time constitute, and which 'tis pleasant to see, act almost as harmoniously and efficiently, as if they were organized and acted by vote."
For a writer who is often classified nowadays as a "mere moralist," Emerson liberated an extraordinary number of ideas about both the major and the minor problems of the literary art. You may say, if you like, that his literary scrupulousness is but an aspect of his moral rectitude; but any other writer of his exacting artistic conscience would be saluted by all the anti-Puritans as a "lover of beauty," a "martyr of style." In 1831, long before Flaubert or Pater had announced it, he committed to his Journal the doctrine of the "unique word:" "No man can write well who thinks there is any choice of words for him. The laws of composition are as strict as those of sculpture and architecture. There is always one line that ought to be drawn, or one proportion that should be kept, and every other line or proportion is wrong, and so far wrong as it deviates from this. So in writing, there is always a right word, and every other than that is wrong. There is no beauty in words except in their collocation. The effect of a fanciful word misplaced, is like that of a horn of exquisite polish growing on a human head."
Economy, Emerson regards as the poet's chastity: "Let the poet, of all men, stop with his inspiration. The inexorable rule in the muses' court, either inspiration or silence, compels the bard to report only
