第47章

Irving was the first American writer who stood high enough to be seen across the water.Thackeray's most beautiful essay is on Irving and Macaulay, who died just one month apart.In it he describes Irving as the best intermediary between the nations, telling us Americans that the English are still human, and assuring the English that Americans are already human.Irving was trained early and thoroughly in the Bible.All his life he was an old-fashioned Episcopalian with no concern for new religious ideas and with no rough edges anywhere.Charles Dudley Warner, speaking of Irving's moral quality, says: "I cannot bring myself to exclude it from a literary estimate, even in the face of the current gospel of art for art's sake."[1] Like Scott, he "recognized the abiding value in literature of integrity, sincerity, purity, charity, faith.These are beneficences, and Irving's literature, walk around it and measure it by whatever critical instruments you will, is a beneficent literature."[1] American Men of Letters Series, Washington Irving, p.302.

Then there is Emerson, a son of the manse and once a minister himself.He was, therefore, perfectly familiar with the English Bible.He did not accept it in all its religious teaching.Indeed, we have never had a more marked individualist in our American public life than Emerson.At every point he was simply himself.There is very little quotation in his writing, very little visible influence of any one else.He was not a follower of Carlyle, though he was his friend.If there is any precedent for the construction of his sentences, and even of his essays, it is to be found in the Hebrew prophets.As some one puts it, "he uttered sayings." In many of his essays there is no particular reason why the paragraphs should run one, two, three, and not three, two, one, or two, one, three, or in any other order.But Mr.Emerson was just himself.It is yet true that "his value forthe world at large lies in the fact that after all he is incurably religious." It is true that he could not see any importance in forms, or in ordinary declarations of faith."He would fight no battle for prelacy, nor for the Westminster confession, nor for the Trinity, but as against atheism, pessimism, and materialism, he was an ally of Christianity." The influence of the Bible on Emerson is more marked in his spirit than in anything else.Once in a while, as in that familiar address at Concord (1873), you run across Scripture phrases: "Shall not they who receive the largest streams spread abroad the healing waters?" That figure appears in literature only in the Bible, and there are others like it in his writings.