slave-holders, and corruptionists: "I suppose the evil may be cured by this rank rabble party, the Jacksonism of the country, heedless of English and of all literature—a stone cut out of the ground without hands—they may root out the hollow dilettantism of our cultivation in the coarsest way, and the new born may begin again to frame their own world with greater advantage."
As literary critic, Emerson has, with only an occasional trace of reluctance, the courage of his free religion, his philosophy, his politics. His thought in these matters underlies and supports his Poetics and his Rhetoric. Mystic, symbolist, and democrat, he is constrained to declare that there is no vulgar life save that of which the poetry has not yet been written. He urges us bravely to paint the prospect from our doors, wherever they open. He asserts the possibility of all subjects: "A dog drawn by a master, or a litter of pigs, satisfies, and is a reality not less than the frescoes of Angelo." He detests a bookish and fossilized phrase and diction: "He only is a good writer who keeps one eye on his page, and with the other sweeps over things, so that every sentence brings in a new contribution of observation." He has meditated deeply on image, rhyme, and rhythm; and has discovered the literary value of colloquial cadence, the picturesque language of children, the scoff and violence of the "yeoman," the pungency of natural persons expressing their mother-wit. His essays contain more great
