page 1170 note 1 “Emerson's Debt to Coleridge,” Studies in Philology, Jan., 1926.

page 1170 note 2 In “Emerson on Wordsworth,” PMLA, March, 1926, Mr. John Brooks Moore presents Emerson's criticism of Wordsworth's attitude toward nature. He relies mainly upon the Journals, ignoring the valuable introduction to Parnassus (cf. p. 1184). In his review, it seems to me, he has omitted material that would give an entirely different aspect even to his arguments on nature. He has one reference to Coleridge, and, though he stresses the influence of Carlyle, he takes no account of the fact that Coleridge's influence upon Emerson was greater than we have suspected. He practically brushes aside the odes, and analyses The Prelude, which Emerson did not read in full until after 1850. Through Coleridge, however, Emerson had read before 1833 two of the finest parts of the poem, the tribute to France and the Skating Scene. Mr. Moore refers to the latter (p. 188) as an illustration of Emerson's attitude after 1836, without realizing its source and implications. A much stronger reference that he might have used is to a list of poems Emerson made in 1837 (cf. p. 1174). I think I am correct in saying this list should form the basis of any paper dealing with the influence of Wordsworth upon Emerson.

But if these omissions were all, I could not dissent with Mr. Moore's treatment of the change that took place in Emerson's attitude toward Wordsworth. As the foundation stone of his argument he uses Emerson's criticism of Wordsworth during the years 1826-28, and makes this positive statement (page 180): “Emerson's first observations, written in 1826, are interesting because they are the first.” In my opinion, however, they are interesting because they present a decided theory of poetry and an analysis of the Ode (cf. p. 1172), the value of which Mr. Moore completely overlooks. From his own point of view the earlier criticism, written when Emerson was seventeen, is of more importance. It is true that the criticism remains unpublished; yet reference is made to it in the Journals (Vol. 1, p. 32); the note book “Contains notes on College lectures and extracts copied from the books he was reading; also some very juvenile criticism of Wordsworth, especially ‘The Excursion’ and notes for his prize dissertation ‘On the Present State of Ethical Philosophy’.”

Cabot, in A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, page 58, says, “There is much criticism of the poetry of the day; laudatory of Byron and Moore, doubtful of ‘the experiments of Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Coleridge’; queries whether they have not gained more ridicule than honor, not because they want genius, but because they want nature, and the affectation of simplicity is too apparent.” The change from hostility to both Wordsworth and Coleridge to hostility for Byron, whom he evidently liked in his youth, needs to be traced. It is similar to a change in Emerson's attitude toward nature.

page 1171 note 3 Journals, II, 107-08. The precursors to whom Emerson refers are Milton and Shakespeare, as is evident from the following: “He mauls the moon and the waters and the bulrushes, as his main business. Milton and Shakespeare touch them gently, as illustration or ornament” (Ibid., p. 232).

page 1172 note 4 Ibid., pp. 108-09.

page 1172 note 5 Journals, 226-27.

page 1173 note 6 Ibid., p. 143.

page 1174 note 7 Letters and Social Aims, pp. 28-29, Centenary Edition.

page 1174 note 8 Journals, IV, 246, May 25, 1837.

page 1176 note 9 Journals, II, 265-66.

page 1176 note 10 Ibid., II, 429-30.

page 1176 note 11 Ibid., II, 395-99.

page 1177 note 12 Lines 133-59.

page 1177 note 13 Journals, II, 534-35.

page 1177 note 14 Ibid., III, 533.

page 1177 note 15 Ibid., III, 535.

page 1178 note 16 Ibid., IV, 51-52.

page 1178 note 17 Nature, p. 9.

page 1178 note 18 This aspect of Emerson's attitude toward nature is not touched upon in Mr. Moore's article. He creates a barrier between Wordsworth and Emerson, and misses what Emerson gained from such poems as the Ode, Laadamia, Happy Warrior, and the Ode to Duty by the position he takes: “And it is those poems of the earlier period that Emerson had been reading, clearly enough before 1836.” In regard to the Joy experienced in the presence of nature, Mr. Moore is silent; yet Wordsworth's expression of Joy in the Ode proves almost the reverse of what Mr. Moore says about the distinction between the attitude of Wordsworth and Emerson in regard to nature: “They faced, nevertheless, in somewhat different (however far from opposite) directions. Wordsworth's early view of nature is partly similar to Emerson's permanent view of nature, as I have pointed out But the clear line of difference is there to indicate that each arrived separately at the view. For each of them, God (or Oversoul) penetrates and interpenetrates nature, an Essence ever present Emerson, from the first, adds that this soul is not simply ever present —it is already within us, as well. The intuition of the heart quite overshadows the impulses kindled by external nature” (“Emerson on Wordsworth,” p. 191). Now any one except a strict follower of Beatty will admit that Wordsworth's theory of Joy as given in Tintern Abbey was greatly modified in the Ode by Coleridge's poem Dejection an Ode, dedicated to Wordsworth, and the death of John in 1805. Coleridge writes,

“Joy is the tweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud—

We in ourselves rejoice.“

At the close of the Odt Wordsworth writes,

“The Clouds that gather round the setting sun

Do take a sober coloring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality.“

And in a sonnet written about the same time he uses almost the same phrasing as did Coleridge:

“ 'Tis well I from this day forward we shall know

That in ourselves our safety, must be sought.“

Of Wordsworth, as well as of Coleridge, Emerson would say that he taught “ab imtra.” In the essay “Beauty” be says, “Wordsworth rightly speaks of ‘a light that never was on sea or land,‘ meaning that it was supplied by the observer.” And in “Morals” he adds the further idea of a reco: filiation effected by Wordsworth between nature and the mind: “I count the genius of Swedenhorg and Wordsworth as the agents of a reform in philosophy, the bringing back to nature—to the marrying of nature and mind, undoing the old divorce in which poetry had been famished and false, and nature had been suspected and pagan.”

page 1179 note 19 Nature, p. 9.

page 1179 note 20 Centenary Edition, I, 119.

page 1179 note 21 Poems, p. 59.

page 1179 note 22 Poems, p. 50.

page 1180 note 23 Ibid., pp. 50-51.

page 1180 note 24 Ibid., p. 52.

page 1180 note 25 The Ode, Stanza XL.

page 1180 note 26 Poems, p. 59.

page 1181 note 27 English Traits, p. 280.

page 1181 note 28 Wordsworthiana, p. 161.

page 1181 note 29 Page ix.

page 1181 note 30 Letters and Social Aims, p. 346.

page 1181 note 31 Letters and Social Aims, p. 435.