Ah, but the long centuries, where the reading of books is concerned, set aside all considerations of quantity, of popularity, of immediate influence, and sternly test by quality alone,—­judge each author by his most golden sentence, and let all else go.  The deeds make the man, but it is the style which makes or dooms the writer.  History, which always sends great men in groups, gave us Emerson by whom to test the intellectual qualities of Parker.  They cooperated in their work from the beginning, in much the same mutual relation as now; in looking back over the rich volumes of the “Dial,” the reader now passes by the contributions of Parker to glean every sentence of Emerson’s, but we have the latter’s authority for the fact that it was the former’s articles which originally sold the numbers.  Intellectually, the two men form the complement to each other; it is Parker who reaches the mass of the people, but it is probable that all his writings put together have not had so profound an influence on the intellectual leaders of the nation as the single address of Emerson at Divinity Hall.

And it is difficult not to notice, in that essay in which Theodore Parker ventured on higher intellectual ground, perhaps, than anywhere else in his writings,—­his critique on Emerson in the “Massachusetts Quarterly,”—­the indications of this mental disparity.  It is in many respects a noble essay, full of fine moral appreciations, bravely generous, admirable in the loyalty of spirit shown towards a superior mind, and all warm with a personal friendship which could find no superior.  But so far as literary execution is concerned, the beautiful sentences of Emerson stand out like fragments of carved marble from the rough plaster in which they are imbedded.  Nor this alone; but, on drawing near the vestibule of the author’s finest thoughts, the critic almost always stops, unable quite to enter their sphere.  Subtile beauties puzzle him; the titles of the poems, for instance, giving by delicate allusion the key-note of each,—­as “Astraea,” “Mithridates,” “Hamatreya,” and “Etienne de la Boece,”—­seem to him the work of “mere caprice”; he pronounces the poem of “Monadnoc” “poor and weak”; he condemns and satirizes the “Wood-notes,” and thinks that a pine-tree which should talk like Mr. Emerson’s ought to be cut down and cast into the sea.

The same want of fine discrimination was usually visible in his delineations of great men in public life.  Immense in accumulation of details, terrible in the justice which held the balance, they yet left one with the feeling, that, after all, the delicate main-springs of character had been missed.  Broad contrasts, heaps of good and evil, almost exaggerated praises, pungent satire, catalogues of sins that seemed pages from some Recording Angel’s book,—­these were his mighty methods; but for the subtilest analysis, the deepest insight into the mysteries of character, one must look elsewhere.  It was still scene-painting, not portraiture; and the same thing which overwhelmed with wonder, when heard in the Music Hall, produced a slight sense of insufficiency, when read in print.  It was certainly very great in its way, but not in quite the highest way; it was preliminary work, not final; it was Parker’s Webster, not Emerson’s Swedenborg or Napoleon.