It was not the just and
virtuous Aristides but the bold reckless Themistocles who saved Greece
from the Persian invasion. Luther and Shakespeare are brilliant examples
of it. Our American poets have all except Poe a high reputation for
virtue and good behavior, but I do not find in them the summer climate
of Burns or the magnetism of Byron and Heine. There is such a thing as
valuing our faults too highly.
Emerson did not like such men, and was apt to do them injustice. He
admired Napoleon and Goethe--a generous nature cannot help that--and his
estimate of Napoleon's character is the best that has yet been made; but
he preferred Lafayette to Mirabeau, considered Caesar wholly lacking in
principle, and thought Machiavelli was the fiend incarnate. His friends
were like himself, cool-headed and scrupulous; but they were not the
persons who cared most for him and appreciated him the best. Such men as
Theodore Parker, M. D. Conway, David A. Wasson and Wendell Phillips did
more for Emerson almost than his own writings, in spreading his
reputation and celebrating his genius. Wherever Phillips and Parker
lectured in the west and were asked, as often happened, who were the
best of the New England lecturers, they always placed Emerson at the
head of the list. They served as mediators between him and the large
class of persons who could not readily understand him.
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