most dangerous thing I have read for some years. A decided likeness of myself recognizable in it, as in the celestial mirror of a friend's heart; but so enlarged, exaggerated, all transfigured, the most delicious, the most dangerous thing! Well, I suppose I must try to assimilate it also, to turn it also to good, if I be able. Eulogies, dyslogies, in which one finds no features of one's own natural face, are easily dealt with, . . . but here is another sort of matter! . . . May the gods forgive you! I have purchased a copy for three shillings and sent it to my Mother, one of the indubitablest benefits I could think of in regard to it." ... A LETTER The position of Editor of the Dial must have been trying to one like Mr. Emerson, who joined to sympathy with young idealists and wish to foster divine discontent," a high standard of thought and expression, a dislike for the negative, and a New England common sense. So he wrote to disappointed contributors, or those restless seekers who asked for counsel, this wholesome circular letter, which ended by referring each to the oracle within which he or she neglected in seeking help abroad. The "Letter" was published in the Dial for October, 1843. Page 404, note I. In the Dial the letter ends by referring to a correspondent who had sent in a generous and just tribute to Bettine von Arnim, and giving a translation from the Deutsche Schellpost" of a sketch, though plainly from no very friendly hand, of the new work of that eminent lady, who, in the silence of Tieck and Schelling, seems to hold a monopoly of genius in Germany.” THE TRAGIC This lecture, under the name " Tragedy," was the seventh in a course on Human Life given by Mr. Emerson in Boston in the winter of 1838-39. The eighth lecture was "Comedy," included among the lectures which Mr. Cabot gathered for him into the volume Letters and Social Aims, when Mr. Emerson's failing strength required such aid. "The Tragic," for so the name was altered, was printed by Mr. Emerson in the last number of the Dial, April, 1844. It was a subject quite foreign to Mr. Emerson's habit of mind, but one which his serene faith could dispose of and bring, as he would have said, "within the sphere." Page 408, note 1. The subject of Fate is treated at length in the Essay of that name in Conduct of Life. In the poem Worship," the motto to the Essay on that theme, Fate, miscalled, is represented as beneficent, living Law. Page 410, note I. From a song by Donne, beginning: "Sweetest love, I doe not goe." Page 412, note 1. Page 413, note 1. Isaiah, xxx., 7. The serenity and composure of Mr. Emerson's venerable friend Samuel Hoar were such that Mr. Emerson wrote of him in his journal: "I know a man who tries time.' |