True, we do not outgrow Dante, or
Cervantes, or Bacon; and I doubt if the Anglo-Saxon stock at least
ever outgrows that king of romancers, Walter Scott. These men and
their like appeal to a larger audience, and in some respects a more
adult one, at least one more likely to be found in every age and
people. Their achievement was more from the common level of human
nature than are Emerson's astonishing paradoxes. Yet I believe his
work has the seal of immortality upon it as much as that of any of
them. No doubt he has a meaning to us now and in this country that
will be lost to succeeding time. His religious significance will
not be so important to the next generation. He is being or has been
so completely absorbed by his times, that readers and hearers
hereafter will get him from a thousand sources, or his contribution
will become the common property of the race. All the masters
probably had some peculiar import or tie to their contemporaries
that we at a distance miss. It is thought by scholars that we have
lost the key, or one key, to Dante, and Chaucer, and Shakespeare,--
the key or the insight that people living under the same roof get
of each other.
But, aside from and over and above everything else, Emerson
_appeals to youth and to genius._ If you have these, you will
understand him and delight in him; if not, or neither of them, you
will make little of him. And I do not see why this should not be
just as true any time hence as at present.
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