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EMERSON'S REPRESENTATIVE MEN.

Representative Men. Seven Lectures: by RALPH WALDO EMERSON. London: John Chapman, 142, Strand. 1850.

GLO

E here welcome the latest, and, in our judgment, the most fruitful and characteristic, of Mr. Emerson's productions. In his earlier essays, the thoughts of other men were too prominent,-of Plato or the Brahmins, of Shakspere, Montaigne, Swedenborg, or other typical geniuses of the past. The thoughts which he dug out of their mines were indeed precious jewels, and the peculiar setting and exquisite polish were his own. He showed himself the mòst skilful of artists, and the beauty and brilliancy of his ornaments could not fail to charm the world. Still, Emerson was too great a soul to remain a mere intellectual lapidary. Under a wise, free culture, he must needs grow to maturity. The law of spontaneous development was strong within him. Ultimately, therefore, he put the great Peers of Intellect to their rightful use; not enthroning them as the Masters of his soul, but regarding them as the Servants of Providence sent to minister to him. He did not, as weaker men have done, suffer them to legislate for him, and overbear his own individuality; but he held reverential council with them. While they furnished the appropriate nutriment to his mental organization, it was his function inwardly to digest and assimilate that food, and finally to convert it into a wholesome and vitalizing fluid, to strengthen and build up the inner man. With the graceful forms and glowing hues that marked the transmutation of this intellectual manna into a vital literature, the world is familiar.

The last traces of even such dependence, disappears with the progress of culture. As when the Child passes into the Man he becomes more omnivorous, so when the Soul attains its full strength, its powers and tastes become more universal. These lectures on 'Representative Men,' exhibit the results of the matured culture of the Author-and hence more truly represent the Individuality of the Man. The era of appreciation has given place to that of developed judgment. We talk with Emerson himself, soul to soul, no longer with Plato or Browne, thrö Emerson, the interpreter. We have not only the charming and native Esthetics of this author, but much more of his special Insight and intellectual Aptitudes.

In the earliest of Mr. Emerson's essays, the speculative and poetic tendencies of his mind-the characteristics of his genius-were obvious enough. They were nobly sustained by a brave and self-reliant spirit, equally rare and remarkable in the land of his birth. Amidst the crushing influences of Democratic Conformitywhere republicans have ingeniously contrived to make the majority of individuals slaves to the opinion of each other as expressed by the majority of the mass!-to merge the Personality in the Politicality-an obscure preacher, of no popular denomination, stood forth as the Champion of Nature against System and Conventionalism-as the Apostle of spontaneous Virtuc and Individuality-as the

Poet-Priest of Mental Liberty and Manhood!

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He became Man the Reformer,' in the deep and truest sense of that word, by touching and opening the fountains of the being. Man-Thinking' at once represented the Man and his Mission. He manifested himself eminently as a Speculative Thinker, not without logic and system, but with the method carefully concealed. He went not out to battle without armor, sword, and spear. But he wore his bright and close fitting corslet beneath an embroidered surcoat, while the weapons of his warfare were polished axioms, and universal brain-searching sentences, in which the wisdom of a whole philosophy lay hidden, yet potent. That they might pierce the heart, he hardened and tempered the metal in the Promethean fire of the Poet. indicates immense labor, care, and perseverance in the armorer, when his weapons have no flaw in their texture, no inequality in the brilliancy of their polish or the evenness of their surface, so of Mr. Emerson's instruments of power and conquest. Nowhere is carelessness, or even irregularity, to be detected in their fabrication. His thoughts and his style are thoroly welded together, and impress us, on reflection, with the idea of uncommon elaborateness and finish. As regards artistic skill he is a perfect contrast to Montaigne; for tho he represents to a nicety the grace of all spontaneous behavior, his own style of thought and expression always infers foregone study and labor. He exhibits nothing of that charming, undress negligence, which is so notable a trait in that frankest unrober of himself; and yet, as regards what we may call the essential-substance of style, Emerson constantly reminds one of Montaigne.

He

In these lectures the author displays the highest qualities of his nature, for he here fulfils the function to which his peculiar powers are most perfectly adapted. A true Poct he doubtless is, but not of the universal, highest type. expresses, but he does not create. A Philosopher also, but not of the grand, constructive order. He is remarkable for his analytic, rather than his synthetic power. He can divide the muscle, and anatomize the finest nerve, but he cannot re-combine. He can vivify a subject, but he cannot make one. Were he unwise enough to attempt, he would only fabricate another Frankensteinmore beautiful perhaps, but not less unnatural. He cannot realize his own Ideals in Work. He has all the appreciation of a Plato, or a Swedonborg, but he wants their central power. Plenty of light, but no gravity for attracting the solid atoms to his centre. He can inspire, but never conspire: altogether he is too etherial for building-purposes. The Man of Science, he, in common with Carlyle, but coldly appreciates, seldom honors. He reflects, but he cannot raise. He rather destroys than builds. He perceives, but how to perform he finds not. In short, he is a Critic, in the right sense of that abused word-a critic perhaps without a peer-of Life and Nature, Men and Manners. He sees into the very heart of his subjects-detects the meaning and purpose of Providence and History-and embraces within his eagle's ken, alike the material and the spiritual, the lofty and the mean, the hollow and fleeting with the solid and eternal. In one realm alone are his gaze and experience limited-the reason probably of his want of universality-he has not fathomed, nor ever can fathom, the depths of human Passion. Emerson, however, is not a mere critic and not at all of the fashionable, formalistic sort. His judgments are both reached and expressed by virtue of his faculty as Poct. Hence indeed their power.

They win acceptance with men because they seize the head and heart together. After a preliminary lecture on The Uses of Great Men,' Mr. Emerson proceeds to examine and estimate the following characters :-Plato, the Philosopher;-Swedenborg, the Mystic;-Montaigne, the Sceptic;-Shakspere the Poet;-Napoleon, the Man of the World;—and Göthe, the Writer. These men are placed before us, tho painted in words only, distinct as a Daguerreotype, and almost as palpable as chiseled marble. The beauty of many of these psychicalportraits, the finish and fidelity of all, are amazing. They transcend anything of the kind that we know of. The lecture on Shakspere is equally eloquent and original. The anatomy of Napoleon is not less so, and terrible as just. That earth-born genius has awarded to him great admiration for his vast powers, and is then dismissed with the brand-mark of eternal infamy. In all the lectures, we find subtle thought, beautiful expression, exquisite comparison, and philosophic inference-qualities which pre-eminently distinguish this Poet-Critic of the New-World.

NAPOLEON,

"Napoleon renounced, once for all, sentiments and affections, and would help himself with his hands and his head. With him is no miracle, and no magic. He is a worker in brass, in iron, in wood, in earth, in roads, in buildings, in money, and in troops, and a very consistent and wise master workman. He is never weak and literary, but acts with the solidity and the precision of natural agents. He has not lost native sense and sympathy with things. Men give way before such a man, as before natural events. To be sure, there are men enough who are immersed in things, as farmers, smiths, sailors, and mechanics generally; and we know how real and solid such men appear in the presence of scholars and grammarians; but these men ordinarily lack the power of arrangement, and are like hands without a head. But Bonaparte superadded to this mineral and animal force, insight and generalizations, so that men saw in him combined the natural and intellectual power, as if the sea and land had taken flesh and begun to cipher. Therefore the land and sea seem to pre-suppose him. He came unto his own, and they received him. This ciphering operative knows what he is working with, and what is the right product. He knew the properties of gold and iron, of wheels and ships, of troops and diplomatists, and required that cach should do after its kind."

"Nature must have far the greatest share in every success, and so in his. Such a man was wanted, and such a man was born: a man of stone and iron, capable of sitting on horseback sixteen or seventeen hours; of going many days together without rest or food, except by snatches; and with the speed and spring of a tiger in action: a man not embarrassed by any scruples; compact, instant, selfish, prudent, and of a perception which did not suffer itself to be baulked or misled by any pretences of others, or any superstition or any heat or haste of his own. 'My hand of iron,' he said, 'was not at the extremity of my arm; it was immediately connected with my head.' He respected the power of nature and fortune, and ascribed to it his superiority, instead of valuing himself, like inferior men, on his opinionativeness, and waging war with nature. His favorite rhetoric lay in allusions to his star, and he pleased himself as well as the people, when he styled himself the Child of Destiny.' 'They charge me,' he said, 'with the commission of great crimes men of my stamp do not commit crimes. Nothing has been more simple than my elevation: 'tis in vain to ascribe it to intrigue or crime: it was owing to the peculiarity of the times, and to my reputation of having fought well against the enemies of my country. I have always marched with the opinion of great masses, and with events. Of what use, then, would crimes be to me?' Again he said, speaking of his son: 'My son cannot replace me; I could not replace myself, I am the crcature of circumstances.'

"He had a directness of action never before combined with so much comprehension. He is a realist, terrific to all talkers, and confused, truth-obscuring persons. He sees where the matter hinges, throws himself on the precise point of resistance, and slights all other considerations. He is strong in the right manner, namely, by insight. dered into victory, but won his battles in his head, before he won them on the field."

He never blun

"In describing the two parties into which modern society divides itself, the Democrat and the Conservative, I said, Bonaparte represents the democrat, or the party of men of business, against the stationary or conservative party. These two parties differ only as young and old. The democrat is a young conservative, the conservative is an old democrat, ripe and gone to seed; because both parties stand on the one ground of the supreme value of property, which one endeavors to get, and the other to keep. Bonaparte may be said to represent the whole history of the party, its youth and its age, yes, and with poetic justice, its fate in his own. The counter-revolution, the counter-party, still waits for its organ and representative in a lover, and a man of truly public and universal aims. "Here was an experiment, under the most favorable conditions, of the powers of intellect without conscience. Never was such a leader, so endowed, and so weaponed; never leader found such aids and followers. And what was the result of this vast talent and power, of these immense armies, burned cities, squandered treasures, immolated millions of men, of this demoralized Europe? It came to no result. All passed away, like the smoke of his artillery, and left no trace. He left France smaller, poorer, feebler than he found it, and the whole contest for freedom was to be begun again. The attempt was in principle suicidal. France served him with life and limb and estate as long as it could identify its interest with him but when men saw, that after victory was another war; after the destruction of armies, new conscriptions: and they who had toiled so desperately, were never nearer to the reward; could not spend what they had earned; nor repose on their down beds, nor strut in their chateaus,-they deserted him. Men found that his absorbing egotism was deadly to all other men. It resembled the torpedo, which inflicts a succession of shocks on any one who takes hold of it, producing spasms, which contract the muscles of the hand, so that the man cannot open his fingers, and the animal inflicts new and more violent shocks, until he paralyses and kills his victim. So this exorbitant egotist narrowed, impoverished, and absorbed the power and existence of those who served him: and the universal cry of France and of Europe, in 1814, was 'Enough of Bonaparte.' "It was not Bonaparte's fault. He did all that in him lay, to live and thrive without moral principle. It was the nature of things, the eternal law of man and of the world, which baulked and ruined him; and the result, in a million experiments, will be the same. Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail. The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient as the pernicious Napoleon. As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick, there will be bitterness in our laughter, and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men."

GÖTHE.

"I described Bonaparte as a representative of the popular external life and aims of the nineteenth century. Its other half, its poet, is Göthe, a man quite domesticated in the century, breathing its air, enjoying its fruits, impossible at any earlier time, and taking away by his collossal parts the reproach of weakness, which, but for him, would lie on the intellectual works of the period. He appears at a time when a general culture has spread itself, and has smoothed down all sharp individual traits; when, in the absence of heroic

characters, a social comfort and co-operation have come in.

There is no poet, but scores

of poetic-writers; no Columbus, but hundreds of post-captains with transit telescope, barometer, and concentrated soup and pemmican: no Demosthenes, no Chatham, but any number of clever parliamentary and forensic debaters; no prophet or saint, but colleges of divinity: no learned man, but learned societies, a cheap press, reading-rooms, and bookclubs, without number. There was never such a miscellany of facts. The world extends itself like American trade. We conceive Greek or Roman life, life in the Middle Ages, to be a simple and comprehensible affair; but modern life to respect a multitude of things which is distracting.

"Göthe was the philosopher of this multiplicity,-hundred-handed, Argus-eyed, able and happy to cope with this rolling miscellany of facts and sciences, and by his own versatility, to dispose of them with ease. A manly mind unembarrassed by the variety of coats of convention with which life had got encrusted, easily able by his subtlety to pierce these, and to draw his strength from nature, with which he lived in full communion." "It is really of very little consequence what topic he writes upon. He sees at every pore, and has a certain gravitation towards truth. He will realize what you say. He hates to to be trifled with, and to be made to say over again some old wife's fable that has had possession of men's faith these thousand years. He may as well see if it is true as another. He sifts it. I am here, he would say, to be the measure and judge of these things. Why should I take them on trust? And, therefore, what he says of religion, of passion, of marriage, of manners, of property, of paper-money, of periods, of belief, of omens, of luck, of whatever else, refuses to be forgotten.

"Take the most remarkable example that could occur of this tendency to realize or verify every term in popular use. The Devil had played an important part in mythology in all times. Göthe would have no word that does not cover a thing [or a fact]. The same measure will still serve :-'I have never heard of any crime which I might not have committed.'-So he flies at the throat of this imp. He shall be real, he shall be modern, he shall be European, he shall dress like a gentlemen, and accept the manners, and walk in the streets, and be well initiated in the life, of Vienna and of Heidelberg, in 1820,— or he shall not exist. Accordingly, he stripped him of mythologic gear, of horns, cloven foot, harpoon tail, brimstone and blue fire, and instead of looking in books and pictures, looked for him in his own mind, in every shade of coldness, selfishness, and unbelief, that in crowds or in solitude darkens over human thought, and found that the portrait gained reality and terror by everything he added and by everything he took away. He found that the essence of this hobgoblin, which had hovered in shadow about the habitations of men ever since there were men, was pure intellect applied, as always there is a tendency, to the service of the senses: and he flung into literature, in his Mephistophiles, the first organic figure that has been added for some ages, and which will remain as long as the Prometheus."

Mr. Emerson holds that 'Great Men are more distinguished by range and extent, than by originality.' This, we think, is true, and supported by history and observation. A limited force of intellect, kept to one bent, naturally produces the original man'-while a larger force, seeking greater scope, merges its 'originality' of form in a more pervading spirit,-and exhibits the varied and commanding phenomena of Greatness.

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