are generalized and personality merged in a type. In the poetry, often intimate personal experiences are used, but purified and adorned. Dr. Holmes treats of this matter with charming wit in his chapter on Emerson as a Poet.
Page 319, note 1. In a lecture in a course on English Literature in 1835, Mr. Emerson said of Byron: "He has a marvellous power of language, but, from pride and selfishness, which made him an incurious observer, it lacked food. One's interest dies from famine of meaning. Cursing will soon be sufficient in the most skilful variety of diction. Of Scott it would be ungrateful to speak but with cheerful respect, and we owe to him some passages of genuine pathos. But in general, what he contributes is not brought from the deep places of the mind, and of course cannot reach thither." In a lecture in 1861, he said, "Byron had declamation, he had delicious music, but he knew not the mania which gives creative power."
Page 321, note 1. In a lecture, "Books," in 1864, Mr. Emerson said: "I read lately with delight a casual notice of Wordsworth in a London journal, in which with perfect aplomb his highest merits were affirmed, and his unquestionable superiority to all English poets since Milton. I thought how long I travelled and talked in England, and found no person, or only one (Clough), in sympathy with him and admiring him aright, in face of Tennyson's culminating talent and genius in melodious verse. This rugged countryman walks and sits alone for years, assured of his sanity and inspiration, sneered at and disparaged, yet no more doubting the fine oracles that visited him than if Apollo had visibly descended to him on Helvellyn. Now, so few years after, it is lawful in that obese England to affirm unresisted the superiority of his genius."
