f 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.

If our learned and excellent John Cotton used to sweeten his mouth
before going to bed with a bit of Calvin, we may as wisely sweeten and
strengthen our sense of existence with a morsel or two from Emerson's
Essay on "Resources":--

"A Schopenhauer, with logic and learning an