New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1912-10-27

| Emerson us the friend and alder OF
! those who live in the spirit" And
again: His insight is admirable, his
truth is precious" and his temper
hopeful, serene, beautiful" And Ar
mold sums up thus:
] "As Wordsworths poetry is, in my
| judgment, the most important work
done in verse, in our language, during
the present century, so Emerson
Essays are, l think, the most i'm
portant work done in prose-"
| And more important than Carlyle's."
If, then, Mr.. Lang had been impartial,
or had sought to bear impartial wit
ness, or had not "detested" Emerson,
we are entitled to think he would have
| given a fair account Of Matthew
and not the unfair and garbled one he
does in fact give.
| To Hawthorne, on the other hand,
Lang does full justice. HE was more
can fiction than either Thackeray or
Dickens is in England" Nay, in the
interests of art, though in no other,
the end of Puritanism in New Eng
land was to inspire the novels Of
Nathaniel Hawthorne" An original
view Of Puritanism indeed. But be-
cause Hawthorne was a genius of the
most exquisite nature" he proved
capable Of extracting poetry and ro-
nance even from -uritanism. The
Scarlet Letter is probably his master
piece" says Lang. who might we'll have
omitted his probably" II he was "ill
at ease in Europe" and in che great
museums, that was because the monu-
ments of classic and medieval art ARE
! not at all American, and he was rather
bitterly patriotic. one might almost say
parochial, in certain moods" Matthew
| Arnold puts 1t differently. He thinks
"Our Old Home the work Of a man
chagrined, and though Hawthorne's
! literary talent is Of the first order, the
| finest, I think, which America has yet
produced Arnold will not admit that
Our Old Home" is che Of his master
pieces. Nor need anybody admit it.
There was a reason for his chdgrin.
Hawthorne was a sensitive man, so
situated in England that he was per-
petually in contact with the British
Philistine; and the British Philistine is
| a trying parsonage"
To Arnold, the ancient enemy Of
British and other Philistines, that is
reason enough. Lang gives 1t a more
humorous turn, and parts from Haw-
! thOrne with the remark that I'VE can
| all sympathize with his criticisms Of
the adiposity Of some British matrons."
| Yet even by British Philistnes and
adipose British matrons Hawthorne is
read with ever-increasing appreciation.
Oliver Wendell Holmes comes next
| 10 Hawthorne as one Of the --latest
Georgian and Victorian Novelists." II
is mere perversity 20 consider Holmes
primarily as Novelist: even with the
admission that he was also poet and
Holiness enduring fame" rests on his
"Autocrat" and other essays. Why he
should classify the "Autocrat. OF the
| Breakfast Table" as an essay is not
clear. Here, and indeed throughout
his History" are traces Of haste or
! carelessness, or perhaps Of tired
mind. His mistakes about Holmes
matter little for he closes with quo
tation from Thackeray in 1858:
mo man in England can write with
Holiness charming mixture of wit,
pathos and imagination"
Between Thackeray and Holmes there
was a community Of intellectual inter
est, and from Thackeray's verdict there
is no appeal
On American Poets as on Poets in
general, save for his overestimate OF
French poetry in its relation to English
poetry, Lang's judgments are apt to
be sounder than on Prose. Bryant,
Whittier, Longfellow and finally Low
ell are grouped in the Poets After
Wordsworth" chapter. Bryant was
one Of those concerning whom Sainte-
Beuve says that they carry about In
them poet who died young" He Of
fered the best wine first. "Thanatop-
sis" Though improved by frequent re-
touching) 1.-THE Water Fowl" and
others. To Whittier Lang awards a
higher place thar such American es-
sayists as Professor Barrett Wendell,
who dismisses Whittier's poems, or
some of them. as of the school which
belongs in the poetical columns of
country newspapers. Lang halls him
as the best candidate for the bays
which a national poet wears.
During the great war he was one Of
the bards who stimulated the valour Of
the North; much as another Quaker by
waving his hat encouraged the Duke of
Cumberland's dragons at Prince
Charles's rear guard action at Clifton"
He compares him, at a distance, to
Burns, yet says:
MANY admirers Of Burns will be
eager 10 confess that Whittier's Snow
Bound has merits superior to those Of
the Ayrshire ploughman's companion
piece, The Cotter's Saturday Night"
Snow Bound is the piece which Mr..
FRIGHT loved: parts Of which more than