounded by reformers, abolitionists, vegetarians, comeouters\nand radicals of all gospels, he remained stubbornly conservative. He\nheld office under three Democratic administrations, and wrote a campaign\nlife of his old college friend Franklin Pierce when he ran for\nPresident. Commenting on Emerson's sentence that John Brown had made the\ngallows sacred like the cross, Hawthorne said that Brown was a\nblood-stained fanatic and justly hanged.\n\nThis conservatism was allied with a certain fatalism, hopelessness, and\nmoral indolence in Hawthorne's nature. Hollingsworth, in \"The Blithedale\nRomance,\" is his picture of the one-ideaed reformer, sacrificing all to\nhis hobby. Hollingsworth's hobby is prison reform, and characteristically\nHawthorne gives us no details of his plan. It is vagueness itself, and\nits advocate is little better than a type. Holgrave again, in \"The House\nof the Seven Gables,\" is the scornful young radical; and both he and\nHollingsworth are guilty of the mistake of supposing that they can do\nanything directly to improve the condition of things. God will bring\nabout amendment in his own good time. And this fatalism again is subtly\nconnected with New England's ancestral creed--Calvinism. Hawthorne--it\nhas been pointed out a hundred times--is the Puritan romancer. His tales\nare tales of the conscience: he is obsessed with the thought of sin,\nwith the doctrines of foreordination and total depravity. In the\ntheological library which he found stowed away in the garret of the Old\nManse, he preferred the seventeenth-century folio volumes of Puritan\ndivinity to the thin Unitarian sermons and controversial articles in the\nfiles of _The Christian Examiner_. The former, at least, had once been\nwarm with a deep belief, however they had now \"cooled down even to the\nfreezing point.\" But \"the frigidity of the modern productions\" was\n\"inherent.\" Hawthorne was never a church-goer and adhered to no\nparticular form of creed. But speculatively he liked his religion thick.\n\n\n     The Psalm-tunes of the Puritan,\n       The songs that dared to go\n     Down searching through the abyss of man,\n       His deeps of conscious woe--\n\n\nspoke more profoundly to his soul than the easy optimism of liberal\nChristianity. Hawthorne was no transcendentalist: he went to Brook Farm,\nnot as a Fourierite or a believer in the principles of association, but\nattracted by the novelty of this experiment at communal living, and by\nthe interesting varieties of human nature there assembled: literary\nmaterial which he used in \"The Blithedale Romance.\" He complains slyly\nof Miss Fuller's transcendental heifer which hooked the other cows\n(though Colonel Higginson once assured me that this heifer was only a\nsymbol, and that Margaret never really owned a heifer or cow of any\nkind).\n\nMr. Lathrop proposed, as a rough formula for Hawthorne, Poe and Irving\n_plus_ something of his own. The resemblances and differences between\nPoe and Hawthorne are obvious. The latter never deals in physical\nhorror: his morbidest tragedy is of a spiritual kind; while once\nonly--in the story entitled \"William Wilson\"--Poe enters that field of\nethical romance which Hawthorne constantly occupies. What he has in\ncommon with Irving is chiefly the attitude of spectatorship, and the\ncareful refinement of the style, so different from the loud, brassy\nmanner of modern writing. Hawthorne never uses slang, dialect, oaths, or\ncolloquial idioms. The talk of his characters is book talk. Why is it\nthat many of us find this old-fashioned elegance of Irving and Hawthorne\nirritating? Is it the fault of the writer or of the reader? Partly of\nthe former, I think: that anxious finish, those elaborately rounded\nperiods have something of the artificial, which modern naturalism has\ntaught us to distrust. But also, I believe, the fault is largely our\nown. We have grown so nervous, in these latter generations, so used to\nshort cuts, that we are impatient of anything slow. Cut out the\ndescriptions, cut out the reflections, _coupez vos phrases_. Hawthorne's\nstyle was the growth of reverie, solitude, leisure--\"fine old leisure,\"\nwhose disappearance from modern life George Eliot has lamented. On the\nwalls of his study at the \"Wayside\" was written--though not by his own\nhand--the motto, \"There is no joy but calm.\"\n\nSentiment and humor do not lie so near the surface in Hawthorne as in\nIrving. He had a deep sense of the ridiculous, well shown in such\nsketches as \"P's Correspondence\" and \"The Celestial Railroad\"; or in the\ndescription of the absurd old chickens in the Pyncheon yard, shrunk by\nin-breeding to a weazened race, but retaining all their top-knotted\npride of lineage. Hawthorne's humor was less genial than Irving's, and\nhad a sharp satiric edge. There is no merriment in it. Do you remember\nthat scene at the Villa Borghese, where Miriam and Donatello break into\na dance and all the people who are wandering in the gardens join with\nthem? The author meant this to be a burst of wild maenad gaiety. As such\nI do not recall a more dismal failure. It is cold at the heart of it.\nIt has no mirth, but is like a dance without music: like a dance of deaf\nmutes that I witnessed once, pretending to keep time to the inaudible\nscrapings of a deaf and dumb fiddler.\n\nHenry James says that Hawthorne's stories are the only good American\nhistorical fiction; and Woodberry says that his method here is the same\nas Scott's. The truth of this may be admitted up to a certain point. Our\nPuritan romancer had certainly steeped his imagination in the annals of\ncolonial New England, as Scott had done in his border legends. He was\nfamiliar with the documents--especially with Mather's \"Magnalia,\" that\ngreat source book of New England poetry and romance. But it was not the\nhistory itself that interested him, the broad picture of an extinct\nsociety, the _tableau large de la vie_, which Scott delighted to paint;\nrather it was some adventure of the private soul. For example, Lowell\nhad told him the tradition of the young hired man who was chopping wood\nat the backdoor of the Old Manse on the morning of the Concord fight;\nand who hurried to the battlefield in the neighboring lane, to find both\narmies gone and two British soldiers lying on the ground, one dead, the\nother wounded. As the wounded man raised himself on his knees and stared\nup at the lad, the latter, obeying a nervous impulse, struck him on the\nhead with his axe and finished him. \"The story,\" says Hawthorne, \"comes\nhome to me like truth. Oftentimes, as an intellectual and moral\nexercise, I have sought to follow that poor youth through his subsequent\ncareer and observe how his soul was tortured by the blood-stain.... This\none circumstance has borne more fruit for me than all that history tells\nus of the fight.\" How different is this bit of pathology from the public\nfeeling of Emerson's lines:\n\n\n     Spirit that made those heroes dare\n       To die and leave their children free,\n     Bid Time and Nature gently spare\n       The shaft we raise to them and thee.\n\n\n\n\nA PILGRIM IN CONCORD\n\n             Rura quae Liris quieta\n     Mordet aqua, taciturnus amnis.\n\n\nThe Concord School of Philosophy opened its first session in the summer\nof 1879. The dust of late July lay velvet soft and velvet deep on all\nthe highways; or, stirred by the passing wheel, rose in slow clouds, not\nunemblematic of the transcendental haze which filled the mental\natmosphere thereabout.\n\nOf those who had made Concord one of the homes of the soul, Hawthorne\nand Thoreau had been dead many years--I saw their graves in Sleepy\nHollow;--and Margaret Fuller had perished long ago by shipwreck on Fire\nIsland Beach. But Alcott was still alive and garrulous; and Ellery\nChanning--Thoreau's biographer--was alive. Above all, the sage of\nConcord, \"the friend and aider of those who would live in the spirit,\"\nstill walked his ancient haunts; his mind in many ways yet unimpaired,\nthough sadly troubled by aphasia, or the failure of verbal memory. It\nwas an instance of pathetic irony that in his lecture on \"Memory,\"\ndelivered in the Town Hall, he was prompted constantly by his daughter.\n\nIt seemed an inappropriate manner of arrival--the Fitchburg Railroad.\nOne should have dropped down upon the sacred spot by parachute; or, at\nworst, have come on foot, with staff and scrip, along the Lexington\npike, reversing the fleeing steps of the British regulars on that April\nday, when the embattled farmers made their famous stand. But I\nremembered that Thoreau, whose Walden solitude was disturbed by gangs of\nIrish laborers laying the tracks of this same Fitchburg Railroad,\nconsoled himself with the reflection that hospitable nature made the\nintruder a part of herself. The embankment runs along one end of the\npond, and the hermit only said:\n\n\n     It fills a few hollows\n     And makes banks for the swallows,\n     And sets the sand a-blowing\n     And the black-berries growing.\n\n\nAfterwards I witnessed, and participated in, a more radical profanation\nof these crystal waters, when two hundred of the dirtiest children in\nBoston, South-enders, were brought down by train on a fresh-air-fund\npicnic and washed in the lake just in front of the spot where Thoreau's\ncabin stood, after having been duly swung in the swings, teetered on\nthe see-saws, and fed with a sandwich, a slice of cake, a pint of\npeanuts, and a lemonade apiece, by a committee of charitable ladies--one\nof whom was Miss Louisa Alcott, certainly a high authority on \"Little\nWomen\" and \"Little Men.\"\n\nMiss Alcott I had encountered on the evening of my first day in Concord,\nwhen I rang the door bell of the Alcott residence and asked if the seer\nwas within. I fancied that there was a trace of acerbity in the manner\nof the tall lady who answered my ring, and told me abruptly that Mr.\nAlcott was not at home, and that I would probably find him at Mr.\nSanborn's farther up the street. Perspiring philosophers with dusters\nand grip-sacks had been arriving all day and applying at the Alcott\nhouse for addresses of boarding houses and for instructions of all\nkinds; and Miss Louisa's patience may well have been tried. She did not\ntake much stock in the School anyway. Her father was supremely happy.\nOne of the dreams of his life was realized, and endless talk and\nsoul-communion were in prospect. But his daughter's view of philosophy\nwas tinged with irony, as was not unnatural in a high-spirited woman who\nhad borne the burden of the family's support, and had even worked out in\ndomestic service, while her unworldly parent was transcendentalizing\nabout the country, holding conversation classes in western towns, from\nwhich after prolonged absences he sometimes brought home a dollar, and\nsometimes only himself. \"Philosophy can bake no bread, but it can give\nus God, freedom, and immortality\" read the motto--from Novalis--on the\ncover of the _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_, published at Concord\nin those years, under the editorship of Mr. William T. Harris; but bread\nmust be baked, for even philosophers must eat, and an occasional\nimpatience of the merely ideal may be forgiven in the overworked\npractician.\n\nOn Mr. Frank Sanborn's wide, shady verandah, I found Mr. Alcott, a most\nquaint and venerable figure, large in frame and countenance, with\nbeautiful, flowing white hair. He moved slowly, and spoke deliberately\nin a rich voice. His face had a look of mild and innocent solemnity, and\nhe reminded me altogether of a large benignant sheep or other ruminating\nanimal. He was benevolently interested when I introduced myself as the\nfirst fruits of the stranger and added that I was from Connecticut. He\nhimself was a native of the little hill town of Wolcott, not many miles\nfrom New Haven, and in youth had travelled through the South as a Yankee\npeddler. \"Connecticut gave him birth,\" says Thoreau; \"he peddled first\nher wares, afterwards, he declares, his brains.\"\n\nMr. Sanborn was the secretary of the School, and with him I enrolled\nmyself as a pupil and paid the very modest fee which admitted me to its\nsymposia. Mr. Sanborn is well known through his contributions to Concord\nhistory and biography. He was for years one of the literary staff of\n_The Springfield Republican_, active in many reform movements, and an\nefficient member of the American Social Science Association. Almost from\nhis house John Brown started on his Harper's Ferry raid, and people in\nConcord still dwell upon the exciting incident of Mr. Sanborn's arrest\nin 1860 as an accessory before the fact. The United States deputy\nmarshal with his myrmidons drove out from Boston in a hack. They lured\nthe unsuspecting abolitionist outside his door, on some pretext or\nother, clapped the handcuffs on him, and tried to get him into the hack.\nBut their victim, planting his long legs one on each side of the\ncarriage door, resisted sturdily, and his neighbors assaulted the\nofficers with hue and cry. The town rose upon them. Judge Hoar hastily\nissued a habeas corpus returnable before the Massachusetts Supreme\nCourt, and the baffled minions of the slave power went back to Boston.\n\nThe School assembled in the Orchard House, formerly the residence of Mr.\nAlcott, on the Lexington road. Next door was the Wayside, Hawthorne's\nhome for a number of years, a cottage overshadowed by the steep hillside\nthat rose behind it, thick with hemlocks and larches. On the ridge of\nthis hill was Hawthorne's \"out door study,\" a foot path worn by his own\nfeet, as he paced back and forth among the trees and thought out the\nplots of his romances. In 1879 the Wayside was tenanted by George\nLathrop, who had married Hawthorne's daughter, Rose. He had already\npublished his \"Study of Hawthorne\" and a volume of poems, \"Rose and\nRooftree.\" His novel, \"An Echo of Passion,\" was yet to come, a book\nwhich unites something of modern realism with a delicately symbolic art\nakin to Hawthorne's own.\n\nA bust of Plato presided over the exercises of the School, and\n\"Plato-Skimpole\"--as Mr. Alcott was once nicknamed--made the opening\naddress. I remember how impressively he quoted Milton's lines:\n\n\n     How charming is divine philosophy!\n     Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,\n     But musical as is Apollo's lute.\n\n\nOur _piece de resistance_ was the course of lectures in which Mr. Harris\nexpounded Hegel. But there were many other lecturers. Mrs. Edna Cheney\ntalked to us about art; though all that I recall of her conversation is\nthe fact that she pronounced _always olways_, and I wondered if that was\nthe regular Boston pronunciation. Dr. Jones, the self-taught Platonist\nof Jacksonville, Illinois, interpreted Plato. Quite a throng of his\ndisciples, mostly women, had followed him from Illinois and swelled the\nnumbers of the Summer School. Once Professor Benjamin Peirce, the great\nHarvard mathematician, came over from Cambridge, and read us one of his\nLowell Institute lectures, on the Ideality of Mathematics. He had a most\ndistinguished presence and an eye, as was said, of black fire. The\nHarvard undergraduates of my time used to call him Benny Peirce; and on\nthe fly leaves of their mathematical text books they would write, \"Who\nsteals my Peirce steals trash.\" Colonel T. W. Higginson read a single\nlecture on American literature, from which I carried away for future use\na delightful story about an excellent Boston merchant who, being asked\nat a Goethe birthday dinner to make a few remarks, said that he \"guessed\nthat Go-ethe was the N. P. Willis of Germany.\"\n\nColonel Higginson's lecture was to me a green oasis in the arid desert\nof metaphysics, but it was regarded by earnest truth-seekers in the\nclass as quite irrelevant to the purposes of the course. The lecturer\nhimself confided to me at the close of the session a suspicion that his\naudience cared more for philosophy than for literature. Once or twice\nMr. Emerson visited the School, taking no part in its proceedings, but\nsitting patiently through the hour, and wearing what a newspaper\nreporter described as his \"wise smile.\" After the lecture for the\nsession was ended, the subject was thrown open to discussion and there\nwas an opportunity to ask questions. Most of us were shy to speak out in\nthat presence, feeling ourselves in a state of pupilage. Usually there\nwould be a silence of several minutes, as at a Quaker meeting waiting\nfor the spirit to move; and then Mr. Alcott would announce in his\nsolemn, musical tones \"I have a thought\"; and after a weighty pause,\nproceed to some Orphic utterance. Alcott, indeed, was what might be\ncalled the leader on the floor; and he was ably seconded by Miss\nElizabeth Peabody, the sister of Nathaniel Hawthorne's wife. Miss\nPeabody was well known as the introducer of the German kindergarten, and\nfor her life-long zeal in behalf of all kinds of philanthropies and\nreforms. Henry James was accused of having caricatured her in his novel\n\"The Bostonians,\" in the figure of the dear, visionary, vaguely\nbenevolent old lady who is perpetually engaged in promoting \"causes,\"\nattending conventions, carrying on correspondence, forming committees,\ndrawing up resolutions, and the like; and who has so many \"causes\" on\nhand at once that she gets them all mixed up and cannot remember which\nof her friends are spiritualists and which of them are concerned in\nwoman's rights movements, temperance agitations, and universal peace\nassociations. Mr. James denied that he meant Miss Peabody, whom he had\nnever met or known. If so, he certainly divined the type. In her later\nyears, Miss Peabody was nicknamed \"the grandmother of Boston.\"\n\nI have to acknowledge, to my shame, that I was often a truant to the\ndiscussions of the School, which met three hours in the morning and\nthree in the afternoon. The weather was hot and the air in the Orchard\nHouse was drowsy. There were many outside attractions, and more and more\nI was tempted to leave the philosophers to reason high--\n\n\n     Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate--\n     Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute--\n\n\nwhile I wandered off through the woods for a bath in Walden, some one\nand a half miles away, through whose transparent waters the pebbles on\nthe bottom could be plainly seen at a depth of thirty feet. Sometimes I\nwent farther afield to White Pond, described by Thoreau, or Baker Farm,\nsung by Ellery Channing. A pleasant young fellow at Miss Emma Barrett's\nboarding house, who had no philosophy, but was a great hand at picnics\nand boating and black-berrying parties, paddled me up the Assabeth, or\nNorth Branch, in his canoe, and drove me over to Longfellow's Wayside\nInn at Sudbury. And so it happens that, when I look back at my fortnight\nat Concord, what I think of is not so much the murmurous auditorium of\nthe Orchard House, as the row of colossal sycamores along the village\nsidewalk that led us thither, whose smooth, mottled trunks in the\nmoonlight resembled a range of Egyptian temple columns. Or I haunt again\nat twilight the grounds of the Old Manse, where Hawthorne wrote his\n\"Mosses,\" and the grassy lane beside it leading down to the site of the\nrude bridge and the first battlefield of the Revolution. Here were the\nheadstones of the two British soldiers, buried where they fell; here the\nConcord monument erected in 1836:\n\n\n     On this green bank, by this soft stream\n       We set to-day a votive stone:\n     That memory may their deed redeem\n       When, like our sires, our sons are gone.\n\n\nIn the field across the river was the spirited statue of the minuteman,\ndesigned by young Daniel Chester French, a Concord boy who has since\ndistinguished himself as a sculptor in wider fields and more imposing\nworks.\n\nThe social life of Concord, judging from such glimpses as could be had\nof it, was peculiar. It was the life of a village community, marked by\nthe friendly simplicity of country neighbors, but marked also by unusual\nintellectual distinction and an addiction to \"the things of the mind.\"\nThe town was not at all provincial, or what the Germans call\n_kleinstaedtisch_:--cosmopolitan, rather, as lying on the highway of\nthought. It gave one a thrill, for example, to meet Mr. Emerson coming\nfrom the Post Office with his mail, like any ordinary citizen. The petty\nconstraint, the narrow standards of conduct which are sometimes the bane\nof village life were almost unknown. Transcendental freedom of\nspeculation, all manner of heterodoxies, and the individual queernesses\nof those whom the world calls \"cranks,\" had produced a general\ntolerance. Thus it was said, that the only reason why services were held\nin the Unitarian Church on Sunday was because Judge Hoar didn't quite\nlike to play whist on that day. Many of the Concord houses have gardens\nbordering upon the river; and I was interested to notice that the boats\nmoored at the bank had painted on their sterns plant names or bird\nnames taken from the Concord poems--such as \"The Rhodora,\" \"The Veery,\"\n\"The Linnaea,\" and \"The Wood Thrush.\" Many a summer hour I spent with\nEdward Hoar in his skiff, rowing, or sailing, or floating up and down on\nthis soft Concord stream--Musketaquit, or \"grass-ground river\"--moving\nthrough miles of meadow, fringed with willows and button bushes, with a\ncurrent so languid, said Hawthorne, that the eye cannot detect which way\nit flows. Sometimes we sailed as far as Fair Haven Bay, whose \"dark and\nsober billows,\" \"when the wind blows freshly on a raw March day,\"\nThoreau thought as fine as anything on Lake Huron or the northwest\ncoast. Nor were we, I hope, altogether unperceiving of that other river\nwhich Emerson detected flowing underneath the Concord--\n\n\n     Thy summer voice, Musketaquit,\n       Repeats the music of the rain,\n     But sweeter rivers pulsing flit\n       Through thee as though through Concord plain....\n\n     I see the inundation sweet,\n       I hear the spending of the stream,\n     Through years, through men, through nature fleet,\n       Through love and thought, through power and dream.\n\n\nEdward Hoar had been Thoreau's companion in one of his visits to the\nMaine woods. He knew the flora and fauna of Concord as well as his\nfriend the poet-naturalist. He had a large experience of the world, had\nrun a ranch in New Mexico and an orange plantation in Sicily. He was not\nso well known to the public as his brothers, Rockwood Hoar, Attorney\nGeneral in Grant's Cabinet, and the late Senator George Frisbie Hoar, of\nWorcester; but I am persuaded that he was just as good company; and,\nthen, neither of these distinguished gentlemen would have wasted whole\nafternoons in eating the lotus along the quiet reaches of the\nMusketaquit with a stripling philosopher.\n\nThe appetite for discussion not being fully satisfied by the stated\nmeetings of the School in the Orchard House, the hospitable Concord\nfolks opened their houses for informal symposia in the evenings. I was\nprivileged to make one of a company that gathered in Emerson's library.\nThe subject for the evening was Shakespeare, and Emerson read, by\nrequest, that mysterious little poem \"The Phoenix and the Turtle,\"\nattributed to Shakespeare on rather doubtful evidence, but included for\nsome reason in Emerson's volume of favorite selections, \"Parnassus.\" He\nbegan by saying that he would not himself have chosen this particular\npiece, but as it had been chosen for him he would read it. And this he\ndid, with that clean-cut, refined enunciation and subtle distribution of\nemphasis which made the charm of his delivery as a lyceum lecturer. When\nhe came to the couplet,\n\n\n     Truth may seem, but cannot be,\n     Beauty brag, but 'tis not she,\n\n\nI thought that I detected an idealistic implication in the lines which\naccounted for their presence in \"Parnassus.\"\n\nThat shy recluse, Ellery Channing, most eccentric of the\ntranscendentalists, was not to be found at the School or the evening\nsymposia. He had married a sister of Margaret Fuller, but for years he\nhad lived alone and done for himself, and his oddities had increased\nupon him with the years. I had read and liked many of his poems--those\npoems so savagely cut up by Poe, when first published in 1843--and my\nexpressed interest in these foundlings of the Muse gave me the\nopportunity to meet the author of \"A Poet's Hope\" at one hospitable\ntable where he was accustomed to sup on a stated evening every week.\n\nThe Concord Summer School of Philosophy went on for ten successive\nyears, but I never managed to attend another session. A friend from New\nHaven, who was there for a few days in 1880, brought back the news that\na certain young lady who was just beginning the study of Hegel the year\nbefore, had now got up to the second intention, and hoped in time to\nattain the sixth. I never got far enough in Mr. Harris's lectures to\ndiscover what Hegelian intentions were; but my friend spoke of them as\nif they were something like degrees in Masonry. In 1905 I visited\nConcord for the first and only time in twenty-six years. There is a good\ndeal of philosophy in Wordsworth's Yarrow poems--\n\n\n     For when we're there, although 'tis fair,\n     'Twill be another Yarrow!--\n\n\nand I have heard it suggested that he might well have added to his\ntrilogy, a fourth member, \"Yarrow Unrevisited.\" There is a loss, though\nConcord bears the strain better than most places, I think. As we go on\nin life the world gets full of ghosts, and at the capital of\ntranscendentalism I was peculiarly conscious of the haunting of these\nspiritual presences. Since I had been there before, Emerson and Alcott\nand Ellery Channing and my courteous host and companion, Edward Hoar,\nand my kind old landlady Miss Barrett--who had also been Emerson's\nlandlady and indeed everybody's landlady in Concord, and whom her\nyoungest boarders addressed affectionately as Emma--all these and many\nmore had joined the sleepers in Sleepy Hollow. The town itself has\nsuffered comparatively few changes. True there is a trolley line through\nthe main street--oddly called \"The Milldam,\" and in Walden wood I met an\nautomobile not far from the cairn, or stone pile, which marks the site\nof Thoreau's cabin. But the woods themselves were intact and the limpid\nwaters of the pond had not been tapped to furnish power for any electric\nlight company. The Old Manse looked much the same, and so did the\nWayside and the Orchard House. Not a tree was missing from the mystic\nring of tall pines in front of Emerson's house at the fork of the\nCambridge and Lexington roads. On the central square the ancient tavern\nwas gone where I had lodged on the night of my arrival and where my\nhost, a practical philosopher--everyone in Concord had his\nphilosophy,--took a gloomy view of the local potentialities of the hotel\nbusiness. He said there was nothing doing--some milk and asparagus were\nraised for the Boston market, but the inhabitants were mostly literary\npeople. \"I suppose,\" he added, \"we've got the smartest literary man in\nthe country living right here.\" \"You mean Mr. Emerson,\" I suggested.\n\"Yes, sir, and a gentleman too.\"\n\n\"And Alcott?\" I ventured.\n\n\"Oh, Alcott! The best thing he ever did was his daughters.\"\n\nThis inn was gone, but the still more ancient one across the square\nremains, the tavern where Major Pitcairn dined on the day of the\nLexington fight, and from whose windows or door steps he is alleged by\nthe history books to have cried to a group of embattled farmers,\n\"Disperse, ye Yankee rebels.\"\n\nConcord is well preserved. Still there are subtle indications of the\nflight of time. For one thing, the literary pilgrimage business has\nincreased, partly no doubt because trolleys, automobiles, and bicycles\nhave made the town more accessible; but also because our literature is a\ngeneration older than it was in 1879. The study of American authors has\nbeen systematically introduced into the public schools. The men who made\nConcord famous are dead, but their habitat has become increasingly\nclassic ground as they themselves have receded into a dignified,\nhistoric past. At any rate, the trail of the excursionist--the \"cheap\ntripper,\" as he is called in England,--is over it all. Basket parties\nhad evidently eaten many a luncheon on the first battle-field of the\nRevolution, and notices were posted about, asking the public not to\ndeface the trees, and instructing them where to put their paper\nwrappers and _fragmenta regalia_. I could imagine Boston schoolma'ams\npointing out to their classes, the minuteman, the monument, and other\nobjects of interest, and calling for names and dates. The shores of\nWalden were trampled and worn in spots. There were springboards there\nfor diving, and traces of the picnicker were everywhere. Trespassers\nwere warned away from the grounds of the Old Manse and similar historic\nspots, by signs of \"Private Property.\"\n\nConcord has grown more self-conscious under the pressure of all this\npublicity and resort. Tablets and inscriptions have been put up at\npoints of interest. As I was reading one of these on the square, I was\napproached by a man who handed me a business card with photographs of\nthe monument, the Wayside, the four-hundred-year-old oak, with\ninformation to the effect that Mr. ---- would furnish guides and livery\nteams about the town and to places as far distant as Walden Pond and\nSudbury Inn. Thus poetry becomes an asset, and transcendentalism is\nexploited after the poet and the philosopher are dead. It took Emerson\neleven years to sell five hundred copies of \"Nature,\" and Thoreau's\nbooks came back upon his hands as unsalable and were piled up in the\nattic like cord-wood. I was impressed anew with the tameness of the\nConcord landscape. There is nothing salient about it: it is the average\nmean of New England nature. Berkshire is incomparably more beautiful.\nAnd yet those flat meadows and low hills and slow streams are dear to\nthe imagination, since genius has looked upon them and made them its\nown. \"The eye,\" said Emerson, \"is the first circle: the horizon the\nsecond.\"\n\nAnd the Concord books--how do they bear the test of revisitation? To me,\nat least, they have--even some of the second-rate papers in the \"Dial\"\nhave--now nearly fifty years since I read them first, that freshness\nwhich is the mark of immortality.\n\n\n     No ray is dimmed, no atom worn:\n       My oldest force is good as new;\n     And the fresh rose on yonder thorn\n       Gives back the bending heavens in dew.\n\n\nI think I do not mistake, and confer upon them the youth which was then\nmine. No, the morning light had touched their foreheads: the\nyouthfulness was in _them_.\n\nLately I saw a newspaper item about one of the thirty thousand literary\npilgrims who are said to visit Concord annually. Calling upon Mr.\nSanborn, he asked him which of the Concord authors he thought would last\nlongest. The answer, somewhat to his surprise, was \"Thoreau.\" I do not\nknow whether this report is authentic; but supposing it true, it is not\ninexplicable. I will confess that, of recent years, I find myself\nreading Thoreau more and Emerson less. \"Walden\" seems to me more of a\nbook than Emerson ever wrote. Emerson's was incomparably the larger\nnature, the more liberal and gracious soul. His, too, was the seminal\nmind; though Lowell was unfair to the disciple, when he described him as\na pistillate blossom fertilized by the Emersonian pollen. For Thoreau\nhad an originality of his own--a flavor as individual as the tang of the\nbog cranberry, or the wild apples which he loved. One secure advantage\nhe possesses in the concreteness of his subject-matter. The master, with\nhis abstract habit of mind and his view of the merely phenomenal\ncharacter of the objects of sense, took up a somewhat incurious attitude\ntowards details, not thinking it worth while to \"examine too\nmicroscopically the universal tablet.\" The disciple, though he professed\nthat the other world was all his art, had a sharp eye for this. Emerson\nwas Nature's lover, but Thoreau was her scholar. Emerson's method was\nintuition, while Thoreau's was observation. He worked harder than\nEmerson and knew more,--that is, within certain defined limits. Thus he\nread the Greek poets in the original. Emerson, in whom there was a\nspice of indolence--due, say his biographers, to feeble health in early\nlife, and the need of going slow,--read them in translations and excused\nhimself on the ground that he liked to be beholden to the great English\nlanguage.\n\nCompare Hawthorne's description, in the \"Mosses,\" of a day spent on the\nAssabeth with Ellery Channing, with any chapter in Thoreau's \"Week.\"\nMoonlight and high noon! The great romancer gives a dreamy, poetic\nversion of the river landscape, musically phrased, pictorially composed,\ndissolved in atmosphere--a lovely piece of literary art, with the soft\nblur of a mezzotint engraving, say, from the designs by Turner in\nRogers's \"Italy.\" Thoreau, equally imaginative in his way, writes like a\nbotanist, naturalist, surveyor, and local antiquary; and in a pungent,\npractical, business-like style--a style, as was said of Dante, in which\nwords are things. Yet which of these was the true transcendentalist?\n\nMatthew Arnold's discourse on Emerson was received with strong dissent\nin Boston, where it was delivered, and in Concord, where it was read\nwith indignation. The critic seemed to be taking away, one after\nanother, our venerated master's claims as a poet, a man of letters, and\na philosopher. What! Gray a great poet, and Emerson not! Addison a\ngreat writer, and Emerson not! Surely there are heights and depths in\nEmerson, an inspiring power, an originality and force of thought which\nare neither in Gray nor in Addison. And how can these denials be\nconsistent with the sentence near the end of the discourse, pronouncing\nEmerson's essays the most important work done in English prose during\nthe nineteenth century--more important than Carlyle's? A truly enormous\nconcession this; how to reconcile it with those preceding blasphemies?\n\nLet not the lightning strike me if I say that I think Arnold was\nright--as he usually was right in a question of taste or critical\ndiscernment. For Emerson was essentially a prophet and theosophist, and\nnot a man of letters, or creative artist. He could not have written a\nsong or a story or a play. Arnold complains of his want of concreteness.\nThe essay was his chosen medium, well-nigh the least concrete, the least\nliterary of forms. And it was not even the personal essay, like Elia's,\nthat he practised, but an abstract variety, a lyceum lecture, a\nmoralizing discourse or sermon. For the clerical virus was strong in\nEmerson, and it was not for nothing that he was descended from eight\ngenerations of preachers. His concern was primarily with religion and\nethics, not with the tragedy and comedy of personal lives, this motley\nface of things, _das bunte Menschenleben_. Anecdotes and testimonies\nabound to illustrate this. See him on his travels in Europe, least\npicturesque of tourists, hastening with almost comic precipitation past\ngalleries, cathedrals, ancient ruins, Swiss alps, Como lakes, Rhine\ncastles, Venetian lagoons, costumed peasants, \"the great sinful streets\nof Naples\"--and of Paris,--and all manner and description of local color\nand historic associations; hastening to meet and talk with \"a few\nminds\"--Landor, Wordsworth, Carlyle. Here he was in line, indeed, with\nhis great friend, impatiently waving aside the art patter, with which\nSterling filled his letters from Italy. \"Among the windy gospels,\"\ncomplains Carlyle, \"addressed to our poor Century there are few louder\nthan this of Art.... It is a subject on which earnest men ... had better\n... 'perambulate their picture-gallery with little or no speech.'\"\n\"Emerson has never in his life,\" affirms Mr. John Jay Chapman, \"felt the\nnormal appeal of any painting, or any sculpture, or any architecture, or\nany music. These things, of which he does not know the meaning in real\nlife, he yet uses, and uses constantly, as symbols to convey ethical\ntruths. The result is that his books are full of blind places, like the\nnotes which will not strike on a sick piano.\" The biographers tell us\nthat he had no ear for music and could not distinguish one tune from\nanother; did not care for pictures nor for garden flowers; could see\nnothing in Dante's poetry nor in Shelley's, nor in Hawthorne's romances,\nnor in the novels of Dickens and Jane Austen. Edgar Poe was to him \"the\njingle man.\" Poe, of course, had no \"message.\"\n\nI read, a number of years ago, some impressions of Concord by Roger\nRiordan, the poet and art critic. I cannot now put my hand, for purposes\nof quotation, upon the title of the periodical in which these appeared;\nbut I remember that the writer was greatly amused, as well as somewhat\nprovoked, by his inability to get any of the philosophers with whom he\nsought interviews to take an aesthetic view of any poem, or painting, or\nother art product. They would talk of its \"message\" or its \"ethical\ncontent\"; but as to questions of technique or beauty, they gently put\nthem one side as unworthy to engage the attention of earnest souls.\n\nAt the symposium which I have mentioned in Emerson's library, was\npresent a young philosopher who had had the advantage of\nreading--perhaps in proof sheets--a book about Shakespeare by Mr. Denton\nJ. Snider. He was questioned by some of the guests as to the character\nof the work, but modestly declined to essay a description of it in the\npresence of such eminent persons; venturing only to say that it \"gave\nthe ethical view of Shakespeare,\" information which was received by the\ncompany with silent but manifest approval.\n\nYet, after all, what does it matter whether Emerson was singly any one\nof those things which Matthew Arnold says he was not--great poet, great\nwriter, great philosophical thinker? These are matters of classification\nand definition. We know well enough the rare combination of qualities\nwhich made him our Emerson. Let us leave it there. Even as a formal\nverse-writer, when he does emerge from his cloud of encumbrances, it is\nin some supernal phrase such as only the great poets have the secret of:\n\n\n     Music pours on mortals its beautiful disdain;\n\n\nor:\n\n\n     Have I a lover who is noble and free?\n     I would he were nobler than to love me.\n\n\n\n\nA WORDLET ABOUT WHITMAN\n\n\nIn this year many fames have come of age; among them, Lowell's and Walt\nWhitman's. As we read their centenary tributes, we are reminded that\nLowell never accepted Whitman, who was piqued by the fact and referred\nto it a number of times in the conversations reported by the Boswellian\nTraubel. Whitmanites explain this want of appreciation as owing to\nLowell's conventional literary standards.\n\nNow convention is one of the things that distinguish man from the\ninferior animals. Language is a convention, law is a convention; and so\nare the church and the state, morals, manners, clothing--_teste_ \"Sartor\nResartus.\" Shame is a convention: it is human. The animals are without\nshame, and so is Whitman. His \"Children of Adam\" are the children of our\ncommon father before he had tasted the forbidden fruit and discovered\nthat he was naked.\n\nPoetry, too, has its conventions, among them, metre, rhythm, and rhyme,\nthe choice of certain words, phrases, images, and topics, and the\nrejection of certain others. Lowell was conservative by nature and\nthoroughly steeped in the tradition of letters. Perhaps he was too\ntightly bound by these fetters of convention to relish their sudden\nloosening. I wonder what he would have thought of his kinswoman Amy's\nfree verses if he had lived to read them.\n\nIf a large, good-natured, clean, healthy animal could write poetry, it\nwould write much such poetry as the \"Leaves of Grass.\" It would tell how\ngood it is to lie and bask in the warm sun; to stand in cool, flowing\nwater, to be naked in the fresh air; to troop with friendly companions\nand embrace one's mate. \"Leaves of Grass\" is the poetry of pure\nsensation, and mainly, though not wholly, of physical sensation. In a\nfamous passage the poet says that he wants to go away and live with the\nanimals. Not one of them is respectable or sorry or conscientious or\nworried about its sins.\n\nBut his poetry, though animal to a degree, is not unhuman. We do not\nknow enough about the psychology of the animals to be sure whether, or\nnot, they have any sense of the world as a whole. Does an elephant or an\neagle perhaps, viewing some immense landscape, catch any glimpse of the\nuniverse, as an object of contemplation, apart from the satisfaction of\nhis own sensual needs? Probably not. But Whitman, as has been said a\nhundred times, was \"cosmic.\" He had an unequalled sense of the bigness\nof creation and of \"these States.\" He owned a panoramic eye and a large\npassive imagination, and did well to loaf and let the tides of sensation\nflow over his soul, drawing out what music was in him without much care\nfor arrangement or selection.\n\nI once heard an admirer of Walt challenged to name a single masterpiece\nof his production. Where was his perfect poem, his gem of flawless\nworkmanship? He answered, in effect, that he didn't make masterpieces.\nHis poetry was diffused, like the grass blades that symbolized for him\nour democratic masses.\n\nOf course, the man in the street thinks that Walt Whitman's stuff is not\npoetry at all, but just bad prose. He acknowledges that there are\nsplendid lines, phrases, and whole passages. There is that one\nbeginning, \"I open my scuttle at night,\" and that glorious apostrophe to\nthe summer night, \"Night of south winds, night of the large, few stars.\"\nBut, as a whole, his work is tiresome and without art. It is alive, to\nbe sure, but so is protoplasm. Life is the first thing and form is\nsecondary; yet form, too, is important. The musician, too lazy or too\nimpatient to master his instrument, breaks it, and seizes a megaphone.\nShall we call that originality or failure?\n\nIt is also a commonplace that the democratic masses of America have\nnever accepted Walt Whitman as their spokesman. They do not read him, do\nnot understand or care for him. They like Longfellow, Whittier, and\nJames Whitcomb Riley, poets of sentiment and domestic life, truly poets\nof the people. No man can be a spokesman for America who lacks a sense\nof humor, and Whitman was utterly devoid of it, took himself most\nseriously, posed as a prophet. I do not say that humor is a desirable\nquality. The thesis may even be maintained that it is a disease of the\nmind, a false way of looking at things. Many great poets have been\nwithout it--Milton for example. Shelley used to speak of \"the withering\nand perverting power of comedy.\" But Shelley was slightly mad. At all\nevents, our really democratic writers have been such as Mark Twain and\nJames Whitcomb Riley. I do not know what Mark Twain thought of Walt, but\nI know what Riley thought of him. He thought him a grand humbug.\nCertainly if he had had any sense of humor he would not have peppered\nhis poems so naively with foreign words, calling out \"Camerado!\" ever\nand anon, and speaking of a perfectly good American sidewalk as a\n\"trottoir\" _quasi Lutetia Parisii_. And if he had not had a streak of\nhumbug in him, he would hardly have written anonymous puffs of his own\npoetry.\n\nBut I am far from thinking Walt Whitman a humbug. He was a man of genius\nwhose work had a very solid core of genuine meaning. It is good to read\nhim in spots--he is so big and friendly and wholesome; he feels so good,\nlike a man who has just had a cold bath and tingles with the joy of\nexistence.\n\nWhitman was no humbug, but there is surely some humbug about the Whitman\n_culte_. The Whitmanites deify him. They speak of him constantly as a\nseer, a man of exalted intellect. I do not believe that he was a great\nthinker, but only a great feeler. Was he the great poet of America, or\neven a great poet at all? A great poet includes a great artist, and\n\"Leaves of Grass,\" as has been pointed out times without number, is the\nraw material of poetry rather than the finished product.\n\nA friend of mine once wrote an article about Whitman, favorable on the\nwhole, but with qualifications. He got back a copy of it through the\nmail, with the word \"Jackass!\" pencilled on the margin by some outraged\nWhitmaniac. I know what has been said and written in praise of old Walt\nby critics of high authority, and I go along with them a part of the\nway, but only a part. And I do not stand in terror of any critics,\nhowever authoritative; remembering how even the great Goethe was taken\nin by Macpherson's \"Ossian.\" A very interesting paper might be written\non what illustrious authors have said of each other: what Carlyle said\nof Newman, for instance; or what Walter Scott said of Joanna Baillie and\nthe like.\n\n\nPRINTED IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA","title":"Four Americans: Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":17204}