Apart from his difficult staccato, Emerson is not free from secondary
faults. He uses words that are not only odd, but vicious in
construction; he is not always grammatically correct; he is sometimes
oblique, and he is often clumsy; and there is a visible feeling after
epigrams that do not always come. When people say that Emerson's style
must be good and admirable because it fits his thought, they forget that
though it is well that a robe should fit, there is still something to be
said about its cut and fashion.
No doubt, to borrow Carlyle's expression, 'the talent is not the chief
question here: the idea--that is the chief question.' We do not profess
to be of those to whom mere style is as dear as it was to Plutarch; of
him it was said that he would have made Pompey win the battle of
Pharsalia, if it could have given a better turn to a phrase. It would
not be worth while to speak of form in a thinker to whom our debt is so
large for his matter, if there were not so much bad literary imitation
of Emerson. Dr. Holmes mournfully admits that 'one who talks like
Emerson or like Carlyle soon finds himself surrounded by a crowd of
walking phonographs, who mechanically reproduce his mental and oral
accents. Emerson was before long talking in the midst of a babbling
Simonetta of echoes.' Inferior writers have copied the tones of the
oracle without first making sure of the inspiration.
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