THE PERSONALITY OF EMERSON.
The Personality of Emerson. By F. B. Sanborn. (Charles E. Goodspeed, Boston, U.S. 20s.)—This volume is full of good matter, a record of experiences among surroundings such as have seldom been found together in one place. Was there ever such a home of notable personalities as Concord? Curiously enough, the one personality of whom we carry away, if not the most definite, yet the most numerous impressions is Bronson Alcott. Possibly one had already realised Emerson, and the realisation was not liable to much change. On one point, where we looked with some curiosity for information, we hear little or nothing; we mean the curious contrast of seemingly opposite qualities which Lowell touched in his "Fable for Critics" when he wrote— "A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range
Had Olympus for one pole, for t'other the Exchange."
One sees Emerson's mental shrewdness, which coexisted with his mystic and transcendental moods; but how about the practical, typified, we presume, by "the Exchange" ? We cannot refrain from expressing our admiration for Mr. Sanborn's own sonnets on Ellen Emerson. We wish we could quote them, but they would be irrelevant. Our own quotation must be Emerson's own couplet, written probably as much as sixty years ago, with its anticipation of evolution :—
" And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form."
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