Both saw that the author in borrowing may transform his material, and so be in effect creative.1 Both trusted the poet to find his own expression, when once insight had enabled him to penetrate below the surface of the world; he need not imitate the rhythm-beats of conventional versification; if only he be himself inspired, his subject will find due music.2 To recall Carlyle's style, and furnish parallels of thought, a few further examples are subjoined, in his very words. Man influences other men, says he, not only by letters and messages, but by "the minutest that he does . . . and the very look of his face blesses or curses whom so it lights on, and so generates ever new blessings or cursing." This suggests Emerson's Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed hath lent.3 Emerson's contemplation of slavery led him back to the prevalent inward slavery of the individual.+ ' Carlyle on Voltaire, "Misc. Essays," II, 57. 2" German Playwrights," in Carlyle's "Critical and Misc. Essays," Boston, 1858, 1, 430; cf. the poem "Merlin," and "The Poet," III, 9, 10. 3 MacMechan's "Sartor," p. 223; Emerson's "Each and All." 4 See VI, 23; also the beginning of the speech of 1854 on "The Fugitive Slave Law," vol. XI. : Carlyle's expression of another side of the same thought is as follows: "Thou who exclaimest over the horrors and baseness of the Time . . . think of this over the Time thou hast no power; to redeem a world sunk in dishonesty has not been given thee; solely over one man therein thou hast a quite absolute uncontrollable power; him redeem, him make honest; it will be something, it will be much, and thy life and labor not in vain." Emerson said: "Beware, when God lets loose a thinker upon this planet." Carlyle: "Truly a Thinking Man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can have; every time such a one announces himself, I doubt not, there runs a shudder through the Nether Empire." 2 I Carlyle, in his essay on Diderot, urges the thinker (whom he calls also the poet and the seer) to write down that which he sees, whether noble or commonplace.3 Emerson, in well-known phrase, tells us to speak forth to-day's thought in hard words, and to-morrow's, regardless of a low consistency. Once more, Carlyle utters the same thought, in ringing tones: I" Corn-Law Rhymes," Essays, III, 295. 2 MacMechan's "Sartor," p. 108. 3 Essays, III, 304. 4" Self-Reliance." "Awake, arise. Speak forth what is in thee: what God has given thee, what the Devil shall not take away." I To conclude, the sum and substance of the current philosophic idealism came to Emerson chiefly through Coleridge, Goethe, and Carlyle. The earlier idealism of Berkeley had awakened youthful response to the life that throbs in a universe seemingly dead. In Schelling, Emerson found eyes looking upon the world very much as his own looked upon it. In Goethe, he saw another man living out, like himself, his individual life. From all, he caught whatever he could assimilate, especially the indwelling spirit of God. I MacMechan's "Sartor," p. 180. |