e: does not wish
to jump out of his skin, or play any antics, or annihilate space or
time, but is stout and solid; tastes every moment of the day; likes
pain because it makes him feel himself and realize things; as we
pinch ourselves to know that we are awake. He keeps the plain; he
rarely mounts or sinks; likes to feel solid ground and the stones
underneath. His writing has no enthusiasms, no aspiration;
contented, self-respecting, and keeping the middle of the road.
There is but one exception,--in his love for Socrates. In speaking
of him, for once his cheek flushes and his style rises to passion."

The writer who draws this portrait must have many of the same
characteristics. Much as Emerson loved his dreams and his dreamers, he
must have found a great relief in getting into "the middle of the road"
with Montaigne, after wandering in difficult by-paths which too often
led him round to the point from which he started.

As to his exposition of the true relations of skepticism to affirmative
and negative belief, the philosophical reader must be referred to the
Essay itself.

In writing of "Shakespeare; or, the Poet," Emerson naturally gives
expression to his leading ideas about the office of the poet and of
poetry.

"Great men are more distinguished by range and extent than by
originality." A poet has "a heart in unison with his time and
country."--"There is nothing whimsical and fantastic in his production,
but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions,
and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of
in his times."

When Shakespeare was in his youth the drama was the popular means of
amusement. It was "ballad, epic, newspaper, caucus, lecture, Punch, and
library, at the same time. The best proof of its vitality is the crowd
of writers which suddenly broke into this field." Shakespeare found a
great mass of old plays existing in manuscript and reproduced from time
to time on the stage. He borrowed in all directions: "A great poet who
appears in illiterate times absorbs into his sphere all the light which
is anywhere radiating." Homer, Chaucer, Saadi, felt that all wit was
their wit. "Chaucer is a huge borrower." Emerson gives a list of authors
from whom he drew. This list is in many particulars erroneous, as I have
learned from a letter of Professor Lounsbury's which I have had the
privilege of reading, but this is a detail which n