Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1903 — EMERSON’S PROSE STYLE. [ARTICLE]

EMERSON’S PROSE STYLE.

Held to Be Lacklun; la the Quality of Writers tailed Masters. What shall be said of Emerson’* prosd? Was Matthew Arnold right when, as an experienced critic calmly Judging the favorite author of hi» youth, he denied that the “Essays,!” the lectures and “English Traits” formed a body of prose of sufficient merit to entitle Emerson to be ranked as a great man of letters? It seems as IT the time had come for Emerson’s countrymen frankly to accept this verdict. Because of deficiencies, both of style and of romance, Emerson docs not belong to the small class of the great masters of prose. Ills style, despite the fact that “Nature” and many 0 1 the essays contain pages of eloquent prose almost equal in power and beauty to noble poetry, was nearly a I way* that of the lecturer or preacher rather than that of the writer. He too frequently lost the note of distinction and was content if he satisfied his far from exigent audiences. In diction, to be sure, he was a conscious and consummate master, and it need scarcely be said that few writers have surpassed him in the ability to compose a pregnant sentence. But, as is generally admitted and as is shown by bis practice of piecing his notes together, he was rarely able to evolve a paragraph,, much more a whole essay, in a masterly or even in a workmanlike fashion. It may be granted that critics have overemphasized his lack of coherence, that there is more logical unity in his essays than appears on first reading, that “English Trails” and the later volumes are far from being mere strings of “orphlc sayings,” but the fact seems to remain that the prose style of Emerson from first to last lacks the firmness, the compass, the precision, the flexibility, the individuality we demand of the prose writers whom we denominate masters.—Professor Trent in Bookman.