Few thinkers on
his level display such breadth of literary reference. Unlike Wordsworth,
who was content with a few tattered volumes on a kitchen shelf, Emerson
worked among books. When he was a boy he found a volume of Montaigne,
and he never forgot the delight and wonder in which he lived with it.
His library is described as filled with well-selected authors, with
curious works from the eastern world, with many editions in both Greek
and English of his favourite Plato; while portraits of Shakespeare,
Montaigne, Goethe, Dante, looked down upon him from the walls. Produce a
volume of Plato or of Shakespeare, he says somewhere, or '_only remind
us of their names_,' and instantly we come into a feeling of longevity.
That is the scholar's speech. Opening a single essay at random, we find
in it citations from Montesquieu, Schiller, Milton, Herodotus, Shelley,
Plutarch, Franklin, Bacon, Van Helmont, Goethe. So little does Emerson
lend himself to the idle vanity of seeking all the treasures of wisdom
in his own head, or neglecting the hoarded authority of the ages. It is
true that he held the unholy opinion that a translation is as good as
the original, or better. Nor need we suppose that he knew that pious
sensation of the book-lover, the feel of a library; that he had any of
the collector's amiable foolishness about rare editions; or that he
nourished festive thoughts of 'that company of honest old fellows in
their leathern jackets in his study,' as comrades in a sober old-world
conviviality.
Pages:
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40