And it is difficult not to notice, in that essay in which Theodore
Parker ventured on higher intellectual ground, perhaps, than anywhere
else in his writings,--his critique on Emerson in the "Massachusetts
Quarterly,"--the indications of this mental disparity. It is in many
respects a noble essay, full of fine moral appreciations, bravely
generous, admirable in the loyalty of spirit shown towards a superior
mind, and all warm with a personal friendship which could find no
superior. But so far as literary execution is concerned, the beautiful
sentences of Emerson stand out like fragments of carved marble from
the rough plaster in which they are imbedded. Nor this alone; but, on
drawing near the vestibule of the author's finest thoughts, the critic
almost always stops, unable quite to enter their sphere. Subtile
beauties puzzle him; the titles of the poems, for instance, giving by
delicate allusion the key-note of each,--as "Astraea," "Mithridates,"
"Hamatreya," and "Etienne de la Boece,"--seem to him the work of "mere
caprice"; he pronounces the poem of "Monadnoc" "poor and weak"; he
condemns and satirizes the "Wood-notes," and thinks that a pine-tree
which should talk like Mr. Emerson's ought to be cut down and cast
into the sea.
The same want of fine discrimination was usually visible in his
delineations of great men in public life. Immense in accumulation of
details, terrible in the justice which held the balance, they yet left
one with the feeling, that, after all, the delicate main-springs of
character had been missed.
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