EMERSON, RALPH WALDO, LL.D. (ante); an eminent American poet and essayist, b. Boston, May 25, 1803. He is of a clerical lineage, being the eighth in succession of a consecutive line of Puritan ministers. His father, who died when be was but seven years of age, was the Rev. William Emerson of the First church in Boston. He was fitted for college in the Boston public Latin school, entered Harvard in 1817, and gradu ated in 1821. His tastes were literary rather than scholastic. In the Latin school lie wrote verses for exhibition days, and in college the library had for him more charms than the text-books. His rank as a student was not above that of sonic others in his class, though he took two prizes for dissertations and one for declamation, and was the class-day poet at the time of his graduation. For five years after leaving college lie was engaged with his brother William in teaching a successful school for girls in Boston. During this time he must have given attention to theological studies, for he was " appro bated to preach" in 1826. After this, for the benefit of his health, he passed a winter in South Carolina and Florida. In Mar., 1829 he was ordained as colleague of the Rev. henry Ware in the Second Unitarian church in Boston. His pastorate was short, for he soon found himself entertaining scruples concerning the ordinances of the church, and especially unwilling-to administer that of the Lord's Supper. Nis resignation of his pulpit and of the ministry for stich a reason made no little stir in the Unitarian denomi and in the other Christian sects, being regarded as a very strange event. The parting between him and his congregation, in 1832, was most honorable and affectionate on both sides, for, as a preacher,. he had won popularity and favor He now went to Europe for a year, and on his return, in the winter of 1833-34, he began in Boston his eminent career as a lecturer, with a discourse upon " Water," before the Boston manufac turers' institute. Three other lectures, two upon " Italy," and one on " The Relation of Man to the Globe," were delivered dining the same season. Shortly after this he delivered in Boston a course of biographical lectures on Michael Angelo, Milton, Luther, George Fox, and Edmund Burke; the first two of which appeared afterwards in the North American Review. Since that day, until within a few years past, lie has been among the most conspicuous and popular of American lecturers, traveling extensively in the eastern, northern, and western states, and attracting large audiences, less by any oratorical gifts than by the solid value of his thoughts. In some places he has been a great favorite, speaking by invitation for the fortieth or fiftieth time in the same lyceum course, with undiminished interest. In 1835, Emerson took up his residence in Concord, Mass., where he still remains, the foremost citizen in the place, sharing the love, honor, and reverence of all the people, without distinction of party or sect. In 1835, and the three or four following years, he delivered in Boston successive courses of lectures on English literature, the philosophy of history, human culture, human life, and the times. In 1834, he delivered a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa society of Harvard: in 1837, air oration before the same society upon "The American Scholar;" and in 1838, an address to the senior class of the Cambridge divinity school, which created no little stir in the literary and theological world. His first book, a thin volume entitled Nature, appeared iu 1836, and was received by a few enthusiastic admirers as opening a new era iu American thought, while in sonic quarters it was sharply criticised. In 1841, appeared The Method of Nature, which developed more fully the peculiar qualities of his mind and his ways of thinking, and by its freshness and beauty won hum many admirers. For reasons which to many leaders of popular thought were ineomprelien sible, he was rapidly gaining a strong hold upon the affection and reverence of an increas ing multitude of his countrymen, and winning the attention of thoughtful men on the other side of the Atlantic. The " transcendental" movement, so called, was coincident with the appearance of his earliest works, and received from them both impulse and direction. In 1840, appeared a quarterly magazine entitled The Dial, with Miss Marga ret Fuller as editor, assisted by A. Bronson Alcott, William H. Charming, Emerson, Theodore Parker, George Ripley, and others. This periodical was continued four years, during the last two of which Emerson was the editor. Two volumes of Essays were Emerson's next issues, the first appearing in 1841, the second in 1844. His collected Poems were published in 1846. In 1847, he visited England to fulfill engagements as a lecturer, and was warmly received by the lovers of his books, and by the public genet ally. In 1849, he colleet&I into a volume of Miscellanies his "Nature," and nine lec tures and college addresses, which had previously appeared in The .Dial, or in pamphlet
form. In 1850, appeared his Essays on Representative Men, a work of great interest and power. In 1852, he assisted in preparing the memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. In 1856, he published English Traits, a work which well illustrated his powers of accurate obseivation, and his clear understanding of the workings of human nature under various conditions. Next appeared, in 1860, The Conduct of Life, a work which brings clearly to view the exalted moral and ethical principles which underlie and pervade all that lie has written. A subsequent volume embraced a portion of his contributions to the Atlantic Monthly. In 1867, appeared a volume of his poems, May Day and Other Pieces. In 1870, lie published Society and Solitude, and in 1869, appeared his Prose lirorks Com plete. In 1875, he published four series of Essays. In 1878, in the North American Review, appeared a paper, Sovereignty of Ethics, which fixed the public attention as the ripest fruit of his broad culture; and in 1880, the Unitarian Review published, under the title of " The Preacher," his address of 1879 in the divinity chapel at Cambridge. Be is now, in a serene old age, reported as -being engaged in revising for the press his remaining MSS., which will not probably see the light until after his death. In the midst of his literary labors Emerson has found time to manifest his interest in great public questions as they arose. Some of his letters upon passing events in the newspaper press have exerted a wide influence. While he was a pastor in Boston he opened his pulpit to an earnest protest against American slavery, and during the whole period of the antislavery agitation he constantly manifested his sympathy with those who sought to deliver the land from the curse of human bondage. In 1844, he gave emphatic expres sion to his views in an address delivered upon the 1st of Aug., the anniversary of emanei pation in the British West Indies. Though not in the technical sense of the word a reformer, his habits and tastes being rather those of a scholar and man of letters, every earnest movement for the welfare of humanity has had his sympathy. He gave his name to the call issued in 1850 for the first convention ever held in Massachusetts to secure for women equal rights with men as citizens and voters. He is a member of the American academy of arts and sciences, of the American philosophical society, of the Massachusetts historical society, and a vice-president of the free religious association. He is also a member of the board of overseers of Harvard university, from which he received the degree of doctor of laws in 1860: lily writings, though marked by an eth ical and spiritual vitality of the highest order, are utterly devoid of system, and pervaded by a certain mystical quality, charming to some but bewildering to others. His intel lectual gems are profusely sown throughout his pages according to no visible or con scious method, and with settings that seem quite accidental; but they glow with a genuine luster wherever found. To the arts and processes of the logician he pays no regard, evidently thinking that they tend to belittle, rather than exalt, the truth. He simply affirms what he believes, making his appeal at every step to the moral intui tions of the reader, in the faith that the " spirit of man is the candle of the Lord," with a power of illumination adapted to every emergency. His position is clearly indicated in a simple sentence from his address at the divinity school in 18.38: " The assumption that the age of inspiration is past, that •the Bible is closed, the fear of degrading the character of Jesus by representing him as a man, indicate with sufficient clearness the falsehood of our theology." His earlier writings are supposed by some to show a drift towards pantheism, but others repel this interpretation as unjust. Certainly lie has never called himself a pantheist, and there is unquestionable evidence that whatever may have been his former speculations, that name cannot truly be applied to him now. His friend A. Bronson Alcott reports him as saying: " I do not care to classify myself with any painstaking accuracy with this sect or with that; but if I am to have any appellation at all of a religious kind, I prefer to be called a Christian theist. You must not leave out the word Christian, for to leave out that is to leave out everything." Con firmation of this is to be found in his latest publication, The Preacher, in which he says: "Unlovely, nay, frightful, is the solitude of the soul which is without God in the world. To see men pursuing in faith their varied action, warm-hearted, providing for their children, loving their friends, performing their promises—what are they to this chill, houseless, fatherless, aimless Cain, the man who hears only the sound of his own foot steps in God's resplendent creation?"