" Every gas is
a vacuum to every other gas, says Emerson, quoting the scientist;
and every great poet complements and leaves the world free to every
other great poet.
Emerson's limitation or fixity is seen also in the fact that he has
taken no new step in his own direction, if indeed another step
could be taken in that direction and not step off. He is a prisoner
on his peak. He cannot get away from the old themes. His later
essays are upon essentially the same subjects as his first. He
began by writing on nature, greatness, manners, art, poetry, and he
is still writing on them. He is a husbandman who practices no
rotation of crops, but submits to the exhaustive process of taking
about the same things from his soil year after year. Some readers
think they detect a falling off. It is evident there is not the
same spontaneity, and that the soil has to be more and more stirred
and encouraged, which is not at all to be wondered at.
But if Emerson has not advanced, he has not receded, at least in
conviction and will, which is always the great danger with our bold
prophets. The world in which he lives, the themes upon which he
writes, never become hackneyed to him. They are always fresh and
new. He has hardened, but time has not abated one jot or tittle
his courage and hope,--no cynicism and no relaxing of his hold, no
decay of his faith, while the nobleness of his tone, the chivalry
of his utterance, is even more marked than at first.
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