... He was your Newman, your man
of soul and genius visible to you in the flesh, speaking to your bodily
ears, a present object for your heart and imagination. That is surely
the most potent of all influences!"
I confess I enjoy these clear classic sentences so full of tenderness,
and yet with the latent fire of manhood in them, much better than
Emerson's weird, concentrated epigrams, wonderful as those sometimes
are. Comparatively speaking it is like the difference between a living
elm and oak timber. But the writer does not long maintain this elevated
tone. He soon becomes despondent, and his glorious sunrise, like that in
Shakespeare's sonnet, is lost to him again.
"For out alack, he was but one hour mine;
The region cloud hath veiled him from me now."
He remembers that Francis Newman is now Cardinal Newman; that Carlyle's
career had ended with his furious "Latter-day Pamphlets," and even in
Emerson he had found a certain kind of disappointment.
Yet there may be a deeper reason in this;--the reason that sometimes
underlies a coincidence. We too in early life were strengthened and
filled with enthusiasm by the earnest voice of Emerson, the trenchant
eloquence of Wendell Phillips, and the brilliant wit and penetrating
humor of Lowell; but the public activity of Emerson soon afterwards
ceased; Phillips became a socialist and ultimately a demagogue; while
Lowell changed his verses for foreign missions and after-dinner
speeches.
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