n is to be found in the fact
that his point of view is not that of the acceptor, the
creator,--Shakespeare's point of view,--but that of the refiner and
selector, the priest's point of view. He described his own state rather
than that of mankind when he said, "The human mind stands ever in
perplexity, demanding intellect, demanding sanctity, impatient equally
of each without the other."

Much surprise has been expressed in literary circles in this country
that Emerson has not followed up his first off-hand indorsement of Walt
Whitman with fuller and more deliberate approval of that poet, but has
rather taken the opposite tack. But the wonder is that he should have
been carried off his feet at all in the manner he was; and it must
have been no ordinary breeze that did it. Emerson shares with his
contemporaries the vast preponderance of the critical and discerning
intellect over the fervid, manly qualities and faith. His power of
statement is enormous; his scope of being is not enormous. The prayer
he uttered many years ago for a poet of the modern, one who could see in
the gigantic materialism of the times the carnival of the same deities
we so much admire in Greece and Rome, seems to many to have even been
explicitly answered in Whitman; but Emerson is balked by the cloud of
materials, the din and dust of action, and the moving armies, in which
the god comes enveloped.

But Emerson has his difficulties with all the poets. Homer is too
literal, Milton too literary, and there is too much of the whooping
savage in Whitman. He seems to think the real poet is yet to appear; a
poet on new terms, the reconciler, the poet-priest,--one who shall unite
the whiteness and purity of the saint with the power and unction of the
sinner; one who shall bridge the chasm between Shakespeare and St. John.
For when our Emerson gets on his highest horse, which he does only on
two or three occasions, he finds Shakespeare only a half man, and
that it would take Plato and Manu and Moses and Jesus to complete him.
Shakespeare, he says, rested with the symbol, with the festal beauty of
the world, and did not take the final step, and explore the essence
of things, and ask, "Whence? What? and Whither?" He was not wise for
himself; he did not lead a beautiful, saintly life, but ate, and drank,
and reveled, and affiliated with all manner of persons, and quaffed the
cup of life with gusto and relish. The elect, spotless souls will always
look upon th