The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Volume V, 1835-1838 byRalph Waldo Emerson; Merton M. Sealts, Jr.Review by: Carl BodeThe Modern Language Review, Vol. 61, No. 4 (Oct., 1966), pp. 687-688Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3724062 .

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Reviews 687

Literary Wise Men of Gotham: Criticism in New rork, I815-I860. By JOHN PAUL PRITCHARD. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press. I963. x + 200 pp. $6.oo.

Literary Wise Men of Gotham is the product of a very considerable amount of research into the files of New York literary periodicals in the years between the Anglo- American War of 1812 and the outbreak of the American Civil War. It must have been a somewhat intimidating project, and its results, as here presented, are likely to be of substantial interest only to the few. There can be no doubt, however, that students of American intellectual history and of the development of American literary criticism will have cause to be grateful to Professor Pritchard for his work in surveying the journals of the period and picking out the literary themes and ideas with which they were most persistently concerned. The book will also have its value for students of Anglo-American cultural and literary relations.

Its chief usefulness is as a kind of digest, a summary, and it rarely becomes much more than that, despite Professor Pritchard's attempt to make the material subserve his central thesis (drawn from an observation of Edmund Wilson's) that the New York writers of the nineteenth century, although less creative than their New England contemporaries, were nonetheless 'more representatively American'. At the same time, the New York literary world of this period operated, to a greater or lesser degree, as setting and context for the work of such writers as Bryant, Irving, Cooper, Poe, Melville, and Whitman, and, as Professor Pritchard argues in his conclusion, Whitman's early career in particular can be better understood in terms of the periodicals, especially the Democratic Review, which must have influenced him even before he began contributing to them.

An Appendix to the volume gives a description of the chief periodicals consulted and brief biographical comments on some of the leading literary figures of the day, among them Gulian Verplanck, James Kirke Paulding, Nathaniel Parker Willis, Park Benjamin, and Evert Augustus Duyckinck; in what must be regarded as something of a pioneering study, these descriptions and comments might well have been expanded. It might also have been helpful, and for much the same reason, to include extended extracts from at any rate the most obviously significant of the articles to which reference is made. But this is perhaps to ask for a different kind of book from the one which Professor Pritchard has written, and the great value of Literary Wise Men of Gotham is that it both gives the intending student of this area some notion of what he is likely to find and provides him with some guidance on where to look.

MICHAEL MILLGATE TORONTO

The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Volume v, I835- 1838. Edited by MERTON M. SEALTS, JR. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: Oxford University Press. 1965. xx + 542 pp. J5.

The best years so far, I think, are covered in this splendid volume. Emerson opens for himself the door to a life more liberal than any he has known earlier. The grief over the death of his first wife largely allayed, he marries Lydia Jackson, pale, dark, and serene, and brings her to Concord to preside over his household. He writes the first of the essays which will give him a permanent place in American letters. He calls publicly for a true American literature and, half knowingly, provides part of it himself. He publishes the little book Nature in I836; it will be called the Bible of New England Transcendentalism. He writes and delivers 'The American Scholar' and the Divinity School address. The first will

Reviews 687

Literary Wise Men of Gotham: Criticism in New rork, I815-I860. By JOHN PAUL PRITCHARD. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press. I963. x + 200 pp. $6.oo.

Literary Wise Men of Gotham is the product of a very considerable amount of research into the files of New York literary periodicals in the years between the Anglo- American War of 1812 and the outbreak of the American Civil War. It must have been a somewhat intimidating project, and its results, as here presented, are likely to be of substantial interest only to the few. There can be no doubt, however, that students of American intellectual history and of the development of American literary criticism will have cause to be grateful to Professor Pritchard for his work in surveying the journals of the period and picking out the literary themes and ideas with which they were most persistently concerned. The book will also have its value for students of Anglo-American cultural and literary relations.

Its chief usefulness is as a kind of digest, a summary, and it rarely becomes much more than that, despite Professor Pritchard's attempt to make the material subserve his central thesis (drawn from an observation of Edmund Wilson's) that the New York writers of the nineteenth century, although less creative than their New England contemporaries, were nonetheless 'more representatively American'. At the same time, the New York literary world of this period operated, to a greater or lesser degree, as setting and context for the work of such writers as Bryant, Irving, Cooper, Poe, Melville, and Whitman, and, as Professor Pritchard argues in his conclusion, Whitman's early career in particular can be better understood in terms of the periodicals, especially the Democratic Review, which must have influenced him even before he began contributing to them.

An Appendix to the volume gives a description of the chief periodicals consulted and brief biographical comments on some of the leading literary figures of the day, among them Gulian Verplanck, James Kirke Paulding, Nathaniel Parker Willis, Park Benjamin, and Evert Augustus Duyckinck; in what must be regarded as something of a pioneering study, these descriptions and comments might well have been expanded. It might also have been helpful, and for much the same reason, to include extended extracts from at any rate the most obviously significant of the articles to which reference is made. But this is perhaps to ask for a different kind of book from the one which Professor Pritchard has written, and the great value of Literary Wise Men of Gotham is that it both gives the intending student of this area some notion of what he is likely to find and provides him with some guidance on where to look.

MICHAEL MILLGATE TORONTO

The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Volume v, I835- 1838. Edited by MERTON M. SEALTS, JR. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: Oxford University Press. 1965. xx + 542 pp. J5.

The best years so far, I think, are covered in this splendid volume. Emerson opens for himself the door to a life more liberal than any he has known earlier. The grief over the death of his first wife largely allayed, he marries Lydia Jackson, pale, dark, and serene, and brings her to Concord to preside over his household. He writes the first of the essays which will give him a permanent place in American letters. He calls publicly for a true American literature and, half knowingly, provides part of it himself. He publishes the little book Nature in I836; it will be called the Bible of New England Transcendentalism. He writes and delivers 'The American Scholar' and the Divinity School address. The first will

This content downloaded from 92.63.102.147 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 08:11:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

688 Reviews

become America's literary Declaration of Independence; the second to his amaze- ment will become a success of scandal and will result in Harvard's barring him, in effect, from its public platforms for the next twenty-five years. But elsewhere the platforms of the nation open up to him as his standing as a lecturer rises. In the present volume we see many of the notes for the lectures he will deliver and then turn into published essays.

His interests expand, his relationships multiply. In the fall of 1837 he meets Henry Thoreau, if he has not met him before, when Thoreau returns to settle in Concord after graduating from Harvard College. The two diverse men find unexpected affinities. Friendships develop too with Bronson Alcott, the most Transcendental of the emerging Transcendentalists, and that classic blue-stocking, Margaret Fuller. We can watch Emerson grow and grasp for new experience. We can see him absorb it. In April I838, for instance, he goes to some cliffs with Thoreau and is awed by the prospect. Back home that night, he walks out in the dark and sees only a star and hears only a frog. He asks himself promptly, 'Well do not these suffice?' The answer is, They do, and there is no need for a new Niagara each day for him to hanker after. He learns that less is more.

As his character becomes richer, his observation becomes more penetrating. He is by no means sinking into a state of vegetable benevolence; quite the reverse. He looks wisely about him, scanning and remembering. The result is sometimes quite formidable. For example, there is a time in October 1837 when he is medi- tating on the Southern character. Emerson recalls his Cambridge days as well as his later experiences, and the observation he makes is barbed: 'The young Souther- ner comes here a spoiled child with graceful manners, excellent self command, very good to be spoiled more, but good for nothing else, a mere parader. He has con- versed so much with rifles, horses, and dogs that he is become himself a rifle, a horse, and a dog and in civil educated company where anything human is going forward he is dumb and unhappy; like an Indian in a church.' Emerson adds, 'Their question respecting any man is like a Seminole's, How can he fight? In this country, we ask, What can he do?'

As we turn the pages we see Emerson enter his prime; and we wait to see more. I remember reading a critic who described his mounting excitement as he proceeded through Pepys's Diary and neared the time when the Great Fire would be encoun- tered, and then came to the point where he knew that the very next day of the Diary would find the fire breaking out. I know that I for one feel something like this as I reach each new volume of the Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks.

HYATTSVILLE, MARYLAND CARL BODE

The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Volume II, 1836-1838. Edited by STEPHEN E. WHICHER, ROBERT E. SPILLER, and WALLACE E. WILLIAMS.

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: Oxford University Press. I964. xx + 494 pp. 15.

How noble, how Transcendental, how long ago, it seems to have Emerson clear his throat and announce, 'In foregoing Lectures we have considered the demands of the Ideal Nature of man upon the Hands and upon the Head.' Thereafter he goes on among his capital letters and his abstractions. The abstractions are real to him; he attempts earnestly to make them as real to his lecture audiences. He stands before them, a preacher without a pulpit but a preacher as enthusiastic for his doctrine as any evangelist. Here in the second volume of this notable edition of the lectures we have more texts of quasi-sermons found and preserved for us than we ever thought to recover.

688 Reviews

become America's literary Declaration of Independence; the second to his amaze- ment will become a success of scandal and will result in Harvard's barring him, in effect, from its public platforms for the next twenty-five years. But elsewhere the platforms of the nation open up to him as his standing as a lecturer rises. In the present volume we see many of the notes for the lectures he will deliver and then turn into published essays.

His interests expand, his relationships multiply. In the fall of 1837 he meets Henry Thoreau, if he has not met him before, when Thoreau returns to settle in Concord after graduating from Harvard College. The two diverse men find unexpected affinities. Friendships develop too with Bronson Alcott, the most Transcendental of the emerging Transcendentalists, and that classic blue-stocking, Margaret Fuller. We can watch Emerson grow and grasp for new experience. We can see him absorb it. In April I838, for instance, he goes to some cliffs with Thoreau and is awed by the prospect. Back home that night, he walks out in the dark and sees only a star and hears only a frog. He asks himself promptly, 'Well do not these suffice?' The answer is, They do, and there is no need for a new Niagara each day for him to hanker after. He learns that less is more.

As his character becomes richer, his observation becomes more penetrating. He is by no means sinking into a state of vegetable benevolence; quite the reverse. He looks wisely about him, scanning and remembering. The result is sometimes quite formidable. For example, there is a time in October 1837 when he is medi- tating on the Southern character. Emerson recalls his Cambridge days as well as his later experiences, and the observation he makes is barbed: 'The young Souther- ner comes here a spoiled child with graceful manners, excellent self command, very good to be spoiled more, but good for nothing else, a mere parader. He has con- versed so much with rifles, horses, and dogs that he is become himself a rifle, a horse, and a dog and in civil educated company where anything human is going forward he is dumb and unhappy; like an Indian in a church.' Emerson adds, 'Their question respecting any man is like a Seminole's, How can he fight? In this country, we ask, What can he do?'

As we turn the pages we see Emerson enter his prime; and we wait to see more. I remember reading a critic who described his mounting excitement as he proceeded through Pepys's Diary and neared the time when the Great Fire would be encoun- tered, and then came to the point where he knew that the very next day of the Diary would find the fire breaking out. I know that I for one feel something like this as I reach each new volume of the Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks.

HYATTSVILLE, MARYLAND CARL BODE

The Early Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Volume II, 1836-1838. Edited by STEPHEN E. WHICHER, ROBERT E. SPILLER, and WALLACE E. WILLIAMS.

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: Oxford University Press. I964. xx + 494 pp. 15.

How noble, how Transcendental, how long ago, it seems to have Emerson clear his throat and announce, 'In foregoing Lectures we have considered the demands of the Ideal Nature of man upon the Hands and upon the Head.' Thereafter he goes on among his capital letters and his abstractions. The abstractions are real to him; he attempts earnestly to make them as real to his lecture audiences. He stands before them, a preacher without a pulpit but a preacher as enthusiastic for his doctrine as any evangelist. Here in the second volume of this notable edition of the lectures we have more texts of quasi-sermons found and preserved for us than we ever thought to recover.

This content downloaded from 92.63.102.147 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 08:11:11 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions