his message with a fervor that at times was
like the trembling of a flame, or the quivering of midsummer sunshine. It
was hard to associate with the man as one saw him, still, shy, stiff, the
passion of his verse. This imbued not only his antislavery utterances,
but equally his ballads of the old witch and Quaker persecution, and
flashed a far light into the dimness where his interrogations of Mystery
pierced. Whatever doubt there can be of the fate of other New England
poets in the great and final account, it seems to me that certain of
these pieces make his place secure.

There is great inequality in his work, and I felt this so strongly that
when I came to have full charge of the Magazine, I ventured once to
distinguish. He sent me a poem, and I had the temerity to return it, and
beg him for something else. He magnanimously refrained from all show of
offence, and after a while, when he had printed the poem elsewhere, he
gave me another. By this time, I perceived that I had been wrong, not as
to the poem returned, but as to my function regarding him and such as he.
I had made my reflections, and never again did I venture to pass upon
what contributors of his quality sent me. I took it and printed it, and
praised the gods; and even now I think that with such men it was not my
duty to play the censor in the periodical which they had made what it
was. They had set it in authority over American literature, and it was
not for me to put myself in authority over them. Their fame was in their
own keeping, and it was not my part to guard it against them.

After that experience I not only practised an eager acquiescence in their
wish to reach the public through the Atlantic, but I used all the
delicacy I was master of in bowing the way to them. Sometimes my utmost
did not avail, or more strictly speaking it did not avail in one instance
with Emerson. He had given me upon much entreaty a poem which was one of
his greatest and best, but the proof-reader found a nominative at odds
with its verb. We had some trouble in reconciling them, and some other
delays, and meanwhile Doctor Holmes offered me a poem for the same
number. I now doubted whether I should get Emerson's poem back in time
for it, but unluckily the proof did come back in time, and then I had to
choose between my poets, or acquaint them with the state of the case, and
let them choose what I should do. I really felt that Doctor Holmes had
the right to precedence, since