Arnold
is himself to blame for the misconstruction put upon him, since he has
expressed himself in a way to facilitate, if not to invite, such a
mistake. Emerson, it is said, was the most important writer of this
century, yet was not a great writer. How should this be, unless, indeed,
the century as a whole is inferior, and prominence in it is no token of
greatness? In truth, Mr. Arnold has used the term 'writer' in two widely
different senses. In the one use it refers to the content of the
writing, to its intellectual and moral import, its spiritual
significance; in the other use it refers to the writing itself
considered as showing more or less of literary power,--that is, of power
in the ordering and verbal embodiment of thoughts and conceptions.
"Declining to be misled by this ambiguity, let us inquire what is meant,
when it is said that Emerson was not a great writer. To my apprehension
the meaning is simply that his literary execution, taken by and for
itself, was not of the highest order. A cotton fabric may be better
woven than one of silk, a chain of copper be better wrought and linked
than a chain of gold. He that should recognize the better workmanship
where it exists would not thereby set the cheaper material above the
more precious, for he would not institute a comparison to any effect
whatsoever between the two. Nor would he betray a shallow and petty
mind, as making much of things trivial.
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