SOURCE: "Emerson's Poems," in Ralph Waldo Emerson/John Lothrop Motley: Two Memoirs, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1899, pp. 239-64.

Holmes, a contemporary of Emerson's, was a famous medical doctor and fellow writer. In the following excerpt, Holmes discusses Emerson's poetry by comparing Emerson to the great writers throughout history, ranking Emerson highly for the moral statements he makes in symbolic terms but also criticizing him slightly for the unevenness of his poetic rhythm.

… The difference between Emerson's poetry and that of the contemporaries with whom he would naturally be compared is that of algebra and arithmetic. He deals largely in general symbols, abstractions, and infinite series. He is always seeing the universal in the particular. The great multitude of mankind care more for two and two, something definite, a fixed quantity, than for a + b's and x²'s,—symbols used for undetermined amounts and indefinite possibilities. Emerson is...