“There is nothing here that he did not write, and he gave his full approval to whatever was done in the way of selection and arrangement; but I cannot say that he applied his mind very closely to the matter.”

This volume contains eleven Essays, the subjects of which, as just enumerated, are very various.  The longest and most elaborate paper is that entitled “Poetry and Imagination.”  I have room for little more than the enumeration of the different headings of this long Essay.  By these it will be seen how wide a ground it covers.  They are “Introductory;” “Poetry;” “Imagination;” “Veracity;” “Creation;” “Melody, Rhythm, Form;” “Bards and Trouveurs;” “Morals;” “Transcendency.”  Many thoughts with which we are familiar are reproduced, expanded, and illustrated in this Essay.  Unity in multiplicity, the symbolism of nature, and others of his leading ideas appear in new phrases, not unwelcome, for they look fresh in every restatement.  It would be easy to select a score of pointed sayings, striking images, large generalizations.  Some of these we find repeated in his verse.  Thus:—­

    “Michael Angelo is largely filled with the Creator that made and
    makes men.  How much of the original craft remains in him, and he a
    mortal man!”

And so in the well remembered lines of “The Problem":—­

  “Himself from God he could not free.”

“He knows that he did not make his thought,—­no, his thought made him, and made the sun and stars.”

  “Art might obey but not surpass. 
  The passive Master lent his hand
  To the vast soul that o’er him planned.”

Hope is at the bottom of every Essay of Emerson’s as it was at the bottom of Pandora’s box:—­

    “I never doubt the riches of nature, the gifts of the future, the
    immense wealth of the mind.  O yes, poets we shall have, mythology,
    symbols, religion of our own.

    —­“Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every
    fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.”

Under the title “Social Aims” he gives some wise counsel concerning manners and conversation.  One of these precepts will serve as a specimen—­if we have met with it before it is none the worse for wear:—­

“Shun the negative side.  Never worry people with; your contritions, nor with dismal views of politics or society.  Never name sickness; even if you could trust yourself on that perilous topic, beware of unmuzzling a valetudinarian, who will give you enough of it.”

We have had one Essay on “Eloquence” already.  One extract from this new discourse on the same subject must serve our turn:—­

“These are ascending stairs,—­a good voice, winning manners, plain speech, chastened, however, by the schools into correctness; but we must come to the main matter, of power of statement,—­know your fact; hug your fact.  For the essential thing is heat, and heat comes of sincerity.  Speak what you know and believe; and are personally in it; and are answerable for every word.  Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak.”

The italics are Emerson’s.