n his Journals, as in this
passage: "The water we wash with never speaks of itself, nor does fire
or wind or tree. Neither does a noble natural man," and so forth. If
water and fire and wind and tree were in the habit of talking of
anything else, this kind of a comparison would not seem so spurious.

A false note in rhetoric like the above you will find in Emerson
oftener than a false note in taste. I find but one such in the
Journals: "As soon as a man gets his suction-hose down into the great
deep, he belongs to no age, but is an eternal man." That I call an
ignoble image, and one cannot conceive of Emerson himself printing
such a passage.

We hear it said that Whittier is the typical poet of New England. It
may be so, but Emerson is much the greater poet. Emerson is a poet of
the world, while Whittier's work is hardly known abroad at all.
Emerson is known wherever the English language is spoken. Not that
Emerson is in any sense a popular poet, such as, for example, Burns or
Byron, but he is the poet of the choice few, of those who seek poetry
that has some intellectual or spiritual content. Whittier wrote many
happy descriptions of New England scenes and seasons. "The Tent on the
Beach" and "Snow-Bound" come readily to mind; "The Playmate" is a
sweet poem, full of tender and human affection, but not a great poem.
Whittier had no profundity. Is not a Quaker poet necessarily narrow?
Whittier gave voice to the New England detestation of slavery, but by
no means so forcibly and profoundly as did Emerson. He had a theology,
but not a philosophy. I wonder if his poems are still read.

In his chapter called "Considerations by the Way," Emerson strikes
this curious false note in his rhetoric: "We have a right to be here
or we should not be here. We have the same right to be here that Cape
Cod and Sandy Hook have to be there." As if Cape Cod or Cape Horn or
Sandy Hook had any "rights"! This comparison of man with inanimate
things occurs in both Emerson and Thoreau. Thoreau sins in this way at
least once when he talks of the Attic wit of burning thorns and
briars. There is a similar false note in such a careful writer as Dean
Swift. He says to his young poet, "You are ever to try a good poem as
you would a sound pipkin, and if it rings well upon the knuckle, be
sure there is no flaw in it." Whitman compares himself with an
inanimate thing in the line:

"I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant my house by."